Welcome to Davos, that nauseating high-altitude circle-jerk where the world’s self-appointed custodians gather to discuss the most efficient ways to finish off the planet while sipping vintage Krug. It is a place where the oxygen is thin, but the arrogance is stiflingly thick. This year’s highlight features Mark Rutte, the newly minted Secretary General of NATO—a man whose political career has been a masterclass in the kind of bland, centrist survivalism that makes unseasoned oatmeal look like a culinary adventure. Rutte took to the stage to perform the diplomatic equivalent of a tap dance on melting ice, desperately trying to sell a vision of “Arctic Unity” to a room full of people who would sell their own mothers for a fractional increase in quarterly dividends.

The premise is as predictable as it is pathetic. Rutte, acting as the ultimate managerial stooge for a collection of debt-ridden nations, is sounding the alarm over the encroaching influence of Russia and China in the north. The “Arctic,” we are told, must be protected. But let’s be clear about what “protected” means in the lexicon of NATO. It doesn’t mean preserving the permafrost or ensuring that polar bears have something to stand on. It means securing the right for Western conglomerates to be the ones to stick the first straws into the newly accessible oil and mineral deposits once the ice is conveniently out of the way. It is a beautiful, self-sustaining loop of human stupidity: we melt the ice with our carbon-heavy greed, and then we send in the tanks to fight over the treasures hidden beneath the slush.

But the real comedy—the kind of dark, absurdist humor that only the truly cynical can appreciate—lies in Rutte’s desperate “sidestepping” of Washington’s persistent, hallucinatory desire to purchase Greenland. Yes, the United States, a nation currently struggling to keep its own infrastructure from crumbling into the 1950s, apparently believes it can just whip out a credit card and buy a sovereign territory like a used Honda Civic. The fact that Rutte had to dodge this question is a testament to the utter dysfunction at the heart of the “transatlantic security alliance.” You cannot have unity when the leader of the pack is eyeing your backyard with the predatory intent of a strip-mall developer. Rutte knows that addressing the Greenland bid would expose the alliance for what it is: a fragile collection of vassals orbiting a superpower that has confused geopolitics with a game of Monopoly.

Of course, the villains of the piece are conveniently identified. Russia is militarizing the ice, which is exactly what anyone would expect a resource-starved petro-state to do. Moscow is busy turning the tundra into a fortress, proving that if there is one thing the Kremlin understands, it’s how to be a nuisance in cold weather. Meanwhile, China—a country that is about as “Arctic” as Florida—has declared itself a “Near-Arctic State.” It is a stroke of linguistic genius, really. By that logic, I am a “Near-Billionaire” because I once walked past a branch of Goldman Sachs. Beijing’s interest in the “Polar Silk Road” is simply the latest chapter in their global strategy of buying up everything that isn't nailed down, and NATO’s frantic response is the sound of a fading empire realizing it’s being outbid.

What Rutte is really pitching at Davos isn’t security; it’s a marketing slogan for a foreclosure sale. He speaks of a “safe Arctic” as if the region hasn't already been condemned by the very people in his audience. The transatlantic bond he praises is nothing more than a suicide pact signed in disappearing ink. The Right-wing morons in Washington think they can buy their way out of a climate catastrophe by owning the ground it happens on, while the performative Leftists in Europe pretend that “sustainable defense” is a real concept rather than a hilarious oxymoron. Both sides are equally deluded, clutching their respective flags as the water level rises to their chins.

In the end, Rutte’s performance was exactly what Davos deserves: a hollow, intellectually bankrupt exercise in pretending that we still have a grip on the steering wheel. The Arctic isn't being “contested”; it’s being liquidated. And while NATO and its rivals bicker over who gets to hold the clipboard during the liquidation, the rest of us are left to watch the spectacle of a species so addicted to power that it will fight to the death over a graveyard. It would be tragic if it weren't so profoundly, undeniably funny.