Munich Security Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger discusses the collapse of the rules-based order, Europe’s waning influence, and why Ukraine must remain the West’s central priority.

March 10, 2026

As Russia’s war against Ukraine grinds on unabated, the US and Israeli attack on Iran has triggered a new escalation – one with consequences for energy prices, global stability, and the wider security landscape.

Just three weeks after this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), the global picture looks even more unsettled than it did during the talks in Munich. The conference was held under the title “Under Destruction” – a reference to a world in which alliances are growing more fragile, certainties are fading, and classical power politics is returning.

Wolfgang Ischinger knows this landscape better than most. The former German ambassador to Washington and London, and longtime chairman of the MSC, is widely regarded as one of the country’s best-known foreign policy voices – and as a committed advocate of the transatlantic partnership.

In Berlin, the Kyiv Post met Wolfgang Ischinger for an exclusive interview on Europe’s waning influence, the consequences of the Iran war for Ukraine, and whether the rules-based order is nearing its end.

Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to Washington and London, long-time chair of the Munich Security Conference. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer / Kyiv Post)

Kyiv Post (KP): Mr. Ischinger, we are witnessing a moment of geopolitical upheaval. Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered its fifth year, and the rapidly intensifying crisis in the Middle East has added a new and dangerous dimension. When you look at the world today, what kind of international order are we actually facing?

Wolfgang Ischinger (WI): The order we believed we had built since the Helsinki Final Act 50 years ago is now a field of ruins. Anyone who claims that an actual order still exists – guidelines and rules governing state behavior – is fooling themselves. That is, unfortunately, the bitter reality.

Of course, we have seen serious crises of many kinds before, including transatlantic ones: Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq 20 years ago. But what we have never seen before is a constellation like the one we have now: Europe is facing an internal stress test. The centrifugal forces and external pressures are immense. They are coming not only from Moscow, but also from Washington, as the US administration no longer seem to believe in the European Union as a collective institution.

Europe is now surrounded by a double war. We have had the Ukraine war since 2014, and now we also have this Iran war, which I personally do not believe will be over in a matter of days. We can only hope it will not last as long as the war in Ukraine, but there is no certainty that it will end well any time soon.

KP: So does diplomacy still play a decisive role?

WI: As a diplomat, you always have to work from the worst-case scenario. You cannot build policy on illusions. In the worst case, we have to assume that the war in Ukraine is far from over – not least because, in recent months, the United States has not positioned itself clearly enough on the side of Ukraine. I see no willingness on the Russian side to compromise or make concessions – quite the opposite. And as for the Iran war, anything is possible.

So what does that mean for diplomacy? Here I disagree with the premise of your question. I believe this is the hour of diplomacy. But it has to be used. Diplomacy requires ideas, proposals, someone who can credibly put them on the table – and above all, the right timing.

At the moment, I see that we Europeans are sitting at best on the bench, on the sidelines of the field. We are not actively involved in the Ukraine talks, nor were we a serious partner for Washington in Gaza or now on Iran. The United States believes it can handle all of this better on its own. I have serious doubts that this is true.

I have a sense of déjà vu. In January 2003, I was ambassador in Washington. We had barely gotten Afghanistan underway together when my American counterparts came and said: Now we’re going into Iraq. Not long ago, I reread the op-ed I had written back then for the Washington Post.

KP: “First wars first.”

WI: Exactly. I know that one must always be extremely cautious when making historical comparisons. But I do believe that we can learn from the past. And here I fear that we—the West—could lose sight of our support for Ukraine because the focus is now on Iran. And that has very concrete consequences. What happens if this Iran war lasts a few more weeks and the US concludes: We have just enough ammunition and enough Patriot replacement parts to protect our own people in the Middle East. For Ukraine, we have nothing left.

I fear we have to recognize that we are facing a double war, and that the defense of Ukraine’s interests may no longer be possible to the extent that would be desirable. The Iran war could absorb much of the United States’ energy– and ours as well. That is the great concern weighing on me at the moment.

KP: There is a growing impression that diplomacy today is also, to some extent, performative – with diplomatic talks continuing while military operations are being prepared at the same time. Russia was still presenting itself as open to peace shortly before launching its invasion of Ukraine, and the US was negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. Does diplomacy not lose credibility under those circumstances?

Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to Washington and London, long-time chair of the Munich Security Conference. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer / Kyiv Post)

WI: We have to be fair and precise here. There are many reasons to be dissatisfied with American diplomacy. But on the other hand, we Europeans did not manage to get any kind of negotiating track with Russia on Ukraine off the ground at all. On that point, I would take my hat off and say: thank you, American government – at least you got those talks started.

