On January 15 to 19, Switzerland’s Davos hosted the 54th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) deemed as world globalism’s "installation session". It brings together representatives of political and economic elites to discuss scenarios for achieving goals set by the collective West’s governing centers. The common 2024 theme is Rebuilding Trust, a slogan used by globalization advocates to get the dangers of global economy fragmentation across to governments and try to restore economic ties between rival countries.
The Forum was held amid the dying financial rules and economic mechanisms that operated throughout the second half of the 20th century until the 1920s. A number of reputable Western experts believe that the next one or two years may see the current trends bring the existing "global economy" to an end.
The United States as globalization initiator is striving to adjust its globalist strategy. It used to advocate for free trade, forcing other countries to remove barriers along its path and capital flows. But, production leakage from the United States to China and other developing states made the latter rise and entailed negative trends in US economy, and the American authorities started dropping the pro-globalization attitude.
Telling evidence of this was the choice of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to speak up for the United States in Davos, as he is considered an even more ardent MAGA supporter back home than the idea’s author Donald Trump. As Sullivan stated, "we are moving into a new era… We have the capacity to shape what that looks like. And at the heart of it will be many of the core principles and core institutions of the existing order adapted for the challenges that we face today." This indicates that the United States is opposed not to globalization as such, but to its present-day model non-compliant with its interests. The country is ready to change their tools, not goals.
One of those new tools for promoting globalist ideas amid a forming multipolar world have been discussions about combating epidemics and artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, the role of AI in shaping our future has been a Davos priority this year.
Sullivan also noted Russia's growing influence and said that part of the new strategy would be dealing with aggression, expressing confidence that the United States and its allies would be able to cope with global challenges, including the Middle East and Ukraine.
Europe should be interested in globalization development, the logic goes, as it has greatly benefited from it. However, the European Union has lost its status of an independent entity, as per the Davos speech by head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. She focused on developing democracy and freedom as perceived by Europe, and spoke of misinformation as a key economic problem. In the face of growing challenges across the globe, von der Leyen portrayed Europe as the leading global effort-shaper in restoring damaged confidence in solving global problems, and declared Russia's economy "set back decades away". Europe, she said, will soon lead “clean energy technology development and innovation.” In practice, her last year’s promises to allocate EU funds via a "sovereign fund" for the development of "clean industries" were being implemented in the growth of military spending and fiscal austerity policies in other areas. The sovereign fund has never been established over money scarcity — Ukraine has consumed it all.
At the same time, the new American-style globalization round has been of great concern to developing countries because the United States uses it to boost its own hegemony. And under the model Washington promotes, normal development of other countries has been perceived as a challenge to its monopoly.
China is the United States’ main competitor favoring a multipolar world, though not showing willingness to present some alternative version to the globalists. Speaking at the WEF, Chinese Premier of the State Council Li Qiang has called for investment in the Chinese economy and suggested restoring trust and strengthening economic collaboration between PRC and the West by strengthening macroeconomic coordination, removing obstacles in China-oriented supply chains, expanding cooperation in achieving "green" goals, and expanding technological effort. Now, according to Li, progress is being hampered by "arbitrary, unreliable and power-hungry countries."
Speaking about forum specifics, let’s note a clear dropout of Ukrainian issues from the globalist agenda — as compared to its predominance at Davos 2023. Probably, this tool turned unsuitable for carrying out the work planned with its use, while communication technologies, primarily AI, were put forward instead, as their capabilities are constantly growing to let you control not only certain social forces, but entire societies. In fact, the Forum featured an attempt to transfer the global hybrid war from the military-technical and financial-economic spheres, where significant successes proved unachievable, to the communications one, where the “alliance of democracies” has been seeking supremacy.
As a result, despite calls made in Davos, the coming years are likely to be a time of greater fragmentation of global economy, since none of the world leaders is going to give up. Today, leading Western countries ignore trade or financial rules, choosing to protect their interests with power tools: bans, sanctions, and duties. China, having realized its capabilities and weight in the global market, is also scarcely going to back down.
A number of foreign experts claim that the coming years will see trade wars become a "new normal", marked by intensified confrontation between "global forces" and states that will try to interfere in market processes. And higher bank rates and public debts would make it difficult for governments to confront economic issues.
Amid these trends, the WEF itself looks more like a phenomenon from some other prior world structure, the importance of which is about to ramp down completely. This view is confirmed by the US delegation departure from Davos on the second day of its work, as their country is not willing to engage in any world-stage dialogue.
