Warm winds of a cold war
Analysis: Judging from the attendance at Munich Security Conference's different sessions, today's world is very interested in what is taking place in Ukraine but is mostly indifferent to the situation in the Middle East.
The vigorous chairman, Wolfgang Ischinger, has turned the conference into the most important forum in the world on international relations and security, with 300 participants from around the world and a similar number of journalists filling up the fortified area of Hotel Bayerischer Hof every February.
The main hall and a number of smaller rooms host discussions in the presence of world leaders, while secret meetings which are not part of the official program take place in dozens of hotel suites, rooms, restaurants and bars.
There isn't a key issue on the global agenda which is not addressed in the conference's program, but the number of people who participate in each session is a completely different question. According to the attendance measure, the world in February 2015 is very interested in what is taking place in Ukraine and in an attempt to understand how Russian President Vladimir Putin's mind and heart work. Ukraine is also in the second place, and in the third place as well. Three sessions were dedicated to this issue, which was also at the focus of most of the Western leaders' addresses.
The global warming and freedom of information issues, privacy and media raised medium interest. The discussion about Africa was full, but that's also because it was held in a relatively small restaurant, with excellent food, and the keynote speaker was former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Israel made a habit of ignoring the Munich Security Conference, but in the past two years it has been sending a distinguished group of ministers and senior officials. But now, the attitude has changed, and the conference's attendees are not really interested in Israel or in what is happening in the region, apart from sporadic references to the war on the Islamic State. Isaac Herzog was excited to arrive in Munich to deliver his first international speech as a candidate for prime minister, and was greeted with an almost empty room and an indifferent European and American audience.
German Chancellor Merkel arrived in Munich on a flight from Moscow, and continued her talks there with the Russian, American and French administration heads ahead of the ceasefire agreement which was signed shortly afterwards and took effect last Thursday.
Nonetheless, the winds blowing throughout the conference were not winds of peace, but warm winds of a cold war. US Vice President Joseph Biden took the stage and delivered an extremely poignant address, which was unprecedented in its tone against Russia and Putin. He accused him of "using psychiatric institutions to quell dissent" and "silencing the mothers of soldiers deployed in Ukraine." This isn't the language of someone who believe something can be solved with the other side through diplomacy. The United States, unlike some of its allies in Europe, wants to deeply arm Ukraine – and as far as Russia is concerned, that would be a blatant American intervention in its area of influence.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's language wasn't lighter. When he denied the presence of special Russian forces in Ukraine in his speech, one of the attendees burst out laughing. The Russian foreign minister responded harshly, and it seemed as if he was about to get off the stage and beat up that man, while journalists and commentators from the West only added fuel to the fire by claiming that Russia was the same power-hungry and unrestrained Soviet bear we knew in the past.
Senior American and German officials I spoke to later that week in Berlin said that while there was a ceasefire agreement, it was doomed to collapse, "just like Putin has violated every other agreement signed with him in the past."
At this rate, it seems that also next year the Munich Security Conference's participants will be interested in only one issue – and the only question which remains open is how many people will be killed in Ukraine in the meantime.
