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THE First World has Davos, the Middle World has United Nations conferences, and the Third World has litfests. Davos, UN moots and litfests serve as a speaker’s corner where academics, intellectuals, politicians (serving and retired), movers and shakers collect to ventilate their opinions. Much carbon dioxide is emitted, much ‘sound and fury’ released, but all too often they signify nothing.
This year, the World Economic Forum at Davos was hijacked by President Donald Trump. Around 80 years ago, in February 1945, a triumvirate consisting of US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill and USSR general secretary Joseph Stalin met to delineate the contours of post-war Europe. Together, they midwifed the UN. Trump, by announcing his Board of Peace (BoP) at Davos, effectively trashed Yalta and in a side-swipe also emasculated the UN.
The UN has only itself to blame. Last November, it passed UNSC Resolution 2803, which granted the BoP a two-year mandate. Trump converted that into an open-ended licence to reorder the world according to his own design. His BoP is a flimsy, fragile facsimile of the UN. It has him as its omnipotent ‘Security Council’ and the fount of all its intended authority.
About 60 UN member countries have been invited to join. At least 25 countries (including a cash-strapped Pakistan) have accepted. At least nine have refused. Canada’s invitation has been rescinded after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s explosive speech at Davos. The rest have yet to respond.
How long will this era of hubris last?
Trump’s BoP is a ‘pay to play’ sport. Some nations want to play without paying its $1 billion entrance fee. They are wary, as the comedian Groucho Marx once quipped, of joining any club that was prepared to accept him as a member.
Trump’s design for the BoP’s logo is a shameless imitation of the UN logo, but with a gilt Western hemisphere (not the world) as its epicentre. Its message is clear. Trump is the self-made King Midas whose touch will make everything glister, even if it does not convert into gold. Interestingly, on that truncated map, Trump’s globe has no place for Gaza, Russia, China, Africa, the Commonwealth or the EU.
Why has Pakistan joined the BoP? How will it pay the $1bn entrance fee when it owes more than it owns? Pakistan’s lenders in the first resort — the UAE and Saudi Arabia — have become founding members of the BoP. Will Pakistan have to borrow from an Arab Peter to pay a BoP Paul? The alacrity with which our prime minister at Davos signed up suggests that Pakistan may think of contributing not in cash but in kind — green berets in the place of UN’s blue helmets.
Those with a feeling for history wonder how long will this era of institutionalised hubris last. Will Trump find his comeuppance at the hands of revivified Democrats in the US midterms this year? Will the EU, after being dumped by the US, revert to its Eurocentric policy of neighbourly interdependence? It has begun scrambling for new friends. The recently signed ‘landmark’ trade deal with India is one knee-jerk reaction.
Will an emboldened Israel now expand its frontiers into adjacent Lebanon and Syria? Will it be tempted to act as America’s satrap again and join in another attack on a weakening Iran? Will Iran relapse into a monarchy which will then sacrifice its nuclear ambitions to appease a US-led nuclear club? And will that concession be enough to lift the onerous burden of sanctions?
Will the smug Arab leadership which towers over its poorer fellow religionists heed the warnings contained in the Holy Quran against pharaonic pretensions? Surah Ghafir (36-37) contains this caution: “And Pharaoh said, “O Haman, construct for me a tower that I might reach the ways — The ways into the heavens — so that I may look at the deity of Moses.’’ The Saudi Jeddah Tower under construction will soar to about 1,000 metres, higher than the UAE’s Burj Khalifa’s 828m. They are all too vulnerable.
These were some of the questions that were discussed at the ninth ThinkFest held at Lahore on Jan 23-25. In a rush before Ramazan — the holy month of abstinence — Lahore will gorge on another two feasts: the 14th Lahore LitFest (Feb 6-8), and after that the 10th Faiz Festival (Feb 13-15).
The range of informed scholarship that is drawn to them as speakers and discussants is evidence of their significance in cities like Lahore. The increasing attendance is a measure of their popularity as a social safety valve. These LitFests may never mature into another Davos. Unless President Trump were to receive an invitation from the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2026
