What is the purpose of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos after the Russian invasion of Ukraine has definitively marked the end of the globalization project? This is a question that looms over the world’s most famous annual gathering of politicians and business people who have gathered again in the Swiss winter resort of Davos after a two-year hiatus due to COVID. At first glance, it seems superfluous.
The WEF in Davos 2023 is record-breaking in terms of the number of participants (more than 2,700 accredited), who could hardly wait for the ‘old normal’ to pack their bags and fly to Davos again at the end of January, as this is the place to be seen, the place where status is confirmed. WEF’s PR team will boast again this year that 51 heads of state or government, 56 finance ministers, 30 trade ministers, 35 foreign ministers, 19 central bank governors, and more than 600 CEOs of the largest global companies, including all those who matter on Wall Street, are participating in the Forum…
But the influence of the WEF in Davos has never been measured by the number of participants, but by their uniqueness. This year, both the USA and China are sending their second political league; the Russian political establishment not only has problems with sanctions (the WEF has always known how to circumvent sanctions,’rise’ above them) but is also too busy with domestic affairs; Russian oligarchs, who allegedly had the best parties with caviar and champagne, now have to worry about their own health and safety, avoiding staircases, balconies, icy patches, unwashed food, and unregistered Lada Nivas. And the fact that Davos will connect German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EC President Ursula von der Leyen is not much of a connection.
But again, Klaus Schwab, the founder and eternal alpha and omega of the WEF in Davos, has known how to maintain and develop the forum even without political top celebrities. Moreover, before this globalist phase, during the Cold War and in the first twenty years of the WEF, it was sometimes more important to remain unnoticed in Davos than to be seen and have a published photo from the fashionable political-economic gathering.
Family-controlled business
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The future of the WEF in Davos is today questioned primarily due to the loss of its content. Over the past quarter-century, Klaus Schwab has placed his (almost family) think tank WEF, which is much more than an annual meeting in Davos, completely and unreservedly in the service of the globalization project. The WEF has become the hallmark of globalization and its institutionalized PR platform. Critics of globalization have often attributed greater roles and powers to Klaus Schwab in the globalization project than he actually had.
For critics of globalization, he has become something like its designated devil, alongside Soros and Gates. However, he was merely a servant of the globalist project, a skilled manager without unnecessary scruples who recognized the trend that would dominate for the next quarter-century in the WEF’s conceptual crisis after the end of the Cold War and completely tied the WEF in Davos to it, which was then seeking its new meaning.
He developed a family-controlled business that today turns nearly four hundred million dollars a year. The question of the future and meaning of the WEF in Davos after the end of the globalization project is serious because it is now being posed by the most eminent participants of that project, such as Financial Times, CNN, New York Times… CNN has literally been the WEF’s media extended arm, and these days it notes that the WEF’s influence has dissipated.
A columnist for the Financial Times, the WEF’s second important partner, will qualify it as ‘completely irrelevant’. The well-known thought of influential New York Times columnist and major promoter of the globalist project Thomas Friedman that two countries with McDonald’s will never go to war is now quoted with irony as an example of a misguided forecast. War has proven to be stronger than McDonald’s.
Not everything is about reach and visibility
Globalization is now being sent to the past by its former main spokespeople, burying Klaus Schwab and his WEF in Davos with it. It could be said that he has lost his previous job. But is this really the end of the world’s most famous political-economic forum and the sprawling think tank of the same name? I am not so sure. Schwab has always turned to trends, seeking his niche of influence and money within them. The main theme of this year’s Forum is in that vein – ‘Collaboration in a Fragmented World’. The WEF in Davos will certainly lose the reach and visibility it had as a PR platform for the globalization project at its peak. But not all influence is about reach and visibility. And Schwab knows this well. Even from his early days.
