It’s almost time and the Trump ‘cyclone’ will arrive in Davos. The US president’s is not a debut but a return to the World Economic Forum, yet Trump 2.0, strengthened by the electoral consensus in the desire to push the old multilateral world, is already causing chaos and uncertainty before arriving, with shocks that are shaking the European Union, NATO and the unity of the West itself.
The tycoon’s presence in Davos is expected on January 21st and 22nd: on Wednesday with a ‘special address’, on Thursday with what for Trump should be the first meeting of the newly established Board of Peace, the Committee for the pacification of Gaza. Reconstruction in the enclave, along with Ukraine and Greenland, are the international crises that the leaders present at the Forum will try to mend. Starting with Europeans such as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron. The objective is a peacemaking meeting but with the need to place some constraints on the tycoon.
Ukraine itself could represent one of the few fixed points in view of the arrival of the largest ever American delegation in ‘Maga’ – Make America Great Again – attire in Davos. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with his delegation aiming for a ‘special address’ tomorrow which however is not known to the WEF organisation, arrives in the Swiss snows determined to reach an agreement with the ‘willing’, NATO and Trump on security guarantees. But he will have to deal with rumors according to which Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian presidential advisor for foreign investments and negotiator with Washington, is also headed to Davos to meet a US delegation: it would be a legitimation of high symbolic significance under the gaze of the US, given that senior Russian diplomats have not been seen at the Forum for years.
In a hotel outside the WEF in Davos, with organization and security from Switzerland and not the Forum, a meeting of national security advisors – including the EU – from a number of countries was held which was planned to discuss Ukraine. But, as it turns out, another crisis would also have found itself on the table, that of Greenland: if Trump has already promised that he will annex it by wresting it from Denmark and the EU “by hook or by crook” and announced further duties for the countries that sent soldiers to Nuuk, as soon as he landed in Davos his Treasury secretary stepped up the game: European duties in response “would be very imprudent” and “we will not give the security of our outsourced hemisphere to no one else”. Warnings of a potential crisis – in the meantime Denmark has canceled its presence in Davos and announced a reinforcement of its troops in Greenland – ready to explode in Switzerland. But which European leaders, US diplomats and NATO (with general secretary Mark Rutte) will try to defuse during face-to-face meetings at the WEF.
Trump, then, has every intention of using the Davos stage, and the opportunity of having many united leaders, to start the Gaza Council with two very faithful people like Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff at the top. But in Davos, faced with the big names that would participate, such as that of Vladimir Putin, the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there are rumors that Macron’s France would not participate for now. An extra problem that adds to the escalation of tone between Paris and Washington, which perhaps it will be up to Chancellor Merz to try to defuse. Unless Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni shows up in Davos.
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