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(LifeSiteNews) — Today is the third and final day of the 2023 World Government Summit, which has taken place each February in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, since 2013. Initially a forum for the rulers of these small oil and gas rich gulf statelets, it was relaunched with a video address by President Barack Obama in 2016 as an organization with global ambitions.

This year’s offering features no world leaders from the West, but did include an appearance from Klaus Schwab. The World Government Summit is suffering from the same decline in interest as the World Economic Forum, with both organizations seeing diminished attendance and press coverage.

Dubai is not a democracy, and nor are any of the six neighboring Emirates. These Persian gulf microstates are hereditary autocracies whose interest in funding such an undertaking appears to be motivated by a desire to modernize their public image.

The past and present themes of the summit would appear familiar to the casual student of technocratic managerialism. With the WEF unable to command sufficient prestige – or power – to advance its agenda elsewhere, it appears happy to associate itself with these non-democratic and wealthy Gulf partners in the project of global managerialism. 

The summit’s title exaggerates its influence, being largely a conference of Gulf princes. However, it notably drinks deep from the well of Schwabian concerns, with past summits developing themes of technological futurism, “sustainable development” and “global futures.”

This public relations technique is well known. These aims, which always reduce to the extinction of personal and national sovereignty enabled by technology to be controlled by our masters, are always described in aspirational terms. The World Government Summit may lack the influence to walk the walk, but it certainly talks the talk. 

Last year’s summit was dominated by one question: are we ready for a new world order? To the dismay of the managerial technocrats, this is a problem. They have not been served the world they had ordered. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine came a break from the unipolar, globalized economy so amenable to international managerial capture. Instead, something emerged more like the “multipolar world” prefigured by former Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov in 1996. 

This has posed a significant problem for the World Government Summit and its more successful sibling, the World Economic Forum. The bifurcation in global power, resulting in something not too distant from Primakov’s Russia-China-India bloc coming to rival the U.S., has seen the momentum fall away from a world government program that once seemed inexorable. 

For an organization which bills itself as a “global, neutral, non-profit organization dedicated to shaping the future of governments,” its reach has fallen from the high point of its launch, with only President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and free speech extremist Elon Musk also joining the conference by video. 

Themes this year included the Global Dialogue for Happiness and Wellbeing, paired with the darkly titled Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Forum. A further segment was focused on sustainable development goals, promoting global city design. This last area is part of a Decade of Action, whose aims are not explicitly mentioned, but which can be summarized as a contribution to the technocratic remodeling of human habitation and social control. 

Other forums expand on familiar WEF themes, such as the integration of technology with public administration, or the confidence inspiring Global Health Forum. Readers can rest assured, as this is undertaken in collaboration with the World Health Organization.  

Whether the forums concern food, education, legislation or the future of African heritage, the common aim is to form these futures according to the principles best suited to efficiency of management. Every aspect of life is a thing to be designed. The summit overall gives the fitting impression of an executive lounge attached to a fully automated factory of our future. Its aesthetics and language are typical of the elite fetish for advanced technology and the limitless potential for the expansion of their powers that it promises.  

The summit has partnered with the global management consulting firm Kearney to promote their National Transformations Institute, a center tasked with reconfiguring the Middle East into the bright posthuman future suggested in its own imagery. Tellingly, the Summit boasts a museum of the future, which showcases the pledge of the United Arab Emirates to colonize Mars by 2117. It is a gathering whose ethos combines an almost puerile fascination with technology with the wipe clean luxury of an upscale airport lounge. The pictures tell their own story. It is hard to beat this one, a diorama of waxwork-like sincerity:

But the prize for best picture must certainly go to to the evidently elated Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, shown here visibly enjoying two awards ceremonies. 

The purpose of this Summit has been derailed by an insubordinate reality beyond the control of the designers of the future. It has instead become a kind of two way shop window. For the Emiratis, it is a means of displaying their impressive modernity, whilst buying themselves a spot of limited, if favorable, publicity. For the attendees it is a chance to raise their public profile. Both Erdogan and Schwab are skilled at self-promotion. The WEF leader predictably stressed the need for global cooperation – in adopting his agenda.  As for Elon Musk, he used his video address not to suggest some nightmarish vision of a posthuman future, but touchingly asked whether politicians, heads of state, ministers and CEOs might consider speaking normally to the world. 

It was a simple appeal to rehumanize our politics, and one which, it is to be hoped, will be taken up in a future that has not been contrived to leave humanity behind. 

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