An Analysis of the Munich Security Report 2026
By James Mwaura
In October 2025, construction crews began tearing down significant portions of the White House’s East Wing. For President Donald Trump’s supporters, the demolition symbolized his promise to shake up Washington – replacing the old with something grander, more efficient, more American. For his critics, the wrecking balls swinging against one of the world’s most iconic buildings served as a chilling metaphor for something far more consequential: the systematic destruction of the international order that America itself built over the past eight decades.
The Munich Security Report 2026, released ahead of this year’s conference, carries a stark title: “Under Destruction.” Its 123 pages chart how the world has entered what its authors call an era of “wrecking-ball politics” – a time when demolition has replaced reform as the dominant political impulse, and when the most powerful nation on Earth is actively dismantling the very structures it once championed.
The Rise of the Demolition Men
The report identifies a disturbing global trend: political leaders who brandish chainsaws instead of policy papers, who promise destruction rather than reform, who offer bulldozers instead of blueprints. Argentine President Javier Milei literally wielded a chainsaw as a campaign prop. Elon Musk’s “Department of Governmental Efficiency” celebrates disruption as doctrine. Across continents, politicians openly call for the obliteration of bureaucracies, courts, and international agreements.
What unites these figures is not coherent ideology but a shared belief that meaningful change requires demolition rather than repair. They “move fast and break things,” preferring obliteration over reform, speed over deliberation, symbolic destruction over institutional adaptation.
The sentiment feeding this movement runs deep. The Munich Security Index 2026, based on surveys across G7 nations, reveals a crisis of confidence in democratic governance. In France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, absolute majorities believe their governments’ policies will leave future generations worse off. Across all G7 countries surveyed, only tiny proportions of respondents express faith that current policies will improve the lives of their children and grandchildren.
This is not mere dissatisfaction with specific policies. The report describes what German sociologists Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey term Zerstörungslust – a “lust for destruction” rooted in the conviction that existing structures are beyond reform. Democratic institutions are perceived as overly bureaucratized and judicialized, paralyzed by their own complexity. International organizations like the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organization, and international financial institutions are seen as rigid relics, impossible to adapt despite decades of reform attempts.
Between 2021 and 2025, feelings of helplessness in the face of global events surged across G7 nations – rising 19 percentage points in Germany, 14 in France, and 12 in the UK and Canada. When people lose faith not just in their leaders but in the very possibility of positive change, they become receptive to those who promise to tear it all down.
Present at the Destruction
The most consequential of these demolition men is Donald Trump. In his second term, freed from many of the institutional constraints that limited his first presidency, Trump is systematically dismantling what scholars call the “Kantian triangle of peace” that has underpinned American grand strategy since 1945.
First, he is attacking the commitment to multilateral cooperation and international law. Immediately after taking office, Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. A January 2026 presidential memorandum announced withdrawal from 66 international organizations deemed contrary to American interests. The administration shut down USAID entirely, ending decades of American leadership in development assistance. Hundreds of foreign service officers were dismissed, with ambassador posts left vacant worldwide.
The assault extends beyond institutional withdrawal to the fundamental norms of international order. Trump has openly stated that he doesn’t need international law – that his only limit is his “own morality.” His administration has used force against targets in Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. He has threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, speculated about Canada becoming the 51st state, and intensified designs on Greenland. Most alarmingly, he has pressured Ukraine to cede territory to Russia, effectively rubber-stamping territorial conquest by force.
Second, Trump has weaponized trade policy to an unprecedented degree. The postwar commitment to open markets and economic interdependence has given way to transactional coercion. Tariffs and sanctions are deployed to extract short-term concessions rather than sustain a predictable framework for global exchange. The administration has imposed vast, WTO-non-compliant tariffs on nearly every country, heavily deployed economic blackmail to secure bilateral deals prioritizing American interests above all else.
Third, the United States has abandoned its role as leader of the free world. The promotion of liberal-democratic values and cooperation among democracies – once central to American identity – has been replaced by an unsettling hierarchy in which longstanding democratic allies face public criticism while autocratic leaders receive praise. When Vice President J.D. Vance addressed the Munich Security Conference in 2025, he accused European governments of “shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process” and questioned what exactly they were “defending themselves for.”
The symbolism was stark: while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy endured a fiery exchange in the White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin was welcomed with a red carpet in Alaska and treated, in the words of European observers, “as a valued friend” despite offering no concessions. To many Europeans, it felt as though their long-time captain had joined their archrival’s team.
Europe: Detachment Issues
The report’s chapter on Europe reveals a continent grappling with existential insecurity. At a time when Russia is regaining tactical initiative along parts of the Ukrainian front and intensifying hybrid warfare across Europe, Washington’s gradual retreat, wavering support for Ukraine, and threatening rhetoric on Greenland have deepened European anxiety.
The American approach to European security is now perceived as volatile, oscillating between reassurance, conditionality, and coercion. European nations find themselves striving to keep the United States engaged while simultaneously preparing for greater autonomy – a delicate balance that may prove unsustainable.
German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier captured the mood in his Munich address: “The absence of rules must not become the guiding principle of a new world order.” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned that “any division of the West makes us all weaker, and benefits those who would like to see the decline of our civilisation.”
