Those arriving in Davos this week can be forgiven a pang of nostalgia. The World Economic Forum was once the annual gathering of “Davos Man”; a self-congratulatory exercise in neoliberal backslapping among the stewards of globalisation. No longer. The experiment of global economic integration under a supposedly “rules-based” order is beginning to feel like a distant memory.
No one will do more to underline that shift than Donald Trump. He arrives in the Swiss alpine resort with the largest US delegation in the forum’s history, reiterating his threats to take control of Arctic territory from Europe.
“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” he said.
Europe’s leaders are struggling to orient themselves in this new reality. Only days ago, they were preparing to use Davos to extract renewed American security guarantees for Ukraine, and persuade the second Trump administration to keep at least one foot in the post-war transatlantic security architecture. Now they are waking up to a more basic doubt – is America a friend or foe?
The battle for Greenland
On Saturday, Trump announced an extra 10% tariff on six EU countries, as well as on Britain and Norway – all members of Nato – to punish them for opposing his desire to take control of Greenland. What began as a bizarre provocation has metastasised into the gravest crisis in the Atlantic alliance since Suez. For the first time in decades, European officials are openly questioning the alliance’s future.
EU leaders and their delegations, meeting Trump and US officials at the forum, have had to rewrite their briefing notes. Discussions on Ukraine have been replaced with what one senior EU diplomat has termed a policy of “carrots and sticks”; how Brussels might retaliate against the Greenland tariffs while still offering paths to de-escalation.
Retaliation plans include €93-billion in counter-tariffs and, should things really deteriorate, the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, which would allow Brussels to restrict American firms’ access to the single market. That tool was designed with China in mind. Its potential use against the US is a measure of just how far things have fallen.
Even leaders thought to be closest to Trump, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, concede that the era of strategic ambiguity is over. The old assumption, that US and European interests were at least broadly aligned, has evaporated. An emergency EU summit to survey the wreckage has now been hastily scheduled for when the Davos meetings have concluded.
The problem, however, is not merely tactical, but conceptual.
“How,” wondered one European diplomat, “do you negotiate security guarantees with a man who treats alliances as protection rackets?” It is a fair point. Trump does not merely doubt the value of multilateral institutions; he seems to regard them as elaborate schemes to extract favours from the US.
The Israelification of America
One way to contextualise Trump’s America is as the endpoint of what might be called Israelification; the evolution of a state that comes to see law, restraint and multilateralism as not assets but encumbrances. The parallels with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
First comes open disdain and disregard for international institutions. The UN, International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice are waved aside as nuisances. Rules are invoked only when convenient and in one’s interest and dismissed as conspiracies when not. In Israel’s case, this posture and strategy have been honed over decades of conflict and external pressure. In America, this is a new habit, but one that is being acquired with remarkable aptitude.
Second comes the overlap between technology, security and politics. In both countries the tech sector – much of it intertwined with military and intelligence work – has become not only economically dominant but politically formative. Companies such as Palantir advertise their loyalty not merely to clients but to “the American war-fighter”. In Israel, a start-up ecosystem largely seeded by defence spending has grown into the backbone of the economy and a formidable lobbying force. In America, Silicon Valley no longer even tries to make a secret of its courtship with Maga and the national-security state.
Third comes the erosion of equality before the law. Scenes from American streets, particularly in Minnesota in recent weeks, where federal agents confront protestors with extraordinary latitude and limited visible restraint, look uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has watched the West Bank over the past two decades. In both systems, legality is conditional, and legal procedure offers little protection once a political decision has been made. Pity those on the wrong end of the baton. For them, any legal process is an illusion smashed with a brutal blow.
Fourth comes geography as destiny. For Netanyahu this means a “Greater Israel”, pursued under the aegis of security and paid for in permanent instability. For Trump it means a revived Monroe Doctrine, with Greenland and Venezuela cast as chips in a “hemispheric” game of influence. These ambitions are presented as defensive necessities, as if illegally claiming land from neighbours was a good way to attain regional stability.
In both cases, expansion is justified as pre-emption; strike first, lest others do so. It is an old logic, and one that after 75 years in which multilateralism delivered relative peace among the great powers has rarely looked more questionable.
Finally, there is the personal dimension. Both men are driven not only by ambition, but also self-preservation. Netanyahu’s political survival is entangled with ongoing criminal corruption allegations. Every extension of the security emergency is an extension of his time in office and out of jail. He is openly seeking a presidential pardon, an idea encouraged by Trump.
Trump, had he lost in 2024, would still be fighting through a thicket of both criminal and civil convictions. Leaders with little to lose, and much to fear, are rarely cautious. This makes them, and under them their respective rogue states, especially dangerous.
Imperial distractions
The one source of cautious reassurance is that voters are not blind. Americans are already souring on these imperial distractions; only one in five think Greenland is worth the trouble. The Republican Party, meanwhile, is showing fresh cracks between its Maga core and its more traditional conservative roots. Trump is widely expected to lose the House in the midterms later this year.
In Israel, elections must come by October. Beware all ye who try to predict anything regarding Israeli politics. Netanyahu may yet be able to cobble together another coalition from the familiar fragments of the right and religious parties. But he has seldom looked weaker, and never has he been more dependent on the very forces that are isolating Israel abroad and straining it at home.
For the Davos crowd, this is the bleakest outlook in decades; perhaps since the end of World War 2. The liberal global order is not being reformed; it is being dismantled in full view, by the very country that did more than any other to build it, guarantee it, and benefit from it.
History, however, has a habit of judging such hubris harshly. Power can distort reality for a time. It cannot do so forever. And in the long run – even in Davos – that remains the only bet worth making. DM