Welcome to Davos, that high-altitude masquerade where the world’s self-appointed custodians gather to sip overpriced mineral water and pretend the planet isn’t screaming in the face of their collective incompetence. This week’s headline act features the leader of the American experiment arriving in Switzerland with the grace of a wrecking ball in a crystal shop, fresh off a series of proclamations that have the European political class clutching their pearls with such vigor it’s a miracle they haven’t turned back into coal. The American president, a man who views the world map primarily as a series of potential golf courses and high-rise developments, has set his sights on Greenland. In a move that manages to be simultaneously archaic and deeply stupid, he has suggested seizing the self-governing Danish territory, treating a sovereign landmass like a distressed property in a Queens foreclosure. It is the ultimate colonial throwback, performed with the intellectual nuance of a toddler playing with a globe.

Naturally, the Europeans are horrified, or at least they are performing the theatrical version of horror required by their voters. The NATO secretary general, tasked with maintaining the fiction that the Western alliance is something more than a hollowed-out relic of the Cold War, has emerged to offer the most tepid linguistic sedative imaginable: ‘thoughtful diplomacy.’ One has to admire the sheer, galling emptiness of the phrase. ‘Thoughtful diplomacy’ is the verbal equivalent of bringing a wet napkin to a forest fire. It is the plea of a man who knows his house is being demolished but hopes that if he asks the bulldozer driver politely, they might leave the flowerbeds intact. The NATO chief’s call for restraint is a desperate attempt to ignore the reality that the transatlantic alliance is currently being held together by duct tape and the shared delusion that everyone still likes each other.

Adding a layer of comedic grease to this fire, the US Treasury Secretary decided to grease the diplomatic wheels by dismissing Denmark as an irrelevance. It is a rare moment of honesty from the American side, albeit a cruel one. To the masters of the American treasury, Denmark is not a nation with a history, a culture, or a soul; it is a rounding error on a spreadsheet, a ‘boutique’ country that exists only to provide a picturesque backdrop for LEGO sets and social democratic fantasies. By dismissing the Danes as irrelevant, the administration has merely said aloud what the rest of the world’s superpowers whisper behind closed doors. The Danish government, for its part, reacts with the wounded dignity of a waiter who has been stiffed on a tip, unable to comprehend that their ‘strategic partnership’ is actually a one-way street paved with American indifference.

But let us not pretend the Europeans are the innocent victims in this farce. They occupy Davos with an air of moral superiority that is as thin as the mountain air they breathe. They talk of ‘stability’ and ‘norms’ while their own economies stutter and their populist movements sharpen their knives in the shadows. They fear a trade war not because of the principles of free exchange, but because their bloated social contracts are entirely dependent on the very globalist machinery they claim is currently being sabotaged. The threat of tariffs on European nations is the only language the American administration speaks fluently, and the European response is a frantic search for a dictionary they lost decades ago. They are terrified of a trade war because they have forgotten how to fight, preferring the comfort of bureaucratic memos and the slow decay of the status quo.

As the American president promises to impose tariffs on any nation that dares to oppose his whims, we witness the final, wheezing gasps of the ‘liberal world order.’ This order was always a fragile construct, a gentleman’s agreement between thieves, and it is finally being dismantled by someone who doesn’t even know what the word ‘gentleman’ means. The prospect of the US seizing Greenland or initiating a total trade war with the EU is not just a geopolitical crisis; it is a reminder of the inherent absurdity of human governance. We are led by people who think countries are commodities and by people who think a polite suggestion will stop a megalomaniac. The Davos crowd will continue to talk of ‘global cooperation’ while the ground beneath their feet shifts toward a new era of naked aggression and petty insults.

In the end, this is the world we have built for ourselves: a world where ‘thoughtful diplomacy’ is the last refuge of the powerless, and where the most powerful man on Earth is shopping for glaciers as if they were last year’s fashion accessories. There is no one to root for in this scenario. There are no heroes, only varying degrees of grifters, bureaucrats, and blowhards. As the jets take off from the Swiss mountains, they leave behind a trail of carbon and the unmistakable scent of a civilization that has finally run out of ideas. Greenland will remain cold, Denmark will remain offended, and the rest of us will remain trapped in this endless, stupid cycle of performative outrage and inevitable decline. It is, if nothing else, a consistent end to a pathetic century.