It is difficult to say which major annual Munich event is the bigger performative letdown: Oktoberfest or the Munich Security Conference. They can be easy to mix up. You expend a lot of effort to take part, just to end up stuck in a big tent for most of it, engulfed by a gaggle of verbiage and tradition, asking yourself Is that it? Notions of some kind of higher-minded European culture scoffing at hoedown American state fairs full of butter sculptures and corn mazes are revealed to be largely imaginary. The reality of the Bayerischer Hof is much more provincial.
Still, European political elites scoff away, while simultaneously reminiscing about that one high school exchange semester they did in Plain, WI, 35 years ago, which forevermore made them the America-experts they now are. Tragically, that expertise did not prepare them for the painful realization that America is its own sovereign country, not an NGO, which seems to be the big takeaway of MSC 2025.
Somehow, copious amounts of evi…
