This year the Munich Security Conference turns 50. For decades the gathering has been one of the most important places for the trans-Atlantic community to exchange ideas, find common ground and devise foreign and security policy.

But when politicians, military and business leaders, think tank experts and journalists gather this Friday in southern Germany, they won’t be in the mood for much celebration.

That’s because, over the last year, the Western security community has seen a series of setbacks unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. It finds itself in a period of strategic drift, with an increasingly isolationist superpower that seems to have lost the spirit to lead and a self-centered Europe unready to step up to the plate.

→ Click here for the complete article by Clemens Wergin in the New York Times.