While Russia’s aggression in Ukraine dominates the headlines, there are many other issues of global concern. In fact, there were so many important crises, according to Benedikt Franke, CEO of the Munich Security Conference, that it was impossible for him and his colleagues to rank them by intensity. There’s a sense of “helplessness,” he said, with the combination of climate change, migration, pandemic, and global hunger “overwhelming” us. So the conference decided not to prioritize global issues based on the level of threat. Instead, they decided to “treat them all the same,” Franke said.

Franke spoke with moderator David Sanger in GZERO Media's Global Stage livestream discussion at the Munich Security Conference.