Dispatch: Trump and Thucydides at Davos

A behind-the-scenes note from FP’s editor in chief  
  
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| **Ravi Agrawal** is the editor in chief of _Foreign Policy_ and host of FP Live.   
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|  **Ravi Agrawal** is the editor in chief of _Foreign Policy_ and host of FP Live.   
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| | Dear FP Insiders, Forgive me in advance for the wonkish subject line, but you’re here now, and I promise it’s relevant. I’ve been calling this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a tale of two speeches. One of them, by U.S. President **Donald Trump** , was pockmarked with misinformation and ended with an announcement of immediate talks to “acquire” Greenland—a call that was later walked back, capping a day of needless drama. The other speech, by Canadian Prime Minister **Mark Carney** , cited the Athenian historian Thucydides, whose _History of the Peloponnesian War_ deploys the famous aphorism “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” It’s a fancy way of saying jungle law, which is exactly what happens when Big Country X says it wants to snatch Small Country Y. Carney called on his fellow leaders to recognize the world as it is: a ruptured order with the fiction of international law no longer useful. In an address that will go down as a Davos classic, Carney laid out the case for countries to join forces and stand up to bullying. “When we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness,” he said. “The middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”  Now, this is an Insider note, so I suppose I should start dishing some gossip beyond the headlines at this point. A short while after Trump announced he was holding off from previously announced tariffs on eight European countries, I found NATO Secretary-General **Mark Rutte** on the phone with someone, standing outside a conference hall. “I _think_ it’s a good deal?” he said, clearly still digesting what had gone down. The reality, at that point, was that Rutte didn’t have the authority to negotiate Greenland’s sovereignty—a point Greenlandic Prime Minister **Jens-Frederik Nielsen** made clear in a Thursday press conference. The going theory, however, was that a market downturn—and strong words from many European leaders and U.S. senators in attendance—convinced Trump to pull back, at least for now. We may never really know.  Regardless, European leaders have decamped from Davos to gather in Brussels and discuss the week’s roller coaster news. No matter where the Greenland affair ends up, it’s already clear it has been a profound distraction from the real war in Europe: the one in Ukraine, which got comparatively little attention at Davos until Thursday morning, at an annual breakfast focused on the war. “Let’s keep our eyes on the ball in Ukraine,” Rutte said. “This is not about Greenland or the Arctic.” On that there was little disagreement—at least among the Europeans. Trump’s envoy-for-everything, **Steve Witkoff** , struck a positive note as he announced a day trip to Moscow, followed by talks in Abu Dhabi. “We’re reaching the end now,” he said. “We’re down to one issue.” But his optimism was somewhat doused by the realism of Finnish President **Alexander Stubb,** who said he wasn’t convinced Russia would accept anything Europe and the United States agreed to offer. As Polish Deputy Prime Minister **Radoslaw Sikorski** reminded the array of diplomats present, “To get any deal, you need to put pressure not only on the victim but the aggressor.”  At some point on Thursday, I switched focus a bit to look at what was happening with Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace” in Gaza. As Israeli Economy Minister**Nir Barkat** told me, the group would function as an alternative to a body both the United States and Israel have begun to see as a hindrance: the United Nations. But the board has hardly racked up the U.N.’s 193 members. Europe is represented by the likes of Hungary and Belarus, not exactly paragons of democracy. As one European foreign minister remarked to me, “Every country that’s joining either owes Trump something or needs something from him.” But, to be fair, it also includes Egypt and Turkey; several Gulf states, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates; and two of the world’s biggest Muslim-majority countries, Indonesia and Pakistan. No future can be envisioned for Gaza without the money and clout of these nations. And the board itself includes several competent diplomats and doers such as former U.N. Middle East peace coordinator **Nickolay Mladenov** and World Bank Group President **Ajay Banga**.   Business leaders I ran into wanted to focus on a different element of jungle law: making sure their companies were safe from the vagaries of politics. At a private gathering of bank leaders, one CEO told me they were concerned Trump would cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, a move that would “destroy the very idea of credit.” Another told me they didn’t understand the fuss because**** U.S. Treasury Secretary **Scott Bessent** had given them his home number and said to call if there were ever any problems.  One of the public sessions I ran, now on FP Live, centered on the race for critical minerals. **Jack Hidary** , the CEO of artificial intelligence firm SandboxAQ, told me the geopolitical tensions we were all feeling meant that countries “need to not only have sovereign AI … but also sovereign battery production and sovereign magnet production,” which could be made possible with the use of more technology. Here comes autarky? Not if Carney has his way. And he’s already putting his money where his mouth is, as he cut tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, announced in a visit to Beijing last week.It’s all reminiscent of 2,500 years ago, when passionate speeches about international law might have come from the Melians in Thucydides’s Melian Dialogue and the paeans to power from the Athenians. But ultimately, the strong might only fear the strength of others, not rules or laws. As historian **Niall Ferguson** said on Thursday morning in a call for more military spending by European leaders: “Speeches at Davos aren’t going to do it, folks. Be a little less Melian and a little more Athenian.”As ever,  
Ravi Agrawal  
  
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