This year, Davos was revealing. It reinforced a perception that the world was at the cusp of a major restructuring, even if it was having trouble defining it. A loud din of the lone superpower giving way to multipolarity; Canada's Mark Carney proclaiming that the era of the rule-based order was over and stood swept with time, and that nostalgia was not a strategy, each was for itself. Europe struggled all the same to convince everyone that the order was very much alive and showed the resolve to keep it that way, along with the USA. Of course, Donald Trump had cast the proverbial first stone on which there was anger and frustration.

In all this, China, through one of its Vice Presidents, reiterated the niceties that had helped turn it into an economic superpower and went on as if nothing had happened. To it, no order was under any threat. It was business as usual. Russia wasn't visible or prominent at the Forum. The only voice one heard from Russia was that of Vladimir Putin, who had opined that Trump was within his rights in seeking control of Greenland, which wasn't worth anything greater than 250 million USD. It was a backhanded support to reinforce Trump's ambitious agenda and deepen the cracks in NATO which had only just begun to appear. It would also give him the reason to stay the course on Ukraine. And then, there were cheerleaders in the Global South, who warmed the gallery by riding the moral high horse.

When one looks at China and Europe, their hope that the old order can sustain lies more in the fact that Trump's cavalierism has only three more years to go. If somehow the world can hold out through this disruption, there may be better days........

© The Express Tribune