For decades, the World Economic Forum in Davos functioned as a symbolic anchor of the post–Cold War international order. It was a place where globalization was affirmed, multilateralism celebrated, and stability presumed. Davos 2026 marked a decisive rupture with that tradition.

What emerged this year was not a reaffirmation of order, but its quiet dissolution.

The now widely quoted remark by the Canadian Prime Minister, “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” was not rhetorical flourish. It was a structural diagnosis. The statement reflects an international system in which power asymmetry is no longer mediated by norms, institutions, or shared restraint, but negotiated directly through leverage.

The language of a “rules-based international order” was notably absent. Instead, the conversations in Davos revolved around costs, exposure, and strategic prioritization. The central question was no longer how to preserve the system, but who would bear the burden of its erosion.

President Donald Trump’s address encapsulated this shift with remarkable clarity. While framed in diplomatic terms, the substance was unmistakable: alliance commitments are no longer intrinsic; they are conditional. Security guarantees are no longer assumed; they are transactional. The implications for NATO, transatlantic relations, and global trade are profound.

Trump’s references to Greenland, defense spending, and trade leverage were not isolated provocations. They represent the consolidation of a strategic doctrine that rejects automatic multilateralism in favor of selective engagement. In this framework, cooperation is not a principle, but a variable.

Europe’s position in Davos revealed a deeper structural vulnerability. European leaders remain physically present in the architecture of global governance, yet increasingly absent from its authorship. Once a normative power shaping rules and institutions, Europe now finds itself primarily managing decline — attempting to preserve frameworks it no longer controls.

This transformation raises a broader question often overlooked in Western discourse: how do middle powers navigate a system that has shifted from rule enforcement to power negotiation?

Türkiye offers a particularly instructive case. Frequently framed in Western analysis through outdated binaries — East versus West, alignment versus autonomy — Türkiye’s strategic dilemma is more accurately understood through the lens of positional agency. The relevant question is not ideological orientation, but bargaining capacity.

In an environment defined by transactionalism, states that fail to assert strategic relevance do not remain neutral. They become objects rather than subjects of policy. History provides little evidence that moral consistency alone protects states in periods of systemic transition.

What distinguishes the current moment is not the return of interest-based politics, but the erosion of the pretense that it was ever otherwise.

Davos 2026 did not signal the collapse of the international system. It signaled its mutation. The system has not disappeared; it has become openly negotiable. Power is no longer constrained by shared narratives of order, but exercised through explicit calculation.

In such a context, neutrality is not stability, it is postponement. And postponement, in international politics, is often indistinguishable from loss.

The era of world order is giving way to an era of global bargaining. The question for states is no longer whether they approve of this reality, but whether they are positioned to survive it.

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