By Terry Glavin, Special to Postmedia Network From owensound suntimes

Against a backdrop of shuddering and implosion in the key institutions of the liberal world order, it wasn’t easy to discern anything encouraging in the 48th annual gathering of the rich, the famous and the powerful at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss village of Davos last week.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had just wrapped up meetings in Chile with 31 Latin American and Caribbean countries, four regional institutions and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Syrian mass-murderer Bashar Assad appears to be gassing civilians again, with impunity, and Turkish strongman Recip Tayyip Erdogan had launched an war on Syria’s Kurdish resistance.

The Davos gathering is a week-long exercise in lavish eggheadedness, with salons, workshops, speeches and panel discussions on artificial intelligence, crypto-currencies, climate change, the future of work and esoteric and highbrow concerns.

The gathering of China and Latin American and Caribbean states, meanwhile, is a function of China’s strategy to pull smaller countries out of the orbit of developed-world democracies and curb the influence of Europe and the United States.

The Davos opening keynote was delivered by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who didn’t dwell on an Oxfam report showing the richest one per cent of India’s 1.3 billion people hoovered up 73 per cent of the total wealth generated in the country in 2017. Instead, he addressed the virtues of globalized trade.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used his speech at Davos to announce Canada had concluded negotiations with 10 other countries in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Canadian auto-parts manufacturers, dairy farmers and labour leaders say will cost Canadians jobs and place Canadian products at a disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the White Helmets civil defence force and the local health directorate in Douma, Syria, reported at least 13 people suffered chlorine gas suffocation following shelling by Assad forces. Roughly 400,000 people have been besieged by Assad in Douma since 2012.

The world was watching from Davos while delegates from 30 countries met in Paris to endorse the International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons. It’s all about “naming and shaming” individuals and entities violating international covenants banning chemical weapons — as if this will stop Assad.

As the Davos festivities proceeded, Turkish tanks and troop carriers rumbled across the Syrian border into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. The UN Security Council considered the matter briefly and decided not to do anything. NATO is quiet, too, owing to embarrassment. Turkey is nominally a NATO member, but it is waging war against Kurdish guerrillas backed by the United States and several other NATO members.

Also last week, the democracy-tracking agency Freedom House released its annual report. Its main finding: For the 12th year in a row, democracy is on the run: 71 countries suffered net declines in political rights and civil liberties; only 35 countries registering gains.

“Liberal democracies have less legitimacy than at any time since World War II, and most of their structural problems don’t appear fixable,” the global risk-analysis firm Eurasia Group concluded in a study released Jan. 2. “Today’s strongest leaders show little interest in civil society or common values . . . if we had to pick one year for a big unexpected crisis — the geopolitical equivalent of the 2008 financial meltdown — it feels like 2018. Sorry.”

And for why that is so, look no further than Davos.

Terry Glavin is an ­author and journalist. 

IMAGE: US President Donald Trump meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. President Donald Trump has wished Prince Harry and fiancee Meghan Markle well and says he is not aware of having received an invitation to their royal wedding in May. (AP Photo)

For more on this story go to: http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/2018/01/28/glavin-party-time-in-davos-while-the-world-burns