The same applies to the Middle East. Who managed to secure that difficult ceasefire over Gaza? Not us – it was Donald Trump. So one has to be fair and say: American diplomacy, coupled with American military power, has been effective to a certain extent.

How lasting that is, of course, is another question. Diplomacy does work, and it must work in this situation as well. But I do agree on one point: I did not see the necessity of abandoning diplomatic efforts with Iran and switching to military action instead.

I cannot see that it was hopeless to try to reach some kind of arrangement with Iran after all – perhaps something similar to the JCPOA. That agreement was insufficient, yes – it dealt only with nuclear enrichment, not missile development and not Iran’s destabilizing role in the region. But the idea was that after this first step, the other unresolved issues would be addressed. Once the US under Trump withdrew from the deal in 2017, all of that was effectively frozen for ten years. The fact that the talks with Iran – which we Germans had begun in 2003 alongside France and Britain – eventually ended up in ruins is not our fault. A great deal of diplomacy did take place here, but some of it was simply not thought through over the long term.

KP: At the Munich Security Conference, it was repeatedly stressed that Europe must become more strategically autonomous and avoid slipping into dependence on Washington. And yet we now see situations like the one in the Oval Office recently, where Donald Trump publicly criticized Spain, but a European partner like Germany did not step in to defend its ally.

Chancellor Merz, in his speech in Munich, had sharply pushed back against the US and argued for a more independent Europe. But in Washington he remained conspicuously quiet while Trump lashed out at Spain.

Another example: Secondary sanctions were threatened against India for buying Russian oil and thereby continuing to finance Putin’s war against Ukraine. And before those sanctions were ever actually implemented, the German chancellor was already in New Delhi pursuing trade deals with the same country. Is that not a visible form of double standards?

WI: Unfortunately, diplomacy requires that sometimes, in front of rolling cameras, you say things differently than you say them behind closed doors. I was told that Friedrich Merz did in fact stand up for his European partners afterward in private conversation. What would have been gained if the German chancellor had said to the American president in front of the cameras: “This is outrageous, I’m walking out”? Nothing would have been gained.

These are difficult questions because they raise the issue of consistency. But we, the European Union, are not the ones creating the ambiguities. The ambiguities on our side are out in the open: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán takes positions on many foreign policy issues that differ from those of the other 26 member states. The handling of Donald Trump is, admittedly, a different matter – diplomacy mixed with show business. But quite apart from Washington, I do see a major, even existential threat to the EU, because it is under enormous pressure from several directions at once: first from within, and Orbán is hardly the only problem.

KP: And from far-right parties that could come to power with the backing of the Trump administration.

WI: Exactly – and second, the problem posed by Putin, who since 2008 in Georgia and then since 2014 in Ukraine has shown that he is willing to sweep away every rule governing European coexistence. The feared decline of the UN Security Council’s role has been visible to all since 2014 at the latest. Here we have a permanent member attacking its neighbor without even attempting to justify it under international law before the Security Council.

But that is not the only field of ruins. Another is the EU’s Middle East policy.

Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to Washington and London, long-time chair of the Munich Security Conference. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer / Kyiv Post)

KP: Which European Middle East policy – if there even is one?

WI: I am old enough to remember that not long ago we still had the so-called Middle East Quartet. The EU, the United States, Russia and the United Nations all had a seat at the table, and we spoke on equal footing about the right and wrong paths for the future of the region.

Today, the EU – as I said – is on the sidelines, allowed to comment. At best, European heads of state and government are left sitting like potted plants on the sidelines. At the Gaza meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh last year, they were present – but not even invited to sign the final statement.

That cannot be the answer for 450 million Europeans. We could change that – if, and here we come back to the first point, the Viktor Orbán problem – we spoke with one voice.

KP: So Europe should finally accept that the current US administration thinks in categories of deals and power politics rather than values and rules? How should Europe deal with Trump, Vance, Rubio and the rest when Washington visibly rejects the rules-based order, creates its own formats such as a “Board of Peace,” and then a few weeks later attacks Iran? We can now see where that has led. There are Israeli ground troops in southern Lebanon, the Gulf states are being attacked, and a wider regional war seems possible.

