BERLIN — The Ukraine conflict, Islamic State group jihadists and the wider “collapse of the global order” will occupy the world’s security community at an annual meeting in Germany from Friday.
Also on the agenda of the three-day Munich Security Conference (MSC) will be Iran’s nuclear talks, the Syrian war and mass refugee crisis, West Africa’s Ebola outbreak and cyber-terrorism.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is among 20 heads of government and state on the guest list, along with 60-odd foreign and defense ministers including US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and US Vice President Joe Biden will also join the 51st MSC, a gathering launched at the height of the Cold War that is expected to focus heavily on the new East-West standoff over Ukraine.
The event’s organizer, veteran German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, said the meeting will discuss what he called an unprecedented upsurge in global crises over the past year, and the inability of the international community to tackle them.
“The international order is collapsing right now,” he warned.
“We live in the age of the collapse of order. In this vacuum everyone is testing how far he can go: (Russian President Vladimir) Putin in Ukraine, China against Japan, Iran in the nuclear dispute, the jihadists with the horrible things they do.
“There is a massive need for ‘global governance’. Really the UN Security Council should be resolving a crisis a week — Iraq, Syria… Instead the council is blocked and so is any will to reform.”
Full article: Security confab focuses on ‘collapse of global order’ (The Times of Israel)
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