Putin, Xi and Trump Are Launching a Freedom Counterrevolution

There was a time when Munich really mattered. For a generation after the Cold War, the annual Munich Security Conference was a mecca for leaders of a Europe whole and free, a confab for the Western coalition that bestrode the globe. Just five years ago, US President Joe Biden told the attendees that democracy must triumph and humanity must never return the “rigid blocs of the Cold War.”

Yet it is fitting that the three most important leaders of our moment — US President Donald Trump, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin — are absent from Munich this week. All three view the geopolitical revolution that followed the Cold War as a catastrophe — and these counterrevolutionaries are now reshaping the world.