The Munich Security Index 2024 also reveals how the war in Ukraine is competing with other geopolitical threats and priorities.
Concern about mass migration and radical Islamic terrorism now top the list of threats in Germany — a turnaround from the previous year.
The threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism jumped to second place, compared to 16th last year. Mass migration as a result of war or climate change, which came in second last year, now ranks sits at number one. The authors of the report attribute the trends to the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, noting the survey was undertaken in October and November last year.
“As in many other countries, the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 appears to have prompted a spike in German concern about radical Islamic terrorism,” the report notes, adding that “Germany now has the highest level of concern about migration among the countries surveyed.”
The survey, which interviewed 12,000 people last fall, also provides a bleak insight into the thinking of many of the world’s wealthiest countries. Large parts of the populations in G7 nations believe their countries will be less secure and wealthy in 10 years’ time, the report states. But the prospects for the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are judged more positively by their populations.
A whopping 72 percent of the world’s population now lives in autocracies, compared to 46 percent a decade ago.
