If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.
If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.
Once again, the world’s rulers failed to grasp the world! The same issues, the same panels, the same sentences, once again, fell short of tangible benefits for the planet.
This year, from January 19 to 23, the World Economic Forum convened in Davos under the theme of “The Spirit of Dialogue”, hosting 64 heads of state and government alongside more than 3,000 participants to talk on global uncertainties. While discussions on rising geopolitical risks and the future of alliances were the major themes, “The Spirit of Dialogue” was strained by leaders exchanging harsh words.
Trump’s return to Davos, after his limited participation, absences, or video appearances during his first term, was interpreted as a sign that the search for “ideological alignment” had been partially abandoned, as his “America First” stance is in contradiction with the Forum’s emphasis on global economic cooperation. Rumors say that organizers assured Trump’s team that topics they might see as “woke”, such as diversity and climate change, would be downplayed.
In his address, Trump’s “sharp words” on Greenland, NATO, and transatlantic trade, his drawing a clear line between himself and European leaders on foreign policy and global economic issues, and his stress on the US’s role as a global economic leader, became one of the Forum’s defining moments. In short, Trump stressed the critical importance of maintaining US economic strength for the world, and weaved some elements in his domestic policy into his international agenda.
In contrast, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney drew attention by highlighting that the global order is experiencing a “break from the rules-based system of the past” and calling for middle powers to act in coordination. Carney’s phrase “If we are not at the table, we are on the menu” received a rare standing ovation, and marked one of the unforgettable moments of Davos 2026.
Davos lived one of it’s most dramatic and remembered moments in 2009, with the one-minute-incident between Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan and his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres. Since then, the summit has been a platform very openly displaying structural contradictions, be it Chinese President Xi’s defense of globalization against capitalists or Greta Thunberg’s moral questioning of the gathering, with the statement that “our house is still on fire”.
Calling Davos, “the ski club for those who fly in on private jets to save the world” is no exaggeration. Indeed, watching distant fires in receptions against the backdrop of the Alps form the core spirit of Davos.
One of the most recurring themes at Davos is inequality, yet those who raise it are its architects. Africa is discussed, but by colonizers. The climate crisis is debated but overshadowed by private jets and personal carbon footprints. Hunger, poverty, migration, and war are reduced to charts in PowerPoint slides.
At Davos, where critique itself is sterilized and often treated like a bottle of pasteurized milk, one of the most frequently invoked concepts is the “future”. This “future” has been awaited, like Godot, since the Forum’s inception in 1971. Expectations regarding the future remain valid only until the next Davos, because Davos is a stage for postponing the future. Issues deemed “urgent” forty years ago remain still urgent today. In the end, Davos is not a forum where the world’s future is genuinely debated, it is a ceremony for those who delay the future to legitimize themselves.
Also, Davos is a space where the things said to have to change never actually change. Of course, there are sincere participants at Davos: those who genuinely want to make a difference, wandering between panels with notebooks in hand. But their numbers are far smaller than those who attend not to solve the problems, but to ensure their names appear on “the list of those who save the world.” And those who dare to openly challenge the Forum’s structural hypocrisy and entrenched power dynamics can get no closer than twenty kilometers to Davos thanks to tight police security.
There are occasional surprises: a leader yells accusations, an activist disrupts the comfort of the crowd, a journalist asks real questions. For a fleeting moment, it seems as if the order is shaken, but then everything snaps back to its former state. Because Davos is not about solving crises, it is about demonstrating that crises are under control. In short, the World Economic Forum is the largest therapy session the global order ever holds for itself.
At Switzerland’s famed ski resort, it was business as usual. The rulers of the world spoke, then went home. And none of them seemed to think “If Davos actually worked, it wouldn’t have been held all these years.”
