Experience Davos From Your Own Living Room

Expanded Remarks

I can assure you now of one things readers. What you have heard about the Davos World Economic Forum being the exclusive preserve of the rich, powerful and elite, is completely untrue. This year it was the host of the poor and the non-powerful. I can say that as I was asked to take part in a number of panels at Davos this year, and I am about as far from a global elite as someone can be (who actually gets on a plane every once and a while).

PS—Davos has been fascinating and not entirely uplifting. What is has shown more than anything is the almost total triumph of MAGA for now—even in Europe and around the world. I will write some reflections on the whole experience when its over.

I was asked to take part in panels held at Ukraine House—and naturally I was delighted and honored. Specifically I was asked to be a speaker at two of their sessions—and what I thought I would do (and which I thought you might find interesting) is to right down for you more detailed responses than I can actually deliver at Davos.

The way that it works is that most events are handled in panels. The speakers are given talking points to guide the discussion—and they have a few minutes to discuss them. Then a Q/A session happens, with questions either coming from one moderator, or from the crowd controlled by a moderator. What I did, was write down a rather long response to each set of preparatory questions, to set the issues straighter in my mind. So you are getting an even more detailed response than the Davos Crowd

Issues for Discussion First Event—this is what the Panel would asked to consider.

“Showing deficiencies in dealing with the war in Ukraine and other crises, and criticized by the incoming US administration, the UN, along with other major global institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, is facing increasing scrutiny and criticism from nations worldwide. Is the old order simply crumbling, or can something new emerge? What would Ukrainians envision as a fair international order?”

An Answer: A New World?

Whatever world we end up with when the Russo-Ukrainian War (blessedly) ends, it should not be the world of February 23, 2022. There should be no going back—(which is not to say that there won’t be). Bureaucracies, particularly useless, large ones, have a way of protecting themselves and out lasting any attempts to reform them. So, I am not going to prophesize, for instance, that the UN will be gone or even significantly reformed in the next decade. We might very well see a world with a bloated, irrelevant, even malignant UN, etc 10-20-100 years from now.

The other thing that needs to be understood is that the UN is operating exactly as planned. It was constructed to be useless except when the permanent members of the Security Council agree—which they clearly do not here. With Russia a permanent member, with the support of China, Ukraine is never going to get the proper support from the UN that we would hope—even as Russia is trampling entirely on the foundational points of the UN Charter. In case you want a brief reminder—here is Article 2 (4) of the charter.

1. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

So simply hoping the world learns or improves from the experience of the Russian-full-scale of Ukraine is at least partly a fool’s errand. That being said, the underpinnings of the order that established the UN and other post World-War II global institutions have weakened considerably, and that means that a wholesale change is not out of the question.

This weakening is not just down to to the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine—though that matters. It is is even more tied up with the significant political changes in the USA (which the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has only sharpened) as well as the growth of economic power in Asia-Pacific, and the inability (so far) of European states and institutions to think and act in their own interests.

The fundamental change starts with the transformation politically of the USA. The world that is outlined in the starting points is basically the, “rules-based international order” that the US instituted and institutionalized after 1945. The United Nations, World Bank, IMF, etc were all creations of the US-led order. They could not have come about without US economic power, which was massive in the late 1940s, but that was not all. They required consistent US support to keep functioning, and that was only possible because of a shared consensus amongst US leaderships that was regularly supported (or at least not challenged) by the American electorate.

The US created this world because there was a generally shared belief that such institutions provided mechanisms for economic and international political stability, and that this stability served US interests by significantly reducing the chances of international political or economic upheaval.

Looking back, we can see that this US consensus was in many ways extraordinary and brought about because confluence of extreme events. There was first the two great World Wars, both of which threatened to bring about very different worlds. Had Germany, for instance, been able to assert a more permanent dominance over the European continent during either World War, the US would have had a rival that it has not faced until the very recent rise of China.

Moreover, there was the Great Depression of the 1930s, which hit the United States very hard, harder than many European states, and shattered many American illusions of an almost permanent economic success.

Finally, I would add the advent of the nuclear age to these events. The explosion of a nuclear weapon by the USA in 1945, (which was followed a few years later by a decades-long nuclear arms race between the USA and the USSR) helped solidify the basic consensus in favor of some form of internationalism and cooperation with Allies.

