Davos 2026: A Summit of Consensus or Geopolitical Mirror?

Dheer Chawla
2 days ago
5 min read

Once a year, the small Alpine town of Davos transforms into a metonym for global diplomacy. Heads of state, central banks, technology executives, and leaders of civil society descend upon it not just to speak, but to signal.

The World Economic Forum of 2026 became, as opposed to its typical role as a forum for economic prognostication, a platform for competing visions of global order. Instead of striving to emerge with a unified manifesto for cooperation, leaders laid bare the fractures, time and again portrayed by news media, that are now defining the world stage, particularly centred around geopolitics, trade leverage, and disputes regarding sovereignty. Most conspicuously, the Greenland question, which now dominates the majority of news headlines, became a lens through which anxieties about power and norms were laid bare.

At the crux of this ‘contest’ were two historic speeches that echoed loud and clear across the Swiss Alps: one by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and one by U.S. President Donald J. Trump. Both spoke, acknowledging a changing global landscape, but with very different emphases and implications for international cooperation.

Carney’s address, delivered on 20 January, was met with a standing ovation. His statements were stark: “Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he told the present leaders, while clearly warning that the ‘post-Cold War rules-based order’ was no longer in function as imagined. Carney elaborated: “Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”

Perhaps the most memorable line of this speech that the US Financial Times national editor called ‘extraordinary’, and one that crystallised his speech, came as a challenge to smaller and middle powers: “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” In using this stark comparison, Carney questioned whether nations historically reliant on alliances are now at risk of becoming subordinate to unilateral power plays.

Contrast this with the speech given the following day by President Trump, which was broadcast widely and studied intensely by media from all across the planet. Trump asserted a different conception of stability, one carefully grounded in ‘American primacy and economic strength’. “When America booms, the entire world booms,” he declared, asserting the central nature of U.S. economic performance to global prosperity, “You all follow us down, and you follow us up.”

Trump’s remarks were quick to leap from economic reassurance to geopolitical assertiveness when he addressed the elephant in the room, Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. Seeking “immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland,” he said, even as he reassured the audience that he “won’t use force” to take it. This balancing act, which demanded control while disclaiming coercion, accurately depicted the tensions beneath Davos’s polished facade. By contrasting ‘strategic ambition’ with ‘diplomatic restraint’, the speech raised questions about the ever-evolving meaning of sovereignty in a world where some of the greatest powers claim security imperatives as justification for ‘territorial negotiation’.

It was precisely this dissonance, between formal respect for norms and realpolitik manoeuvring, that drew an unusually unified response from other European leaders. Coverage from the forum confirmed that figures from the UK, Denmark, Norway, and other European capitals publicly rejected coercive designs on Greenland as “unacceptable” and reaffirmed a collective commitment to sovereignty and alliance norms.

In other words, what ended up unfolding in Davos was not simply a policy debate but a crisis of interpretive frames: Is global order defined by the assertive will of singular powers, or even by collective adherence to norms that enable cooperation beyond the boundaries of coercion?

These questions resonated beyond Canada and the United States. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking at Davos as well, warned that the world has entered an era of “great-power politics” in which strength and force increasingly govern outcomes. Even China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng presented a normative counterpoint, arguing that the world must not revert to “the law of the jungle … where the strong will eat the weak.”

The irony is that Davos itself, a town that traditionally stood as a symbol of elite consensus, became a stage for contesting the very idea of a global consensus. Those who champion international cooperation were compelled to defend not only personal ideologies, but the very premises upon which cooperation is thought to be even possible.

Carney’s call for strategic autonomy among like-minded middle powers invites a crucial query: Can smaller states coordinate effectively in the shadow of great-power competition, or will their own autonomy be swallowed by the pull of economic coercion and geopolitical hierarchy? As Carney himself suggested, building new coalitions without the trappings of past orders requires a sense of honesty about where world politics actually stands, not where nostalgia suggests it is supposed to be.

Trump’s insistence on American centrality raises a fundamental question about the nature of interdependence: If one country’s prosperity is necessary for others’ fortunes, as he himself claimed, then what happens when that interdependence is harnessed for acquiring a hierarchical supremacy instead of cooperation? And if the negotiation over Greenland becomes a precedent for future territorial-security bargains, what does that say about the stability of alliance structures and the sanctity of territorially grounded autonomy?

These are not theoretical musings confined to academic journals; they are debates with genuine consequences for global trade, alliance cohesion, and the structural integrity of international norms. Davos 2026 may not have resolved them, but it has framed them in stark relief.

In an age where power is heavily concentrated and heavily contested, the most important lesson from Davos is probably this: the old certainties of global order have given way to contested assumptions, and understanding the world now demands that we interrogate what those assumptions are really worth.

The views and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Warwick Economics Summit.

Reference List

World Economic Forum (2026) Davos 2026: Special address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

World Economic Forum (2026) Davos 2026: Special address by Donald Trump, President of the United States of America. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-donald-trump-president-united-states-america/

World Economic Forum (2026) Special address by Friedrich Merz, Federal Chancellor of Germany. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/special-address-by-friedrich-merz-federal-chancellor-of-germany/

World Economic Forum (2026) Davos 2026: Special address by He Lifeng. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-he-lifeng/

Global News (2026) "One for the ages": US Financial Times editor calls Carney's Davos speech "extraordinary". Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuJojcp2E3M