The Munich Security Conference (MSC) is the world's largest independent forum on international security policy. Since it began in 1963, it has become the leading place for the discussion of current and future security challenges: Heads of state, along with national security policy decision-makers and analysts from around the world attend.

As would be expected at a European event, events in Asia have been marginal to the main conversations. That oversight prompted the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) to launch the Shangri-La Dialogue, which convenes each spring in Singapore.

Asian participation at the MSC remains limited; this year just a handful of Asian officials attended — Foreign Minister Taro Kono among them — but the issues that the group takes up are of rising significance to Asia. And Asian issues are of growing importance to Europe. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted in remarks at the opening session of the meeting, "All allies are within range of North Korean missiles. Pyongyang is closer to Munich than it is to Washington DC" — and he could have added closer to London, Paris, Berlin and almost every other European capital.