We should carefully study again the speech by President Valdimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and reactions from key participants in their reflections today. It is an attempt to explain and analyze the “hysterical reaction formation” exhibited by leading military as well as security experts then (2007) and study how those who blocked out the content of Putins speech are the ones who today prefer war against Russia instead of an exploring exit strategy of peace and dialogue with Russia.
Wiesbaden, March 10 2026
By Elisabeth Hellenbroich
In the previous article this author shed some light on this year’s Munich Security Conference 2026 (MSC 26), which -with the exception of the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech about the need to strengthen “multipolarity” and a reformed UN- was unable to outline a viable plan for a more peaceful future: overcoming the war in Ukraine as well as settling the horrors unleashed in the Mideast. With the recent US -Israel preemptive war against Iran, all fantasies about a “rules- based order” which the EU is so much clinging to, have been destroyed.
It is imperative therefore to have a closer look at this year’s Munich Security Report “Under Destruction”- in particular its addendum booklet, that was written end of 2025, centering on the speech, given in 2007 by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference, aside the speech which at the time was given by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The real dilemma in Munich at that time was, that neither Putin’s nor Merkel’s speech were discussed by the audience. What prevailed instead was an overall “hostile” and “indifferent” reaction shown by the audience to President Putin. The MSC 2007 was a major turning point, since after this event strategic relations between Russia and the US, Russia and Europe, in particular Russia and Germany began to significantly deteriorate. All this became prelude to the disastrous Ukraine war and accompanying conflicts which we can see today in Iran.
The trigger for this strategic deterioration was President Vladimir Putin’s speech February 10 2007 in front of the Munich Security Conference, which at the time was chaired by Dr. Horst Teltschik- former security and strategic advisor to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and architect of the policy that finally led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and a new era of peace between East and West and marked the end of the Cold War. The booklet consists of several chapters, which compile among others the speech of Putin and the speech by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who at the MSC 2007 conference developed her vision for a close strategic partnership with Russia. Among others she said that “without doubt, partnership with Russia is of particular importance. I am very pleased that President Putin is here with us today, participating at the conference and addressing us. I am deeply convinced that we can shape the future relationship among the European Union. NATO and Russia will decisively affect the stability of Europe’s common security space and our relations with our neighbors. It is true: Russia already shares responsibility with us in many cases – contributing to resolving the Middle East conflict (as I said, in the Quartett), regarding Iran (all resolutions would have been less effective without Russia), and regarding the Balkans. Our experience is, that together with Russia we can move and can achieve more.” She further emphasized the key role of the United Nations: “All this brings me to say: we need the United Nations. In my view, the UN is the place where legitimacy for global responsibility can be created. But I also say: UN reform is progressing too slowly- to put it mildly; to avoid saying it is advancing, only very little.”
Putin’s speech 2007
President Vladimir Putin frankly addressed on Febr 10 2007 the MSC in Munich by first pointing to some “international security problems.” “International security comprises much more than issues relating to military and political stability. It involves the stability of the global economy, overcoming poverty, economic security and developing dialogue between civilizations.” the President said. He particularly criticized the ‘unipolar view’ that had been proposed after the end of the Cold War (…) It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for those within the system, but also for the sovereign itself, because it destroys itself from within,” he said. The result of such an approach showed that “unilateral and often illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem. Instead, they had led to new human tragedies and created new centers of tension.” (An indirect reference to all the failed wars, which the US engaged in, for example in Iraq, which was based on a package of fabricated lies. EH)
Putin specifically criticized the “unilateral model” represented by the US, as a “model that is flawed, because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundation for modern civilizations and of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.” According to Putin “we are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law (…) such policy stimulates an arms race.” He further underlined: “I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture and global security.” He made reference to “India and China whose GDP is already larger than that of the United States,” and he commented that the “GDP of the BRIC countries (!), Brazil, Russia, India and China surpass the cumulative GDP of the EU. (…) There is no reason to doubt, that the economic potential of the new centers of global economic growth will inevitably be converted into political influence and will strengthen multipolarity.”