WI: The bitter truth is this: We could deal with things differently if we were not so heavily dependent on the US because of Russia and the war in Ukraine. It is all well and good to talk about European sovereignty and autonomy, but that is, at best, a vision for ten years from now. It is certainly not something that can be achieved at the push of a button in the short term.

That is why we must attempt this difficult balancing act: on the one hand, keeping the United States engaged – on Ukraine’s side, or at least on our side in the confrontation with Russia. And at the same time, we must try to stand more firmly on our own feet.

Germany alone will, in a few years, be spending 150 billion on defense. That is three times as much as last year. In everything we do in this area, we must make clear: we are not doing this to restore German greatness, but to protect Europe as a matter of duty – and to become more independent of the US.

So the goal is twofold: keep the US engaged, while at the same time building greater independence. And the German chancellor is being received by Donald Trump for a reasonably civilized conversation. That is worth a great deal.

KP: But is refusing to clearly describe the attack on Iran as a violation of international law also part of “keeping the US engaged”?

WI: I myself come very much from the world of international law. And it is correct to say that there is no mandate for this war under the rules that the international community established decades ago. But that is still a politically insufficient analysis.

Because it does not ask the next question: Why have we been so concerned about Iran for decades? Iran has on its record that for decades it has called Israel’s very existence into question and, in our assessment, was on the path toward acquiring a nuclear capability.

KP: Though experts said that would still have taken years.

WI: Yes, but they had thousands upon thousands of centrifuges running, and there is no purpose for that other than enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels. And 10 to 12 years ago, in light of Libya and Syria, we wrote entire books about the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” – a principle of international law adopted by the UN General Assembly with an overwhelming majority. The idea being that if a country or government is unable or unwilling to protect its own population, then the international community has a duty to intervene.

That is the decisive point: Do we, in the 21st century, want to hold on to an interpretation of international law dating back to the 16th to 19th centuries – one designed to protect rulers rather than the people? Or do we want an interpretation of international law that protects human beings when they are oppressed or murdered by their own rulers, as is now the case in Iran?

We must include this modern protective function of international law in the overall assessment.

KP: So is this the moment to put ideals aside and adopt a more pragmatic course?

WI: No, I would not go that far. Of course, we Germans, and we in the European Union, should hold fast to the principle that such actions should not take place in violation of international law. The political question is: How much pressure was there really to do this now?

Was there still a possibility of reaching a good outcome through negotiations? In principle, yes. And are we sure that the countries of the region all believed there was only one option left – military action? I guess the opposite was the case. From everything I know, the states of the region, the Arab world, urged Israel and the US to continue the negotiations, because they feared exactly what is now happening: that they themselves might be attacked. Many Gulf states depend heavily on tourism, let alone their oil revenues.

In other words, can what is happening be justified on substantive grounds? The most important substantive argument is this: you should never launch a military intervention, or in this case pursue regime change, unless you have a very precise and coordinated plan for who will take power afterward.

And now we are seeing, in these very days and hours, that it seems unclear whether Washington has such a plan. With Ali Khamenei’s son just named the next supreme religious leader, I see a very dark future. I do not know the man, but I do know that his father has just been killed, his wife has been killed – by the Americans and the Israelis. I find it hard to imagine that he will then head to Washington and say: I would like to be your friend. In other words, we may simply be dealing with the next hardliner

If one were certain that all this would lead to real regime change, one might say: the end justifies the means. But I am not sure at all that we can expect such an outcome in the short or medium term.

KP: If we do not know how long this war in Iran will last, and if we do not know how many US resources it will consume: on the one hand, oil and energy prices are rising worldwide, Russia finances much of its war through energy exports, China could increase its purchases of Russian oil, and air-defense systems like Patriots may now be deployed in the Middle East rather than in Ukraine. All of that could ultimately weaken Ukraine’s position. On the other hand, Iran is an important military partner of Russia. If Iran is seriously weakened militarily, that could also undermine Russia’s war capacity. So in the end, will the Iran war weaken Russia and help Ukraine – or produce the opposite effect?

WI: If I put myself in Zelensky’s position, I would think the following: after Witkoff and Kushner concluded – after three rounds of talks – that further negotiations with Iran were pointless, Zelensky ought to ask them: How many rounds of talks do you need with Russia to realize that those are pointless too?

My answer to your question is this: I fear that almost nothing that is now unfolding, or could unfold, will help Ukraine. I basically see only downsides. I can imagine a scenario in which Russia earns even more money, a scenario in which US weapons deliveries, spare parts, Patriots and so on become even harder to obtain. I do not see anything truly positive here.

