What do the events of this year’s World Economic Forum signal about the future of the global order?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was right in Davos: There has been a rupture. But Davos also sent a contradictory signal: Our global system of norms and rules endures. If President Trump had seized Greenland by force, this system could have been shattered. But he backed off in Davos, demonstrating the fierce resilience of our international order. National sovereignty still matters.

Globalization is “a failed policy,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Davos. Paradoxically, the largest ever U.S. presidential delegation in Davos showed that an ostensibly unilateral and isolationist president understood that global opinion remains important. Davos has become the loudest microphone for blasting a global message. Trump’s goal was to seize global attention. He succeeded. And he also succeeded in getting some degree of support for his Gaza “Board of Peace” initiative.

One additional observation: The severe breakdown in trust between Europe and America in Davos will undoubtedly boost the most important trend of the 21st century: the return of Asia, especially China and India, to the world stage. The low profile of Asia in Davos was therefore misleading. Future Davos meetings must significantly increase the Asian presence. A Western echo chamber, which Davos has become, won’t help the West to prepare for the Asian 21st century.

Kishore Mahbubani is a former Singaporean ambassador and former United Nations Security Council president. He is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and the author of “Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy.”

When we look back on the 2026 World Economic Forum a decade from now, we will see the birth or acceleration of two big trends. First is rupture, the “rupture in the world order” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described at the outset of his speech. That speech will rank alongside addresses by Vladimir Putin in 2007 and JD Vance in 2025 — both delivered at the Munich Security Conference — as marking the beginning of a new geopolitical era. Deals can be reached between the U.S. and its erstwhile allies, and divisions can be papered over for specific purposes, but the trust is broken. The second is regrouping. While the U.S. disrupts, menacing a fellow member of NATO and trying to build an alternative to the U.N. Security Council through a “Board of Peace,” many nations are turning to their neighbors to forge their own economic and security arrangements. Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen praised the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement, which creates a market of 31 countries and over 20% of world GDP. Carney called for a new order built by “middle powers” and described Canada’s outreach to China, Europe and Asia. The center of global international cooperation is shifting away from New York and Washington, perhaps irrevocably.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America.

The events of this year’s World Economic Forum made one thing unmistakably clear: The post–Cold War global order is over, and the Davos class knows it. President Trump’s speech cut through the technocratic fog with a blunt reminder that power, not process, still governs the world.

His remarks on Greenland were not provocation for its own sake — they were a strategic declaration. The Arctic is the next great theater of competition, and the United States will not subcontract its security interests to multilateral talking shops or European complacency.

Europe’s reaction exposed its deeper crisis. While elites clutched their pearls, Trump articulated what many Europeans privately understand: A continent that underinvests in defense, overregulates its economy and outsources its energy and security has no claim to global leadership.

Transatlantic relations will persist, but they will be rebalanced — away from dependency and toward reciprocity. Trade, too, will reflect this shift. Access to the American market is a privilege, not an entitlement, and it will be aligned with U.S. strategic and industrial interests.

Even the so-called Board of Peace exposed what Davos refuses to admit: Donald Trump is the only leader serious about ending wars that the EU and United Nations have ignored, mismanaged and prolonged for decades.

Rejecting moral posturing and process-driven failure, Trump intends to engage the leaders who have the power — backed by American strength — to reach real settlements where global institutions like the U.N. have repeatedly failed.

Paul McCarthy is a senior research fellow for European Affairs in the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

The future is increasingly being written by others in opposition to the toxic nationalism displayed by the Trump administration. President Trump’s retreat from traditional forms of international cooperation and his incessant tariff threats have pushed world leaders to forge new partnerships with each other — and without the United States — that will define global engagement for decades.

The EU’s trade deal with Mercosur will soon move forward. The EU also has a new trade agreement with India. Canada just announced a deal with China. Brazil, South Korea, Japan, the U.K. and Australia have all recently sealed arrangements to limit their exposure to the United States. Few, if any, of these would have occurred without the Trump administration’s constant tantrums on the world stage.

The Trump administration’s actions have also failed to deliver at home. Since its “liberation day” tariff announcements, the United States has lost 72,000 manufacturing jobs. U.S. manufacturing has now contracted for 10 consecutive months, and investment in new U.S. factories continues to decline. In short, the Trump administration is losing at home and abroad. Davos was thus just another waypoint on Trump’s self-immolation of American leadership.

Ryan Mulholland is a senior fellow in international economic policy at the Center for American Progress.

Pay attention to the relatively subdued presence of the Chinese government. He Lifeng, one of China’s four vice premiers, didn’t need to make a splash in Davos. The Chinese government has been quietly centering the new global order around itself by hosting its own major economic conferences, oftentimes showcasing new technologies, platforms and manufacturing capacity that rivals or exceeds those in the United States and the Western world. The American vision at Davos was distinctly regressive, instead talking about investments in coal power and battleships. While President Trump spoke about nuclear energy deployment, China is actually doing it.

The middle powers (to riff on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s words) have also started to view technological integration with the United States as a potential source of their subordination. Who’s going to buy an F-35 if your spare parts and electronics could get cut off? In that context, it’s harder to differentiate U.S. solutions from Chinese platforms that also present geostrategic risks. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that America’s allies are increasingly traveling to China to boost relations and reopen trade ties. Upcoming summits, including APEC in Shenzhen, will be China’s chance to showcase President Xi Jinping’s alternative vision of the global order.

Cole Donovan is associate director for science and technology ecosystem development at the Federation of American Scientists.

Four dynamics stood out. First, economic security has become a central lens for global policy. Trade, industrial policy, supply chains and even climate cooperation are increasingly being framed through a lens of resilience and strategic autonomy. Second, the Global South, and Africa in particular, has moved from the margins to the center, with discussions on industrialization, critical minerals and digital payments pushed to the forefront. Third, technology, especially AI, is a test for governance, advancing faster than institutions can keep up. But perhaps the most important takeaway was the value of the dialogue itself. Today’s challenges cannot, and should not, be solved by states or markets alone, and the continued attention paid to the World Economic Forum suggests that there is a deep global appetite for dialogue at a time of rising fragmentation, mistrust and strategic rivalry.

Landry Signé is a senior fellow with the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Regional Action Group for Africa.