The world is in an era of “wrecking-ball politics” led by US President Donald Trump, and it’s putting the decadeslong prosperous international order under unprecedented strain, according to the Munich Security Report 2026.
The annual report, released ahead of the Munich Security Conference, described Trump point blank as the most powerful figure challenging existing rules and institutions, arguing that his approach risks dismantling long-standing alliances and norms.
“More than 80 years after construction began, the US-led post-1945 international order is now under destruction,” the report said.
The report labeled Trump one of the most prominent “demolition men.”
At last year’s event, which annually gathers top security officials and academics, Vice President JD Vance shocked the audience with a speech lambasting European leaders on censorship and migration and claiming the continent’s threat came from “within.”
Vance’s speech, then just a few weeks into the second Trump administration, set the tone for a year of tumult, including punitive US tariffs on close European allies, the threat of US military action to take over the territory of Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, and deference to Russia over its illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The report also called Trump “the most powerful of those who take the axe to existing rules and institutions.”
His actions could yield “a world shaped by transactional deals rather than principled cooperation,” it said.
Critics fear Trump’s policies “will pave the way for a world that privileges the rich and powerful, not the wider mass of people who have placed their hopes in disruptive change,” according to the report.
US Vice President JD Vance gives a speech at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 14, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Leah Millis/Reuters
Public opinion surveys conducted for the report show much of the world is already fearful that is happening.
The surveys show widespread skepticism that governments can really fix problems like the affordability crisis, rising inequality, declining upward mobility, and stagnating or declining living standards.
There is “a growing sense of growing individual and collective helplessness and doom,” the report said.
In France, 60% of respondents said their government’s policies will leave future generations worse off, as did 53% in the United Kingdom and 51% in Germany. In the US, that figure was 45%.
And the surveys put most of the blame for that sense of doom on Trump.
Asked if the US president’s policies are good for the world, half or more of the respondents in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, Brazil and South Africa said they slightly or strongly disagreed.
The Munich Security Conference runs Friday through Sunday in the Bavarian city. More than 50 heads of state and government are expected to attend, according to the event’s website.
Trump, however, is not going. The US will be represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and by more than 50 members of Congress, conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger said, according to a Reuters report.
