The English expression, “May you live in interesting times,” is believed to originate from a speech by statesman Joseph Chamberlain, the father of Neville Chamberlain, the UK prime minister who signed the 1938 Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler. Fast forward a century and the expression still has political currency. It is often used ironically — life is seen as better in “uninteresting times” of peace and prosperity than in “interesting” ones, which are disproportionately times of trouble. Today’s interesting times, not least the crisis in Ukraine, are the focus of this weekend’s landmark Munich Security Summit, the premier annual geopolitical event in Europe. Attendees include 35 heads of state and government, plus about 100 government ministers and other key dignitaries, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and US Vice President Kamala Harris. While the eyes of much of the world are currently on the Russian military buildup in Eastern Europe, the key theme of the Munich conference is how these current security tensions are only the most prominent manifestation of a broader “poly-crisis” the world faces today, with an unprecedented number of overlapping challenges. In the assessment of the summit’s organizers, we are living in an “era of successive and interconnected disruptions,” in which a permanent sense of crisis has become the “new normal.” The world’s multiple geopolitical fractures include the continuing threat from international terrorism, the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remains dormant, continuing instability in Syria, and North Korea having acquired nuclear weaponry. The Munich summit will engage not just challenges like these, Ukraine and Afghanistan, but also the pandemic, climate crises, economic inequality and cyberattacks, which are also destabilizing the global landscape. While policymakers and financial markets now appear to be taking fright at the growing array of risks, such turbulence has been a recurring feature of international relations for several years now. For instance, several market commentators, including Citi, asserted more than half a decade ago that “geopolitical risks (are) at a 25-year high… (in) the most fluid global political environment in decades.” Moreover, the World Economic Forum has for several years also showcased the looming challenges in its Global Risks Report. The 2016 version, produced with partners including Marsh McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, cited the words of John Drzik of Marsh that “events such as Europe’s refugee crisis and terrorist attacks have raised global political instability to its highest level since the Cold War.” Amid this landscape of high risk, the Munich summit will also focus on how best to overcome what it perceives as a mood of “collective helplessness,” in which much of the world is failing to face up to the challenges confronting it, even though the resources, strategies and instruments required to do so are available. While there are no easy answers when it comes to meeting the current array of crises, it is sometimes forgotten that there are some success stories.One example is the 2015 global climate change deal agreed in Paris, which was buttressed last year in Glasgow. While the agreement is by no means perfect, it nonetheless represents a welcome shot in the arm for attempts to tackle global warming and, crucially, put in place a new post-Kyoto treaty framework. Moreover, the review framework means that countries can toughen their response to climate change in the future, especially if the political and public will to tackle the problem increases with time. With much focus on Ukraine right now, it is actually one of the countries that is a bystander in that crisis, China, which may have the biggest bearing on whether the poly-crisis gets better or worse. Growing China-US rivalry, rather than an increasingly cooperative relationship, is widely seen as the most likely scenario for post-pandemic relations. However, there remains a possibility that a different future is possible, with greater cooperation, especially around softer issues such as climate change, and less tension on harder issues like security. The direction of that bilateral relationship is perhaps the key uncertainty in the global landscape today. While greater collaboration is widely dismissed, such a cooperative relationship may yet offer the best prospect for the world moving beyond the collective helplessness that the Munich summit organizers have highlighted. Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.