He then emphasized that “the only mechanisms that can make decisions about using military force as a last resort is the Charter of the United Nations.” Equally important would be to “conserve an international legal framework relating to weapons of destruction and therefore ensure continuity in the process of reduction of nuclear weapons. (…) He further stated that “plans to expand certain elements of the anti -ballistic missile defense system to Europe cannot help but disturb us (…) I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relations with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust… Against whom is the expansion directed?” Putin asked and stressed that Russia favors strengthening the regime of non- proliferation. “The present international legal policies allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.” The president called for more actions between the United States and Russia in the field of arms control.
The infamous Wolfowitz doctrine
From Putin’s warning about unilateral actions (US) to today there is a continuous red line. What Putin described, without going into the detail then, was the damage which is perpetrated by those powers that trigger “unilateral actions” which are based on a doctrine – that in the beginning 90ies, shortly after the end of the Cold War- became known as the infamous “Wolfowitz doctrine.” Shortly after the end of the Cold War, there was in the US the discussion about how to consolidate the global control of an “American century” after the break- up of the Soviet Union, providing content to President George Bush’s sen. assertion in January 1991, that the coalition going to war against Iraq was creating a “new world order.” The founding document of the “rules-based order” was the “defense planning guidance”, drafted by a team working under the direction of Paul Wolfowitz (then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in 1992). The key principles elaborated in this document were: After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US coalition victory over Iraq in the Gulf war “our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival (!), either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.” (!) The document explicitly stated that what was needed was to “discourage any nation from challenging US- leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. The US must deter potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” And the US must take preeminent responsibility to protect its own interests, such as “access to vital raw materials!” (This is reminiscent of the motives behind the recent military strikes of the US against Venezuela and its oil reserves, as well as its preemptive war against Iran and Iran’s oil resources. E.H).
Reactions from experts
We should also look at some of the reactions to Putin’s speech, coming from different strategic experts among them Robert Gates, as well as Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (NATO General Secretary), Rose Gottemöller (NATO Vice-General Secretary), Naumann (Chairman of Nato military commission and Inspector General of the Bundeswehr) and Constanze Stelzenmüller (Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Trans-Atlantic relations of the Brookings Institute.) According to Stelzenmüller, she just remembered “a small and angry President” underlining that “Putin’s invocation of ‘Multipolarity’ was an announcement that Russia saw itself as a new pole – and in opposition to the West.” Other commentators had written that “Germany’s policymakers had fallen prey to a brazen ploy to weaponize (!) German and European dependency on cheap Russian fuel and to position Germany as the Kremlin’ bridgehead into Europe.”
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Netherlands Institute of International relations Clingendal and former Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) criticized: “Vladimir Putin’s address at the MSC has proven to be a landmark occasion where he spoke about what he now qualifies as ‘root causes’ of the conflict Russia has with the West. In plain language ‘I want my Empire back’(!). That ambition justifies in his eyes the war of aggression and attrition against Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of fatalities (…) What he did at the MSC in his landmark address in 2007 was to start the false ‘root causes’ narrative which he keeps alive till the present day.”
The reaction of General Naumann is exemplary and typical for the entire German response pattern. After the Paris Charter Conference in 1990, as he stated, he had hoped for a zone of shared security from Vancouver to Vladivostock. “I hoped for a renewed signal of peaceful cooperation in Europe.” He further stated that Putin in 2007 no longer had the conciliatory tone he had in 2001 in his speech in front of the Bundestag, but “his tone was assertive and accusatory. Angrily he accused the United States of repeated violations of international law, of unilateral dominance, and of actions in Europe that Russia must perceive as threats- such as the planned deployment of a very small number of missile defense systems in Poland and Romania.” (sic)
Similar reactions came from the international press such as WAPO, The Economist, Germany’s “Die Zeit” Magazine, SDZ et al. All of them deeply freaked out about Putin’s speech, spreading the line that he was a revisionist and the architect of a new Cold War.
