NEWS
The organizers of the Munich Security Conference, Europe’s main defense-related forum, said in a report that President Trump is helping destroy the postwar international order. The world has entered an era of “wrecking ball politics,” a team of conference staff wrote in their report.
The organizers of the Munich Security Conference, Europe’s main defense-related forum, said in a report that President Trump is helping destroy the postwar international order.
The world has entered an era of “wrecking ball politics,” a team of conference staff wrote on Monday, in their 2026 Munich Security Report. The conference is a highly watched annual gathering of security officials from Europe, the U.S. and beyond, and was roiled last year by a castigating speech from Vice President JD Vance, who called on European leaders to cooperate with parties they have deemed extreme.
This year’s conference, which opens on Friday, has taken on a more urgent tone amid growing concerns in Europe over Russian military aggression and Mr. Trump’s rapidly refashioned security strategy, including his ongoing efforts to pry Greenland from Denmark. The report summarizes those concerns, which have been repeatedly voiced by European officials in recent months, in terms that are more strident and detailed than many European leaders have typically dared to express.
“Ironically, the president of the United States — the country that did more than any other to shape the post-1945 international order — is now the most prominent of the demolition men,” the authors wrote. “As a result, more than 80 years after construction began, the postwar international order is now under destruction.”
“Under Donald Trump,” they said, “the United States has largely abandoned the role of the ‘leader of the free world.’”
The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, rejected those characterizations on Monday. “I don’t see a world under destruction,” Mr. Whitaker said at an event held to mark the security report’s release, adding that the Trump administration is “not trying to dismantle NATO.”