The one thing that would genuinely help would be if the American president approved the sanctions package prepared more than half a year ago by Lindsey Graham and others in the Senate. That would impose sanctions on all countries that buy Russian oil. That would presumably affect the volume of Chinese and Indian oil purchases as well. Unfortunately, that package has still not been enacted.

In other words, the US could exert more pressure – and frankly, so could we Europeans. We are still buying quite a lot of oil ourselves.

I come back to my original point: first things first. For us, the phrase must be: Ukraine first. Ukraine must remain Europe’s absolute priority.

KP: So while the United States and Israel are becoming ever more absorbed in the Near and Middle East, Europe should now finally and decisively step up its support for Ukraine?

WI: Yes, absolutely. Now that the US has positioned itself there, this becomes our responsibility. This is our continent, this is our neighboring country, and Ukraine is meant to become an EU member in the future. So we have to take care of it.

KP: So if I understand you correctly, Europe must come out of what Zelensky once called “Greenland mode” – out of this frozen passivity – and act more forcefully now to put Russia under pressure?

WI: I believe we need a dual strategy. One part is to support Ukraine even more strongly — with weapons, ammunition and so on. But the other part must be that we do not leave diplomacy solely to the United States. We must try to reach an arrangement with the Americans so that whenever they meet with Russians and Ukrainians, European representatives are in the room as well.

For me, one thing is clear: any outcome of those negotiations that is not supported by the Europeans is no outcome at all. And we cannot agree to any settlement that forces Ukraine to give up territories that are not even occupied.

KP: And if the US administration threatens to abandon Ukraine altogether unless it can force through a deal?

WI: I do not see it so clearly. Support for Ukraine still commands a substantial majority in the US. If Ukraine’s supporters can show that the president is abandoning Ukraine, that will not help him win the midterms. On the contrary.

And I think that is why it is so important that Ukraine has a president like Zelensky, who has argued so impressively for his country over the years. Germany’s sympathy for Ukraine was massively underdeveloped. For a long time, Germany had been conditioned to think: Russia is our friend, and somewhere in between there is Ukraine. Only in recent years has it slowly become clear that Ukraine was the land in Eastern Europe through which the Wehrmacht, the SS, and the Gestapo passed twice – once on the way in, and once on the way back. There is perhaps no part of Europe that suffered more under Germany’s war of conquest than Ukraine. But that was not present in our public consciousness in Germany.

Back in 1998, at the Foreign Office, we wrote in a paper for the German government that the security architecture of Central and Eastern Europe requires a secure Ukraine, because Ukraine is the keystone. If that stone falls out, the whole structure collapses. Unfortunately, that correct insight was never translated into real policy at the time. We were still so captivated by Gorbachev and the gift of German reunification that we kept making pilgrimages to Moscow.

KP: One final question: Boris Johnson recently argued that more military pressure must be put on Putin immediately. European troops, he says, should not wait until a ceasefire, but should already be considered now. What do you make of that proposal?

WI: Well-intentioned, but not realistic. I do not know anyone in Europe who would send troops into Ukraine without an understanding with Russia. If we did that while the war is still ongoing, we would become a party to the war ourselves.

And even if the war were over: if we went in without such a deployment being part of the agreement, the Russian side would use that as grounds to tear up a ceasefire. I hear what Sergei Lavrov says about security guarantees. The Russian line is: You can invent whatever guarantees you like – for us, all of it is completely unacceptable.

So one has to be realistic. In one point, I would agree with Boris Johnson: if we believe that, in the end, Ukraine will need a European military presence on its territory in order to secure its own existence, then the Russian side must indeed be put under dramatically greater pressure.

More pressure on Russia is absolutely necessary in any case. Whether that would eventually lead Russia to accept the presence of troops, I remain skeptical.

I do see another option, though it is hardly being discussed. One could, under certain circumstances, station troops from non-NATO countries to secure a line of contact in Ukraine – if this were done under UN rules or some comparable international framework. Just as an example: Countries like Pakistan or India have provided UN contingents all over the world for the last 40 years. I could imagine that such a force might be acceptable to the Russian side. But that remains a question for the future. At the moment, I see no movement in that direction.

I think the debate on security guarantees will only become credible when it is backed up – either by a troop presence or by a Russian commitment to drastically reduce the presence of Russian forces in the western military districts. That would be classic arms control. There is nothing new about it. The problem is simply that, in this area, nothing is happening right now.

https://www.kyivpost.com/interviews/71632