We should also look at the foreword of the booklet that was written by the present MSC chairman Wolfgang Ischinger (2025). It was a freakout. Ischinger essentially states that “Putin used the opportunity to fundamentally challenge the “unipolar moment” celebrated by the United States since the beginning of the decade (!) (…) and to outline a world view in which some would again be more equal than others. The outline of a revisionist (!) agenda began to emerge. The consequence of this world view is evidenced today in Ukraine!” According to Ischinger “Putin’s historic ‘Munich speech’ was a turning point in Russian foreign policy toward Europe and the West, marking a shift from apparent benevolence to beginning and increasing volatility. Before 2007, Russia appeared generally unfazed by the grievances that Putin would later express in Munich. The 1990 Paris Charter, which Russia- then still part of the USSR- had signed, recognized states’ freedom to choose their own security arrangements. In his 2001 speech to the German Bundestag, Putin did not take issue with Central and Eastern European states exercising their freedom to join NATO. Instead, Putin celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall as a moment when “the ideas of liberty” replaced “totalitarian – Stalinist ideology.” At a press conference a year later, when asked about his views on Ukraine- NATO relations, Putin stated that he was “convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO” and that “this decision was to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. (…) The contrast with his indignation, he voiced in the 2007 Munich speech, is stark. And that was only the beginning. Through the invasion of Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea and the attack on Donbass in 2014, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia underlined that it seeks to re-establish what it considers “its sphere of influence.” Recognizing the historic relevance of this speech, the MSC has published this volume, which showcases the reactions it provoked at the time. (!) We hope this will foster a better understanding of Russian- European relations and the significance of this pivotal speech.”(!)
The long shadow of MSC 2007
Former chairman of the MSC, Dr. Horst Teltschik, who had moderated the 2007 MSC conference, recalled in the booklet that after Putin’s speech “no participant at the conference thought to address Putin, for example to pick up Chancellor Merkel’s proposal to establish a closer relationship between NATO and Russia.” He observed that “the public reaction to Putin’s speech was overwhelmingly negative” and mentioned that Joe Joffe, editor of “Die Zeit”, “set the tone.” According to Teltschik’s account: “Joffe tried to provoke, asking the Russian president, whether his speech meant that we were facing a new Cold War.” This assessment then would have shaped the ensuing discussion in the room and became the headline of almost the entire national and international press. “There was no discernible willingness to highlight and underscore the positive statements made by the Russian president,” Teltschik wrote.
He pointed to the four conflicts that had to be taken into account, in order to understand the reason for Putin’s criticism in Munich: The missile defense system which the US wanted to install in Poland and Czech Republic; the Adapted CFE Treaty (A- CFE); the question of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and the question of Kosovo’s independence declaration. Year after year from 2007 on, as Teltschik could document, the spiral of distrust grew. In conclusion of his excellent analysis, which reflects his in- depth knowledge concerning the relevant security issues under discussion between Russia and the West, Teltschik writes: “The story told here about the path to confrontation, however points in a different direction. It highlights a spiral of mutual distrust, in which Moscow repeatedly sent signals of its fundamental willingness to cooperate, while the West, particularly in the key years 2007/08, showed insufficient willingness to compromise. Under this interpretation, Russia is concerned above all with security and with maintaining its status as an independent power center. It acts aggressively not because it wants to expand its influence, but because it seeks to prevent further losses and increasingly distrusts Western security assurances. If this view is correct, the confrontational policy currently favored in Washington and among NATO’s eastern members can only further worsen relations and ultimately endanger peace. By contrast, Moscow would respond positively to a renewed policy of détente reminiscent of the Cold War era- a policy combining strength with an outstretched hand.”
NB Dr Teltschik’s intervention and the other papers of the Munich Security Conference are available at the web site of the Munich Security Conference (securityconference.org)
