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Davos and Abu Dhabi: How the Ukrainian Endgame Exposed Western Decline

By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – January 28, 2026

While Russia, the United States, and Ukraine quietly negotiated in Abu Dhabi, Davos revealed Europe’s real position in the emerging world order: excluded from decision-making yet burdened with the costs of war and peace alike.

The 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos will likely be remembered less as a forum for global coordination than as a public autopsy of the Western-led international order.

What emerged in the Alpine setting was not coherence but fragmentation: rhetorical excess, strategic confusion, and an unmistakable sense that the world has already moved beyond the frameworks still defended—often ritualistically—by Euro-Atlantic elites.

Three speeches captured this moment with particular clarity: those of Volodymyr Zelensky, Mark Carney, and, less noticed but arguably most consequential, Chinese Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang (represented in the Davos debate through He Lifeng’s economic message).

Zelensky and the Public Humiliation of Europe

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech was striking not only for its confrontational tone but also for its intended audience. His criticism was not primarily directed at Russia or even the United States, but bluntly at Europe. He accused the European Union of strategic indecision, military weakness, and an inability to guarantee Ukraine’s security, reiterating that Europe “still does not know how to defend itself” and remains structurally dependent on Washington.

Mocking Europe’s symbolic troop deployments to Greenland and its delayed reactions to crises such as Iran reinforced Zelensky’s humiliation of Europe.

This rhetoric can be understood as a final reckoning — an all-or-nothing move in which he burned all bridges and launched a frontal attack without regard for the consequences. By Davos, Kyiv was already aware that negotiations over the territorial concessions of the war were being discussed in Abu Dhabi between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine without European participation.

Zelensky’s speech thus functioned as political coercion aimed at Europe as the remaining actor capable of paying the price of a settlement. By publicly framing Europe as weak and morally indebted, Zelensky attempted to transform guilt into leverage in the final phase of negotiations.

This interpretation is reinforced by reporting in the Financial Times, which revealed that Ukraine’s willingness to consider territorial concessions is conditional upon accelerated EU membership, potentially by 2027. In domestic political terms, this trade-off allows Zelensky to reframe territorial loss as civilisational gain: Ukraine does not lose land; it “joins Europe.”

The bill, however, is addressed to Brussels.

Europe’s Astonishing Response

The European reaction to Zelensky’s speech in Davos bordered on political self-abnegation. Despite being publicly criticised, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen praised Ukraine’s “heroic struggle” and emphasised Europe’s material commitment rather than responding to the substance of Zelensky’s accusations.

This asymmetry—verbal humiliation met with renewed rhetorical loyalty—reveals a deeper structural problem: Europe’s inability to translate financial power into strategic agency.

Dissent has nevertheless emerged at the national level. Italian politicians, including Rossano Sasso and Matteo Salvini, openly criticised Zelensky’s “ungrateful” tone and questioned continued military and financial support.

Such reactions reflect mounting domestic pressures linked to inflation, energy costs, and war fatigue, documented extensively by Politico and the Kiel Institute.

Yet these voices remain fragmented, and Europe as a collective actor continues to display what can only be described as strategic paralysis.

Mark Carney and the End of the Rules-Based Illusion

If Zelensky exposed Europe’s weakness, Mark Carney articulated its anxiety. His Davos speech openly acknowledged what had long been implicit: the so-called “rules-based international order” is no longer operative—and perhaps never was. Carney framed the current moment as a rupture, arguing that “middle powers” such as Canada and European states must now navigate a world no longer structured by predictable norms but by power, leverage, and economic scale.

Carney’s concept of “value-based realism” deserves close scrutiny. On the surface, it appears as an attempt to reconcile normative language with geopolitical adaptation. In substance, however, it represents an effort to preserve Western managerial influence within a system that has already shifted towards multipolarity. Sovereignty, in Carney’s formulation, is diluted into “managed multipolarity,” administered by the same financial and institutional elites that dominated the previous order.

This is precisely why his discourse fails to resonate in the Global South. For emerging powers—particularly within BRICS—the collapse of the Western order is not a tragedy to be managed but a long-awaited correction. Carney’s speech, far from acknowledging this, sought to repackage decline as stewardship.

That it reportedly irritated Donald Trump is unsurprising: Carney implicitly rejected American unilateralism while simultaneously refusing genuine systemic change.

China and the Silent Centre of Gravity

The most consequential intervention in Davos was arguably not Western at all. Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng articulated Beijing’s strategic priority with remarkable clarity: China is positioning itself to become the world’s largest consumer market, making access to Chinese demand the central axis of future global trade.

This message, echoed by analysts such as Pepe Escobar, signals a structural shift in the global economy: dependence is moving eastward.

Unlike Carney’s rhetorical manoeuvres, China’s position was grounded in material capacity: industrial scale, domestic demand, and long-term planning. For much of the Global South, this represents opportunity rather than threat. For Europe, however, it underscores marginalisation.

Abu Dhabi Decides, Europe Pays

The trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi marked a geopolitical turning point. While Europe has committed close to €200 billion in support to Ukraine, it was excluded from negotiations shaping the war’s end.

This exclusion is not accidental. Both Washington and Moscow increasingly view Brussels as incapable of strategic compromise, bound instead by ideological rigidity and proceduralism.

Europe thus faces a brutal dilemma: continue financing a war it does not control, or finance a peace settlement that fundamentally alters the EU through accelerated Ukrainian accession. Neither option strengthens European sovereignty.

Granting Ukraine some lite-sort of membership by 2027—without completed accession chapters—would transform the EU’s budgetary, agricultural, and cohesion policies overnight. Yet postponement risks indefinite financial haemorrhage. As the Financial Times and Reuters have noted, peace may ultimately be cheaper than perpetual war, even if politically uncomfortable.

Conclusion: Europe as the Weakest Link

Davos revealed a system speaking past itself. Zelensky spoke from desperation and tactical clarity. Carney spoke from elite anxiety. China spoke from structural confidence. Europe, by contrast, spoke in platitudes.

The irony is stark. Europe funds Ukraine, absorbs the economic shock, and bears the political consequences—yet is excluded from decision-making. In Abu Dhabi, values were absent, and strategy was outsourced. When the deal is announced, Europe may discover it was not a negotiator, but a guarantor of last resort.

The tragedy is not merely Europe’s weakness, but its refusal to acknowledge it.

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Ricardo Martins is a Doctor in Sociology with specialisation in geopolitics and international relations.

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January 28, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Economics | Canada, China, European Union, Ukraine, United States