When leaders gather at the Munich Security Conference this week, they do so in a world that no longer pretends to be orderly. Rules are applied selectively, power is exercised more bluntly, and the idea of a stable, rules-based international system is under visible strain. From Ukraine to Gaza, from the Sahel to the Red Sea, insecurity feels less like an exception and more like the defining condition of our time.
Much of the conversation in Munich will understandably focus on geopolitics: military deterrence, alliances, supply chains, technological rivalry, and great-power competition. These matter. But if security is understood only through these lenses, the conference risks missing the deeper drivers of instability, those that begin not in capitals or battlefields, but in the daily lives of ordinary people.
For millions, insecurity is not experienced as geopolitics. It is experienced as injustice.