There is a specific, pungent scent that permeates the World Economic Forum in Davos every year. It is a mixture of chilled Krug, unwashed ego, and the palpable terror of a ruling class realizing they are no longer the ones steering the ship. This year, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, took the podium to confirm what anyone without a private jet and a god complex has known for a decade: the vacation is over.

Merz stood before the assembled masters of the universe—a collection of tech oligarchs, banking parasites, and career bureaucrats whose only skill is failing upwards—and delivered a message that can be summarized as: “panic.” He warned that the world is entering a time of “great power politics.” This, apparently, is news to the Davos crowd. For the last thirty years, these people have operated under the collective delusion that history ended in 1991, that borders were just suggestions, and that if we all just traded enough carbon credits and held enough panels on synergy, conflict would cease to exist.

Merz, with the grim demeanor of a man who just realized his insurance policy doesn’t cover “global collapse,” lamented that the old world order is unraveling at a “breathtaking pace.” One has to appreciate the German capacity for stating the blindingly obvious with the gravity of a divine revelation. The “old world order” he is mourning was essentially a playground where the West made the rules, the United States paid the bills, and everyone else politely nodded while waiting for their turn to hold the knife. That era is dead and rotting, yet the Chancellor’s advice to the assembled elites was, hilariously, “not to accept” this new reality.

Think about the sheer, unadulterated arrogance of that statement. “Do not accept reality.” It is the geopolitical equivalent of a toddler covering their eyes to make the monster disappear. Merz is looking at the shifting tectonic plates of global dominance—Russia’s brute-force expansionism, China’s methodical economic colonization, and the chaotic, isolationist wrecking ball of Donald Trump’s America—and suggesting that if the Davos attendees simply furrow their brows hard enough, they can veto gravity.

Let’s dissect the “Great Powers” that Merz is so terrified of, because his terror is the only honest thing in the room. First, there is Russia. The Davos set treats the war in Ukraine as a rude interruption to their supply chains, a gauche display of 19th-century behavior that doesn’t fit their spreadsheets. Merz cites it as a shaker of foundations. It is. It is proof that tanks do not care about your ESG score. Then there is China. For decades, the geniuses in that auditorium believed they could export their manufacturing base to a communist dictatorship and somehow turn Beijing into a liberal democracy through the magic of capitalism. Instead, they funded the very rival that is now eating their lunch. Merz calls China’s move into the “ranks of the great powers” a disruption. It isn’t a disruption; it is a consequence of Western greed.

And then, inevitably, there is the specter of the United States. Merz pointed to the radical reshaping of US foreign policy under Donald Trump as a key pillar of this terrifying new world. The Europeans are particularly sensitive to this because their entire model of existence relies on the American taxpayer subsidizing their defense while they mock American culture. Now that the US is turning inward, oscillating between erratic nationalism and transactional diplomacy, Europe is realizing it has no clothes. Merz is essentially telling the room that Daddy is leaving to buy cigarettes and he might not come back to protect them from the bullies on the playground.

The irony, of course, is that “great power politics” is the natural state of humanity. The brief interlude of the “rules-based international order” was an anomaly, sustained only by overwhelming American hegemony. Now that hegemony is fracturing, we are reverting to the mean. Strong nations do what they can, and weak nations suffer what they must. Germany, an economic giant with the military capability of a well-funded marching band, is rightly terrified. They spent years making themselves dependent on Russian energy and American security, and now both taps are running dry.

So, what is the solution offered at Davos? Is it a call for radical self-reflection? Is it an admission that their neoliberal fantasies paved the road to this hellscape? Of course not. The solution is to sit in a Swiss ski resort, surrounded by security fences to keep the plebeians out, and agree “not to accept” the new reality. They will issue communiqués. They will express “deep concern.” They will use buzzwords like “resilience” and “multilateralism” as talismans to ward off the encroaching dark.

But the dark doesn’t care. The “Great Powers” Merz speaks of are not interested in the consensus of the World Economic Forum. They operate on the currency of steel, blood, and leverage. While Merz pleads with the ghosts of the past to return, the future is being carved up by those who actually wield power, not those who just talk about it over canapés. The breathtaking pace of the unraveling isn’t the problem; the problem is that the people in charge are too busy being in denial to pack a parachute.