Instead of the usual smugfest we had a number of speakers – not just the Americans – say that the WEF-view was a bust.

In this regard I suggest this written eight years ago

The “Westphalian system” was a brutally taught lesson. Maybe a series of unbroken failure, capped by more brutal wars, has set the triumphalists, the exceptionalists, normally autobasting in the sauce of righteousness at Davos, on the long painful path of re-learning it.

Cuius regio, eius religio. Not just religion, of course.

PS China was also an exceptionalist power in its day. It, like Russia, has learned the hard way. There’s no profit, no benefit in being the Arbiter of Morality. Only ruin at the end.