At the World Economic Forum this year, the audience of wealthy and powerful was treated to the kind of trash-talking that was once reserved for the likes of the Jerry Springer Show. Powerful leaders boasted, belittled, and threatened. Instead of infidelities and family secrets, the conversations at Davos took place against the backdrop of proposed land grabs and shocking betrayals.
Consider the speech by Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader lambasted European leaders for not standing up to the ayatollahs in Iran, not investigating Russian war crimes, not breaking their addiction to Russian energy, not supplying more advanced weaponry to Kyiv. “Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide, especially when America’s focus shifts elsewhere, Europe looks lost trying to convince the US president to change, but he will not change,” Zelensky complained. He diplomatically failed to point out where America’s focus has shifted to.
The Ukrainian president was effectively criticizing his most resolute allies in what might have been a bid for Donald Trump’s approval. After all, Trump has also been dumping on Europe even as he has pushed NATO allies to spend more on their own defense. Zelensky, using stirring rhetoric and appeals to high-minded principles, was essentially piling on by urging European countries to get a grip. He received a standing ovation.
Then there was Mark Carney. The Canadian prime minister made a stirring appeal to middle powers to unite against Donald Trump’s assault on the world order, though he never mentioned the US president’s name. Carney said,
“If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from “transactionalism” will become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.”
Here, too, was a threat: that the United States can no longer count on its allies, who are busy making deals with other countries because their relationship with America is no longer predictable or quite so beneficial.
And then there was the main event – the speech by Donald Trump to whom everyone bends toward like plants to the sun. It was in many ways a coming-out party for the US president. For the first time he revealed his true aspiration. He is not content to rule a single country with impunity. He is not satisfied with mere awards, like a ridiculous peace prize from a soccer federation or a regifted Nobel from Maria Corina Machado.
With his new Board of Peace, which debuted at Davos, Trump has announced that he wants to be king of the world.
Go back to Trump’s speech to Davos in 2018 and you’ll find a fairly conventional offering, at least by Trumpian standards. There are anodyne phrases about US economic growth wrapped around a pitch to invest in the US economy, all delivered in complete sentences. “America first does not mean America alone,” he said in a gesture toward reassurance. “When the United States grows, so does the world.”
[This time], Trump didn’t bother to appear presidential or even coherent. He continued to lambaste “sleepy Joe Biden” even though Trump himself has been caught napping in a number of meetings. He complained that Europe was “unrecognizable.” He criticized the “Green New Scam.” He spouted lie after lie about Greenland, NATO, and the US economy. Some lies – like the claim that China doesn’t have wind farms when it has more such farms than any other country – were so big and gratuitous that it’s surprising that the heads of the audience members didn’t explode.
With incomplete sentences and rambling riffs, Trump spoke as if to an audience of toddlers or as if he were himself a toddler: “when America booms, the entire world booms. It’s been the history. When it goes bad, it goes bad, the whole… You all follow us down, and you follow us up.”
This article is excerpted from: ‘Wannabe King of the World’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org
