Mark Leonard
It is Donald Trump’s world now. Nowhere was this more obvious than at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) latest annual gathering in Davos. Since the 1970s, the WEF has been an integral part of the liberal international order that emerged from the ashes of the second world war. It is where the world’s political and economic elites come together to discuss global risks and explore solutions to collective challenges such as climate change, rising inequality, and the rise of artificial intelligence. In this sense, the 55th Davos summit was a continuation of a longer-running tradition.
And yet, nothing about this year’s gathering was normal, because it coincided exactly with Trump’s second inauguration as president of the United States. Trump’s return to the White House marks the start of an anti-Davos age. Gone is any sense of a global order in which countries pursue joint solutions to shared problems. We are entering a “polyworld” governed by polycentrism, polycrisis, and polysemy (when a word or symbol has multiple meanings).
A polycentric world lacks not only a single order but also any desire to create one. America’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made the administration’s position clear in his confirmation hearing: “The postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us.” And notwithstanding what Chinese leaders tell global gatherings, they are not in the order-building business either. When Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaks of “great changes unseen in a century,” he is not referring to the emergence of a Chinese-led world. Rather, he is instructing Chinese society to prepare for a long period of chaos and disruption.
No comments:
Post a Comment