At this year’s Munich Security Conference, the focus was clearly on the relations between Russia and the West and the dire consequences for international peace and security.

The just concluded 2016 Munich Security Conference further deepened people's concerns over an increasing disorder in international situation. Although a war among major powers is unlikely to happen, the possibility of an escalation of conflicts cannot be excluded. Scholars expert in national security are pessimistic about the prospects of the Syria and Ukraine crises. They also harbor deep misgivings about the struggle for power vacuum in Afghanistan, Mali, Libya and Yemen, among varied non-state actors that are fueled by extremist ideology and conflicts between religious sects and ethnic groups.

The main challenges for the post-Cold War world include: Control by and challenges from international capitals, legacies of the Cold War, asymmetrical threats such as terrorism, regional and transnational conflicts. The world must find proper and effective means to cope with such challenges and manage crises in a time when the mobility and interdependence of personnel, capital, goods and ideas are increasingly enhanced.

Pyongyang’s recent missile tests show that becoming a nuclear power is not merely a bargaining chip but a genuine threat. The next US president will take renewed stock of the situation in the DPRK in 2017, and Beijing should start doing that right now. Protecting its own homeland security should and must be the fundamental gauge for China’s policy towards the DPRK.

Chinese initiatives like “One Belt, One Road” are intentionally open and flexible; no uniform rules or norms are set from the beginning. One of the major challenges for the EU and European countries in the cooperation with China stems from this openness or vagueness, and from doubts about rules that might be applied differently in global and regional contexts.