Certainly, when you add all these elements together, it can explain the bipartisan US consensus that functioned from 1945 and helped create many of the institutions that made up the US-sponsored International Rules-Based Order. While their foundations seemed deep (I don’t want to say permanent because nothing is permanent in international relations) they remained shallow and were based on the continuing support (or at least tacit consent) of the USA.

That support is now over—and even if it comes back, it is probably best not to expect those institutions to play any positive role. The United Nations, for instance, has shown itself during the Russo-Ukraine War to be at best useless. It has not done anything credible to try and settle the conflict, and arguably made things worse. With Russia maintaining its position as a permanent member of the Security Council while deliberately repudiating the “ideals” of the organization by waging a war of expansions and calling for the redrawing of international borders and the subjugation of another people’s identities—the United Nations has shown itself not to be irrelevant but worse.

Its true weakness is that no one is even looking to it to be a source of ending or even trying to control the excesses of the conflict. It has become, if anything, a vehicle to excuse or promote those excesses. The UN is being treated with disdain by the very state’s that have created it.

Btw, this failure of the UN in Ukraine has been repeated in its failures to make any difference in Gaza, in the move to ameliorate climate change, etc. Its arguable that the only things keeping it going are two-fold. The first is that the UN is a well-funded bureaucracy, and history has shown us that once a bureaucracy is created it can be devilishly hard to uncreate. The second is that it gives plausible deniability to those who have set out to deny its principles. As long as the UN exists, it can be argued, there is some chance of international cooperation.

So the old order is not exactly crumbling—but arguably it should be. It might continue to function, salaries paid, speeches given, for a long time going forward.

And that would not be a good thing for Ukraine—but it is very likely to be the case.

International Organizations and Ukraine.

Here I take some issue with the framing of the discussion. I don’t know, nor do I particularly care at this point about what is a “fair” international order for Ukraine. A fair order might be wonderful, but there is little chance that achieving this will be a consideration of many of the powers involved in this process—including both Russia and the USA. The recent revelations that the Biden Administration never really wanted Ukraine to win the war, and as such deliberately limited arms to Ukraine in such a way that it would stretch the war out and cause massive Ukrainian casualties, teaches us much of what we need to know about being “fair”.

No, I’m thinking about an international order that will provide Ukraine security, an economic and social future, and an ability to bed-down its democracy.

Within this new world where the USA is no longer a reliable defense partner—and may become increasingly unreliable, the key hope for Ukraine is that European institutions transform enough to provide Ukraine with as successful a future as possible.

What does that mean. Well, right now NATO is as much as block on the future security of Ukraine as it has been a support. The US, under both Biden and Trump, has been resolutely opposed to Ukraine in NATO and its difficult to see that changing in the next 4-8 years minimum. Its worth noting in their pre-election discussion of what a “peace” plan might look like for Ukraine, Trump officials spoke of a 20-year ban on Ukraine in NATO.

This is a foolish decision by the US leadership, but it also is a reality for now, so assuming Ukraine will receive NATO membership immediately is, shall we say, extremely risky. So, that leaves European institutions—which this war has shown need some significant reinvigoration.

The key institutions for Ukraine, therefore, will be European, one of which is the European Union. And arguably Ukraine not only needs the European Union, but the European Union also needs Ukraine. What this war and the transformation in US politics has highlighted is the atrophied state of European thinking, and the deficient nature of European structures. Europe can neither think for itself, and even if it could, it could not act.

What it needs are structures for both thinking and acting within a security context. The European Union is obviously key for Ukraine—and that involves full membership as soon as possible. You would also have to have a significant deployment of European troops to Ukraine to provide some teeth to any security guarantees. But overall it would be better if the EU itself were strengthened structurally. This means it was able to cooperate with European states that were not members or full members (UK and Norway most importantly), and crucially that it could provide a vehicle for defense coordination in case NATO ceases to be a functional alliance (which is far more possible that European states want to admit).

Ultimately this will require a greater centralization of some security power. You cant have single states, think Viktor Orban’s Hungary) threatening the security of the entire continent. There must be a way to respect the wishes of a majority of the states and peoples of Europe (in other words—what the UN was supposed to be).

Postscript: What I have seen at Davos shows that for now, there is no appetite to take on any changes in European structure or even think modestly about Europe looking after their own security interests. There is for now, only a desperate desire to curry favor with Trump. Its unfortunate, but it is the reality.

.