Road to Munich
Beyond Westlessness: Renewing Transatlantic Cooperation, Meeting Global Challenges
About the "Road to Munich"
Road to Munich Logo
The international security situation in 2021 is bleak. Against the backdrop of the global Covid-19 pandemic, many of the deeply worrying trends that were already underway have further accelerated. At the same time, with a new administration in the United States having assumed office, there is an opportunity to "build back better": to reinvigorate transatlantic and international collaboration in order to find common responses to the many pressing challenges on the international security agenda. In addition, the upcoming German federal elections in September will make 2021 a crucial year for transatlantic relations. Close transatlantic cooperation is not enough to meet most global challenges – but having Europe and the United States pull together is a prerequisite for successfully addressing most threats to the international community.
At the MSC Special Edition in February, the starting point of the “Road to Munich,” world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, expressed their shared commitment to renew, rebuild, and reform the transatlantic partnership. While their remarks demonstrated a new transatlantic momentum and willingness to move beyond a state of “Westlessness,” much work remains to translate this commitment into an actionable program. The MSC aims to support this process with the “Road to Munich” by providing a platform to develop policy recommendations for a new transatlantic agenda in order to lay the groundwork for the next Munich Security Conference planned for February 2022.
Focus topics of the "Road to Munich"
Combining various predominantly digital event formats and publications, "Beyond Westlessness: The Road to Munich" brings together different MSC stakeholders from politics, academia, media, business, and civil society. While some featured events are explicitly aimed at the public, other "off-the-record" formats are only accessible to selected high-ranking decision-makers. The types of events range from high-quality television productions, interactive crisis simulations and task force working meetings to roundtable events and confidential background discussions. Depending on each format, decision-makers from both sides of the Atlantic and beyond will participate to discuss some of the most relevant transatlantic policy priorities.
The following five themes are at the core of a new transatlantic agenda and thus constitute a particular focus of the "Road to Munich":
- International Order & Great Power Competition
- Climate & Sustainability
- Health Security
- Technology & Digital Innovation
- Transatlantic Defense & Security
The events on the "Road to Munich" will also be accompanied by MSC publication projects such as the Munich Security Brief "Beyond Westlessness", the Munich Security Report 2021, and the Munich Security Brief "Error 404 – Trust Not Found: A European Survey on Digital (Dis)trust."
What does "Beyond Westlessness" mean?
The term "Westlessness" was coined by the MSC in its Munich Security Report 2020, reflecting the global political momentum characterized by an increasing erosion of liberal, rules-based and democratic norms both in international relations as well as in “Western” states, a sense of a growing weakness of Western states in international affairs, and the widespread feeling that a multitude of security challenges seem to have become inseparable from what some describe as the decay of the Western project.
Roughly one year later, not least the gathering of key leaders in transatlantic relations at the MSC Special Edition 2021 shows that there is hope to get "Beyond Westlessness." The "Road to Munich" will examine how this can be achieved in different areas.
Past Events
MSC Conversation on Relations between Russia and the West: A Perspective from Moscow
Titled "Relations between Russia and the West: A Perspective from Moscow", the Munich Security Conference (MSC) hosted a high-level digital conversation on May 26, 2021. The discussion was part of the series "Beyond Westlessness: Road to Munich" that prepares the ground for the next Munich Security Conference in 2022 with several events and formats. The series wants to examine how the state of "Westlessness", which was at the center of the discussion at the Munich Security Conference 2020, can be overcome. The opening event of the series, the MSC Special Edition, illustrated that there is a strong new transatlantic momentum. The MSC seeks to contribute to translating this momentum into concrete initiatives. This also includes developing joint transatlantic approaches towards China and Russia. The MSC-event with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on May 25, which dealt with the Sino-Western relations, was now followed by a confidential discussion with the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev, which addressed the status and prospects of the relationship between Russia and the West.
