This Year at Davos: A Referendum on Davos Itself
Many values espoused by the World Economic Forum — globalization, liberalism, free market capitalism, representative democracy — are under attack.
The last time the World Economic Forum held its annual meeting in Davos,Switzerland — in January 2020, before the pandemic — protesters turned out tochallenge its message of globalization. Credit...Ennio Leanza/Keystone, via AssociatedPress
By David Gelles - May 21, 2022
The small ski town of Davos, high in the Swiss alps, has heightened security measure in place during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, when armed guards perch on hotel rooftops while world leaders and business executives sip champagne below. Yet today, everything that Davos stands for — globalization, liberalism, freemarket capitalism, representative democracy — seems to be under assault.
For the past half century, Klaus Schwab, the patrician founder of the World Economic Forum, has extolled the virtues of an interconnected world, one where the free flow of goods, services, people and ideas would lead to shared prosperity and peace. It was an idealistic vision that endured in spite of global unrest, and it found adherents in the corridors of power from Palo Alto, Calif., to Washington, D.C., and from Brussels to Singapore and beyond.
The past two years, however, have fundamentally challenged the viability of that aspirational worldview. The coronavirus pandemic prompted a wave of isolationist foreign policy moves, revealed the fragility of supply chains and left China largely walled off from the rest of the world.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought land war to Europe and stoked fears of broader global conflict. And even before the pandemic and the war, autocratic rulers were on the rise around the globe and internal divisions were straining superpowers like the United States.
Now, as Mr. Schwab prepares to preside over the first meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos since the pandemic began, he confronts a world that looks very unlike the one he has been trying to conjure into being for more than 50 years. As heads of state finalize travel arrangements and wealthy corporations set up shop on the promenade, Mr. Schwab himself seems to understand that the global order as he once envisioned it is, for now at least, little more than a fantasy.
“We are living in a different world,” he said in an interview. “Even when we came together in 2020, we had a lot of serious concerns. Now we had two additional events which have actually accelerated the seriousness of our situation.”
But while the world may have changed, Davos has not. The annual meeting will feature, as usual, politicians, civil servants, executives and nonprofit leaders —the kind of privileged, globe-trotting idealists that gave rise to the term “DavosMan.” Timely issues like the war and Covid will be discussed, alongside perennial threats such as climate change and cybersecurity. And the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will give a virtual address to other heads of state.
The one thing that will be different is the outside temperature. The annual meeting is usually held in January. But after a surge in Covid cases forced alast-minute cancellation, the World Economic Forum rescheduled it for late May. That means there will be no snow on the ground, but the threat of a dull, persistent rain is real. “My biggest worry is actually the weather,” Mr. Schwab said. ....
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