The Humiliation of Davos Man – WSJ
It s that time of year. Corporate chieftains, policymakers, NGO warriors, journalists and intellectuals are heading to the Swiss Alps for the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. If the delegates are serious about this year s theme, Rebuilding Trust, some hard conversations lie ahead.
On both the far left and the far right, conspiracy theorists see the WEF and its allies as an all-powerful network successfully imposing a nefarious agenda on the rest of the world. This reading gets Davos exactly wrong.
The real scandal of Davos isn t that it s taking over the world. It s that it s failing. The Davos agenda a global security order, an integrated world economy and progress toward objectives including decarbonization, gender equality and the abolition of dire poverty is controversial in some quarters and on some points but is neither secret nor particularly nefarious. But far from imposing this agenda on a captive world, the Davos elites are wringing their hands as the dream slowly dies.
Last year was another tough year for the Davos agenda. Russia s war in Ukraine ground on, with Moscow holding an edge in what looks like a war of attrition. The Middle East erupted into chaos, with shipping disrupted in the Red Sea as the conflict escalates and expands. Relations between China and the West continued to deteriorate, with the Taiwan election results pointing toward further tensions in the coming year.
Conflict is bad for free trade, and the breakdown of the global security order is undermining the economic integration at the heart of the Davos agenda. The rift between China and the West is driving a decoupling on both sides. With both the European Union and the U.S. introducing restrictions on imports aimed at limiting the effect on domestic manufacturing of low-wage, low-regulation production in China and elsewhere, the goal of free trade recedes further into the distance every year.
via www.wsj.com
Walter Russell Mead.
And a good thing too, now that Communism is dead. Right?