Yet the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy goes further, warning of Europe’s “civilizational erasure” – a “loss of national identities and self-confidence” that will render the continent “unrecognizable in 20 years or less.” For most Europeans watching America’s descent into what scholars term “competitive authoritarianism,” the question is not whether Europe will be unrecognizable, but whether America already is.
Indo-Pacific: Pact or Fiction?
If Europe has NATO and the EU as coping mechanisms, the Indo-Pacific has no comparable institutional architecture. This makes the region even more vulnerable to American inconsistency.
An increasingly powerful China is making a forceful bid for regional dominance through provocations and coercion that threaten stability. Indo-Pacific nations have responded by stepping up defense efforts, but doubts have grown about US security guarantees and strategic commitment. While Washington claims to counter Chinese dominance, regional players view its recent actions as contradictory to that goal. Some worry that dealmaking with Beijing now matters more to Washington than backing its partners.
Indo-Pacific actors find themselves torn between trying to attract American commitment and hedging their bets through outreach to the very power they hope America will contain. Without mechanisms comparable to European integration, they face a starker choice: bandwagon with either Beijing or a mercurial Washington, or attempt the precarious path of strategic autonomy.
Global Economy: Terms of Trade
The global trade system was already contested before Trump’s return. The promise of equal growth had not materialized, and the WTO struggled to act as fair custodian of common rules. Trump’s administration argues these failures contributed to China’s rise and America’s industrial decline.
Since his return to office, Washington has openly dispensed with the rules it once created. It has imposed massive, WTO-non-compliant tariffs on nearly every country. It has deployed economic coercion to secure bilateral deals benefiting “America First.” Meanwhile, China has continued market-distorting practices and escalated its weaponization of economic chokepoints.
Confronted with unfair trade practices from both superpowers, governments worldwide face an impossible choice. Many have imposed their own trade restrictions while doubling down on liberalizing trade through new partnerships anchored in WTO law. But the viability of this strategy depends on whether the rules-based trading system can survive simultaneous assault from its two most powerful participants.
Development: Death by a Thousand Cuts
Development cooperation and humanitarian assistance were already strained before Trump’s second term. Traditional donor countries, facing economic pressure and populist campaigns, had narrowed their definition of national interest. The world was not on track to achieve any of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, and many humanitarian responses remained underfunded.
Trump’s policies have pushed this strained system into existential crisis. His administration has rejected the SDGs, denouncing them as “globalist endeavors.” The USAID shutdown is already impacting millions in low- and middle-income countries. Budget cuts to humanitarian organizations have forced some to “adapt, shrink, or die.”
Nothing suggests that gaps left by American withdrawal will be fully filled by non-traditional donors. Those still committed to solidarity with the most vulnerable have focused on reforms to improve efficiency and effectiveness. But efficiency gains cannot replace the sheer scale of resources America once provided.
For countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the message is clear: the era of American-led development assistance is over. Whether this creates space for more equitable partnerships or simply abandons the world’s most vulnerable to their fate remains an open question.
What Can Be Done?
The Munich Security Report does not end in despair. It documents how actors still invested in a rules-based order are organizing, attempting to contain wrecking-ball politics and probe new approaches that don’t depend on Washington’s lead.
European nations are investing more heavily in defense and exploring deeper integration. Indo-Pacific countries are forging new partnerships. Governments worldwide are liberalizing trade among themselves while holding firm to WTO principles. Development organizations are reforming to maximize impact with diminished resources.
But these efforts face a fundamental challenge: can the defenders of the international order step up sufficiently to fill the vacuum left by American withdrawal? This requires not just significantly investing in their own power resources and pooling them through closer cooperation, but also demonstrating that meaningful reforms and political course corrections are viable.
The alternative is a world shaped by transactional deals rather than principled cooperation, by private rather than public interests, by regional hegemons rather than universal norms. Ironically, this would be a world that privileges the rich and powerful – not those who placed their hopes in wrecking-ball politics.
Conclusion: After the Demolition
Dean Acheson titled his memoirs “Present at the Creation,” describing the postwar years as a period when America’s task was “to create half a world, a free half, out of chaos without blowing the whole to pieces during the process.”
Nearly eighty years later, we may be present at the destruction. The international order Acheson helped build is under systematic assault from the very nation that created it. The wrecking balls are swinging, the chainsaws are roaring, and the bulldozers are advancing.
What will rise from the rubble remains unclear. Will it be the “new golden age” promised by those wielding the demolition tools? Or will it be something far darker – a world where might makes right, where the strong prey upon the weak, where the hard-won principles of territorial integrity, human rights, and multilateral cooperation are consigned to history’s dustbin?
The Munich Security Report 2026 makes clear that the answers to these questions will not be determined by America alone. They will be shaped by how the rest of the world responds to this moment of maximum disruption. Whether that response is characterized by unity or fragmentation, by principle or opportunism, by courage or capitulation will determine whether we are witnessing not just the destruction of an order, but the destruction of the very idea that order is possible at all.
The construction crews may have finished their work on the White House’s East Wing by now. But the demolition of the international order has only just begun.
This feature is based on the Munich Security Report 2026, “Under Destruction,” published by the Munich Security Conference in February 2026. The report draws on original survey data from the Munich Security Index 2026 and analysis from leading security policy experts.