In an era where the Atlantic has clearly given way to the Indo-Pacific, it is only fitting that the Davos summit has given way to the Raisina Dialogue at Delhi.
When it was becoming obvious to the G-7 members that they were being challenged over the overlordship of the international global order by countries such as India and Brazil, they sought in 1999 to co-opt newly rising countries into accepting (with a few cosmetic modifications) what they expected would be a continuation of their post-1945 dominant status within the international system. The G-7 was expanded into the G-20, with the European Union added as a member. In 1971, Klaus Schwab, a visionary professor at Geneva in Switzerland, began the European Economic Forum, which in 1987 changed its nomenclature to the World Economic Forum (WEF), principally to involve the United States in its deliberations. Since then, it has been called the Davos Conference, as a consequence of having its annual meetings in the village of Davos, which was founded in the 13th century and populated by German-speaking Swiss.
Now into its 51st year of operation, the WEF has from the start sought a broad consensus on finding solutions to global problems that favour the Atlantic Alliance. Unfortunately for Davos, there have been tectonic shifts in the architecture of the world order since the close of the 1990s. The primacy of the countries bordering the Atlantic was giving way to the increasing clout of those bordering the Indo-Pacific, the primary reason why the G-7 created the G-20, without also extinguishing itself, as it ought to have. During 2023, the year when India assumed the Presidency of the G-20, the forum overshadowed not just the G-7, thereby completing a process of change that had already begun after the 2008 financial collapse caused by the greed of Atlanticist bankers. The 2008 financial meltdown showed to the rest of the world that the Atlanticist powers could not be relied upon to safeguard the global financial system in a manner that met the needs of not just a limited number of people within a few countries, but of the world as a whole. In the CCP, the belief that Pax Sinica was at hand was a perception that had begun with the handover of Hong Kong by the British to the PRC on the latter’s terms in 1997. Such a belief was further strengthened by the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, the WHO and other international institutions discredited themselves by refusing to admit that the Covid-19 pandemic was caused by the PRC. The WHO kowtow was followed by similar blindness to CCP complicity in the Covid-19 outbreak by US health experts such as Anthony Fauci as Peter Daszak.
To Xi Jinping, this supine, indeed complicit, attitude by the WHO as well as top US experts indicated that the period of Pax Sinica, which in his view had in the past lasted two thousand years, had arrived. Efforts were made by the CCP to overshadow Davos by holding similar meets in cities such as Shanghai, but they never became self-sustaining in the manner that Davos was. In 2023, the chairman for the year of the G-20, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, established a higher orbit for the G-20 than the group ever had or had even attempted to reach. Apart from that, again under Modi’s prodding, the African Union joined the European Union in becoming a full member of the G-20, which is now the G-21. In the league of Great Powers, there are the US, the PRC, India, and still holding on to that perch through sheer size and potential, Russia. Just behind them are Brazil and Indonesia, the present and next President of the G-21, a coincidence that will go a long way in ensuring that the G-21 remains in the higher orbit in which Prime Minister Modi first placed it in 2023. The G 21 is not just in a much higher orbit than the G-7 and a fractured UNSC, but as a group has since 2023 been dedicated to not just themselves (as the G-7 was) but to all the world, especially the Global South. Despite the reluctance of the CCP to sign on to a Conference Document released under the Indian presidency, it was forced to do so because even the country that the PRC most relies on in its hybrid war against the major democracies, Russia, accepted the draft document.
In 2023, the overshadowing of the G-7 by what is now the G-21 took place. In 2024, the overshadowing of the WEF annual conference at Davos by the Raisina Dialogue occurred. In an era where the Atlantic has clearly given way to the Indo-Pacific, it is only fitting that the Davos summit has given way to the Raisina Dialogue at Delhi, the capital of the country that will in brief years become the world’s third superpower, after the US and China. The architect of that transformation, Narendra Modi, sat in attentive silence as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece delivered the ninth inaugural address of the Raisina Dialogue, after ORF chairman Sunjoy Joshi and president Samir Saran began the proceedings, which were concluded by the vote of thanks delivered by External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. It would take many pages to enumerate the list of speakers and delegates from across the world to the 2024 Raisina Dialogue. Suffice it to say that the world was fully represented in the roster of three thousand invitees, while an exhaustive list of pressing issues were discussed by those conversant with the issues in question.
As the world has moved ever more towards the Indo-Pacific, attendance at Davos has been seen by the makers of state policy as less and less consequential. In contrast, the level of interest and participation in the Raisina Dialogue rose to an unprecedented level in 2024. At the Dialogue, several of discussions were held outdoors, in sessions enlivened by kahwa, a delicious hot tea with a dash of cinnamon and saffron that is a staple in Kashmiri homes.
Sorry, Davos. It’s now Raisina’s turn.