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By Jonathan Arnott
Have you ever felt completely helpless, as though you're a bystander in your own life? It can be a difficult situation, and can feel as though there is nothing you could possibly do to correct it. It might be a financial issue, a problem in a relationship, or a work difficulty. People in such situations often suffer from a form of emotional "paralysis." If you're unable to see a way out of the problem, it's far too easy to simply ignore it. Ignoring problems merely makes them worse. There are almost always small, incremental steps which we can take to make things better.
I've seen that pattern repeated, time and again, by countless acquaintances, and even friends and family. There have surely been times when I've been guilty of the same thing myself. Psychologists call this feeling "learned helplessness," where people are "conditioned to believe that a bad situation is unchangeable or inescapable." Such "learned helplessness" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you believe that nothing can be done, you do nothing, and then the worst outcome becomes inevitable.
I raise this because the Munich Security Report 2022 argues that the world, and in particular the Western world, is falling into a large-scale version of this learned helplessness. The COVID-19 pandemic left global healthcare systems powerless. Governments fear climate change, yet no single nation can truly impact the global situation. Add in the instability caused by what Western nations describe as "Russia's war in Ukraine," as well as the corresponding impact on energy prices and the cost of living, and it's easy to see how negative ideas can develop.
Countries are searching for a non-existent safety blanket. There will always be someone, or something, which will become the scapegoat. In the country where I live, the United Kingdom, politicians seek to blame Brexit, as though a national decision could somehow be blamed for these global crises. According to the Munich Security Report, liberal democracies in particular are feeling "overwhelmed" by current developments.
Governments, whether Left or Right, find themselves unpopular. Approval ratings of the U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are all negative. The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, announced her resignation on February 15, following on from New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern resigning.
The unpopularity back home only magnifies that feeling of helplessness. Right-wing governments and left-wing governments alike are steeling themselves for defeat at the next election, and it is not difficult to imagine that we might yet see more resignations of leaders rather than submit to the inevitable humiliating loss.
Against that backdrop, the 59th Munich Security Conference is due to begin. It is a high-level conference, attended by heads of state and other leaders from over 70 countries across the world. For this reason, it should be treated seriously. The 2023 report, which will be discussed more directly this week, speaks more of the "liberal rules-based international order." It is a phrase used often, most commonly when criticizing a nation for supposedly not following it. A common set of rules cannot be agreed merely by the "West" or by the European Union; it requires global consensus.
There is, given the current U.S. claims that it has "shot down" a Chinese "spy balloon" over military installations, a new tension in the air. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin argues that the United States has itself launched high-altitude surveillance balloons over China. Perhaps, in a sense, that's another example of helplessness: The average citizen cannot easily weigh up evidence which is retained by the U.S. military.
As with any large-scale meeting of global leaders, we should not expect any clear tangible worldwide diplomatic agreement to come out of the security conference. That is not really the question. The question is whether leaders can shake themselves out of the cycle of negativity which has pervaded Western politics since the pandemic.
The problems themselves will take years to resolve. There is no way around that: The world has been dealt a series of perturbing blows over recent years. Whether or not global leaders emerge re-energized following the Munich Security Conference is key, however difficult "energy" is to measure in a human context. In reality, we may well never know what actual impact it has made. Some things will forever remain behind closed doors.
Jonathan Arnott is a former member of the European Parliament.
