Heated tensions between Washington and rival ruling class spokespeople in Europe were on show at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21-22. The annual gathering exposed the reality of the cut-throat relations that increasingly mark the fraying imperialist world order and that are a sign of sharper conflicts and more wars to come.
President Donald Trump used his featured address to tout Washington’s military might, lauding his administration’s Jan. 3 murderous incursion into Venezuela, its bombing of boats in the Caribbean and its military assaults in the Middle East. He reiterated the U.S. rulers’ goal of taking Greenland from Denmark and lambasted “allied” governments that are part of what has been the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
“The problem with NATO,” Trump said, “is that, we’ll be there for them 100%, but I’m not sure they’ll be there for us.” Washington has pushed for European powers to take more responsibility for their defense, including in Ukraine. The U.S. rulers are concentrating on shoring up their own military in the Western Hemisphere. This is tied to Trump’s insistence that his NATO allies yield to his demand for U.S. control over Greenland.
In contrast, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, chief representative of the strongest European power, told the gathering, “NATO became the strongest alliance in history” because it was “based on mutual trust and respect” and “anchored in international law.” But today, a “new world of great powers is being built,” he said, one that “we do not have to accept.”
In fact, the NATO transatlantic military alliance was put together by Washington after its bloody victory in World War II in order to consolidate and extend its domination, tamp down rivals, including the defeated rulers of Germany, and prepare the way for the overturn of the Soviet Union.
But U.S. imperialism did not win the Cold War that followed. In the decades after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, Washington’s illusion it could do as it pleased for the U.S. capitalist class turned to ashes. World capitalism was plagued by sharp financial crises and U.S.-led wars, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Yugoslavia, turned into quagmires. The march toward another world war is accelerating today.
Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine widened fissures between the NATO allies, exposing the vulnerability of imperialist powers in Europe and their military reliance on Washington. It came at a time when the U.S. rulers are pushing to assert their own interests more forcefully.
Washington is adjusting to defend its domination in a changing world, especially against the rising economic clout of Beijing and its efforts to establish itself as a competing military power. The U.S. rulers are trying to bolster their weakened world dominance, working outwards from what they consider “their” hemisphere, the Americas.
Trump’s secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, issued a 2026 National Defense Strategy document Jan. 23. He declared the U.S. rulers’ first goal is to use “the most powerful military that this world has ever seen” to make sure “our interests in the Western Hemisphere are protected. We will deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation.”
And he emphasized the need to “rebuild the U.S. defense industrial base as part of the President’s once-in-a-century revival of American industry.” This is essential for the U.S. rulers in their wars to come.
Illusory world order is ‘ruptured’
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used Davos to describe the crisis facing “middle powers” caught between the “great powers.” He pointed to “a rupture” in what he called “the international rules-based order.”
Carney “wasn’t so grateful,” Trump said the next day. “Canada lives because of the United States,” he said, pointing to Washington’s military dominance. “Remember that Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
French President Emmanuel Macron likewise warned of “a time of instability, of unbalances,” both military and economic.
In his address, Trump pointed to his response to Macron’s initial refusal to concede more favorable trade terms to Washington. He told world dignitaries at the gathering that he forced the French president to submit, saying, “Emmanuel, the answer is you’re going to do it. You’re going to do it fast. Then if you don’t, I’m putting a 25% tariff on everything you sell.”
“Instead of becoming a truly global power, Europe remains a beautiful but fragmented kaleidoscope of small and middle powers,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at Davos Jan. 22. His blunt assessment came even as his government plans to join the European Union, a bloc of 27 competing ruling classes, itself increasingly divided in the face of today’s growing trade and military conflicts. As Washington turns away from Ukraine, Zelensky’s government is hoping European NATO powers will provide more arms and funding for Ukraine’s battle against Moscow’s invasion.
“If you send 30 or 40 soldiers to Greenland — what is that for?” Zelensky said, about the recent deployment of a handful of troops by the rulers in France, Germany, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the U.K.. “What message does it send? What’s the message to Putin? To China?” He contrasted this to Ukraine’s battle-tested million-strong army. “Without this, you won’t manage” to withstand Moscow’s expansion in Europe, he warned.
Every national ruling class is rearming in preparation for global conflicts ahead.
Berlin is rebuilding its military forces. Chancellor Merz has said the Bundeswehr “needs to become Europe’s strongest conventional army,” with a troop increase to 260,000 by 2035.
The rulers of Poland are undertaking the biggest buildup of their navy since the Cold War in the face of Moscow’s growing assertiveness in the Baltic Sea. Warsaw is building three modern frigates and buying three new Swedish-built submarines.
The stakes for millions of working people across the world are rising. Sharpening conflicts between the world’s “great” capitalist powers threaten to drag humanity into another, even more horrific world war, with the growing number of nuclear-armed powers.
Only the working class, which desires peace, can prevent another global slaughter by taking political power into its own hands.