By Madeline Sidgwick – Editor-In-Chief
February 2025 saw the 61st annual Munich Security Conference dominate global headlines. From questions on the Russian-Ukraine war to extreme statements made by a certain president across the pond to that JD Vance speech, the conference was a lot to digest, especially in relation to the conference’s nature and place within media tactics. Here I aim to simplify the conference, remove unnecessary dramatics, and focus on who said what, and why it is significant.
A natural place to begin is with the ongoing War in Ukraine. The conflict is significant for both European military strategy but also in wider political discourse, specifically the February 23rd German Election. The constant conversation on whether Western European powers should keep funding Ukraine, or even send troops to the conflict, came back into mainstream conversation because of the conference. The reasons on whether to keep funding the conflict or not is not my focus here.
The JD Vance speech, however, is not something that the media, nor myself, could not ignore. Vance’s referral to “fundamental values” and “the threat from within”, raised a few eyebrows to say the very least. As a wave of far-right populism engulfs the western world such phrases are not profoundly surprising. But the illusion to Ukraine, or even Europe as a whole, being the bigger global threat than Russia, the country that I must remind you began and planned the initiation of the war in secret, has baffled the UK press. Vance and Volodymyr Zelensky did have a meeting at the conference, yet Ukraine was still left out of talks later in the week.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov, in Saudi Arabia to discuss the conflict. Russia’s demands that concessions be lifted being a focal point here. The fact that Ukrainian representation was missing from the talks is questionable and led to statements in the media overshadowing what both these talks and the Munich Security Conference sets out to do; “offer an unparalleled platform for high-level debates on the key foreign and security policy challenges of our time”.
Ezra Klein, a New York Times opinion columnist, presents that “focus is a fundamental substance of democracy”. Klein presents how overwhelming the media has become, and is a key strategy of the Trump administration, as well as many other controversial world leaders. Through dominating headlines, politicians are able to take up space in people’s minds and thus make it nearly impossible for an effective opposition to be formed. It is all about what political actors WANT you to think and consume on a daily basis.
Vance’s controversial speech is a direct example of this tactic to overwhelm. Mainstream media focuses on outrageous claims rather than what action is needed to protect lives. This example can be extended to President Trump’s recent claim that Zelensky is a “dictator”.
There is redundancy in throwing around such rhetoric. Such sweeping statements, that hold no weight, corrupt political discourse. The Trump administration is more than aware of this fact. With former White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon labelling the tactic “muzzle velocity”. By using such tactics the White House is able to prevent the emergence of any real opposition and thus dominate political spheres. If you really think about the last two months, when have you read a headline on what the Democrat party is up to? This strategy will become even more important as America looks towards the 2026 Midterm elections.
However, extreme statements come from both sides of the political spectrum. The accusations of Nazism towards the far right often become reductive, the average intelligent voter often switching off when seeing such allegations in headlines. It is also important, specifically in relation to labels of ‘Nazism’ to ensure that the label does not lose its weight. Although not in the living memory of many, the Nazi’s spread real terror, a terror that shouldn’t lose its meaning due to the mainstream media’s accusational tendencies. No matter the extremities of either side of the political system, labels become toxic and alienate healthy political conversation and debate, both at the conferences of large organizations, and in debates among friends at university. Andrew Marr has recently summed this up in a recent piece in The New Statesman, we must “remember who we are; and face the new world open-eyed, than to shudder, “Well, they’re all Nazis,” and think no further.”
Relating this back to the Munich Security Conference, it has been made evident by sweeping statements from Trump to tik-tok comments accusations, that it has become increasingly difficult to understand diplomatic politics. Although media strategies and the ‘shock-factor’ are significant and crafted by policymakers, I urge you to plough through the media jargon and form opinions based on what YOU believe in and not what politicians are telling you too.
When writing this article, I used the New York Times Instagram reels as a useful source. If you are looking for a way to consume media away from all of the jargon and accusation, their platform will be extremely helpful.
Image Via Unsplash by Sam Szuchan