Davos is a Western, not World, forum

(The article was originally published in Indian Express on January 24, 2026 as a part of Dr Madhav’s column titled ‘Ram Rajya’. Views expressed are personal.)

World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2026 at Davos concluded earlier this week with much fanfare. Besides several important panel discussions on issues like artificial intelligence and green energy addressed by ministers, CEOs and officials, the real highlight of this year’s meeting was the high-profile list of keynote speakers. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission and He Lifeng, vice premier of China attended it, as also Emmanuel Macron, president of France, Mark Carney, prime minister of Canada, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, president of Egypt, and Javier Milei, president of Argentine. Icing on the cake was the presence of the president of United States, Donald Trump, who had to change planes to reach Davos due to a technical snag in Air Force 1, making it one of the most high-profile events of the year.

The meeting could not escape from the long shadow of Trump’s scathing attacks on global economy, trade and the rules-based international order. Tariffs, US-EU trade deal, NATO, Ukraine and Greenland dominated the discourse highlighting the growing tension between Europe and America. While Ursula, Macron and Carney minced no words in conveying their angst against the American counterpart, Trump too came fully prepared with his punches and ruthlessly delivered them on each one of them with a glee.

Ursula insisted that the “geopolitical shocks” that Trump is causing must serve as an opportunity for Europe “to build a new form of European independence”. Referring to Nixon’s decision of delinking dollar from gold as the global exchange medium in 1971 that led to the dollar domination in the global economy, Ursula called dollar a “foreign currency” and argued that Europe should reduce dependency on that. Plunging the relations between US and Europe into a downward spiral “would only aid the very adversaries we are both so committed to keeping out of the strategic landscape”, she warned Trump.

Macron and Carney were more forthright in their criticism of Trump’s policies although not naming him directly. “We do prefer respect to bullies. And we do prefer rule of law to brutality”, Macron, wearing dark glasses due to some eye infection, thundered in response to Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland and other issues. He vowed to do his best to build a “stronger Europe, much stronger and more autonomous”.

Mark Carney talked about the breakdown of the world order and “the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint”. He called Trump’s description of integration between Canada and US as “mutually beneficial” a “lie” and insinuated that it “becomes the source of your subordination”.Carney called for the middle powers to unite against the “use of economic tools as coercion” and made a potent warning that “if we are not at the table, we are on the menu”.

Trump looked undeterred by the attacks from his European counterparts and went about responding to them with all guns blazing in his hour-long blistering speech. He forcefully defended his stance on Greenland, NATO and the threat of enhanced tariffs. Unlike his critics who refrained from invoking his name directly, Trump ruthlessly went after them through his trademark personal jibes. Referring to Macron’s dark glasses, he joked: “I watched him, with those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened?” Going after Carney he bluntly told that “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements”.

Trump defended his case on Greenland by referring to the Second World War sequence of events when the US Army entered that country to defend it from the Nazis. “We were stupid to give it back to Denmark”, he quipped. Although claiming that he had no plans to use force, Trump demanded that Denmark handover Greenland to America, adding a veiled threat that the failure of which will be “remembered”. Trump used Davos platform to come down heavily on the NATO allies too whom he almost called ungrateful. “We give so much, and we get so little in return”, he bemoaned, complaining about the NATO’s European allies that “… with all the money we expend, with all the blood, sweat and tears, I don’t know that they would be there for us”.

At the end of the day, it appeared as though Davos is, far from being a meeting with an economic agenda, slowly slipping into a proxy platform for strategic and geopolitical conflicts among the Western powers. Russian president Vladimir Putin seemed to be enjoying this Trans-Atlantic cacophony by throwing his weight behind Trump in Greenland matter in the hope that the Europeans would forget Ukraine at least for some time. He not only declared his hands-off approach on Greenland but also reminded Denmark that it had sold Virgin Islands to the US in 1917, indirectly suggesting that they should agree for a similar deal on Greenland too.

Meanwhile, China is quietly stealing the show by hosting events like Boao Forum for Asia and Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC) – both of which are described as Asian Davos and Summer Davos respectively. As the Davos discourse is turning increasingly irrelevant for them, more and more countries in the Global South are opting for the Chinese led forums that hold focused discussions on economy, trade and related issues.

One thing that conspicuously came out of this year’s meeting was that the Davos has very few take aways for the rest of the world. Even the panels of CEOs, executives and public intellectuals were heavily dominated by Western companies and voices with very feeble presence and articulation from the rest of the world. India’s minister Ashwini Vaishnav tried to highlight the progress his country was making in deep-tech domain, but it remained at the most a side story only. India was dubbed as a secondary power in AI by the Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva.

Davos looks no longer like the World Economic Forum meeting but a Western Geopolitical Forum summit. Hope Borge Brende and his team are taking note.