Virginia Mayo / AP

By Stefan Theil

One of the headaches in planning a big annual conference is assembling topics and panelists without knowing what's going to be preoccupying the world that very week. So amid the high economic anxiety surrounding today's start of the World Economic Forum, the opening session with Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai and Condoleezza Rice almost seemed like a blast from the past, when the world was worrying about things other than massive market mayhem. Business leaders listened to their talks about fighting terrorism and promoting democracy, but it's a safe bet that most of them had other troubles on their minds.

A few years back, Davos organizer Klaus Schwab had wrangled a promise out of Rice to come to Davos, and this was the lame duck Secretary's last chance to show up. In a nod to Davos' dominant topic, she talked up American economic resilience and the administration's plans for a $150 billion fiscal stimulus.

Yet if there's a foreign policy question growing out of the market meltdown, it might be this: will the subprime disaster be another hit to America's power and image abroad? If the mess is seen in Europe and elsewhere as a natural outgrowth of American-style capitalism, will it embolden economic populists and protectionists around the world -- ultimately raising the dangers to the global economy? When Rice talked about a "climate of anxiety" and "growing concerns about globalization itself," one of the concerns she didn't mention is whether an economically weakened America might have ever less desire and authority to hold up the liberal, free-trading global order on which globalization is based, and from which much of the world benefits.

The reaction in Davos? Most participants returned to their favorite subject after Rice's speech: the market crash and what might follow. Or where to go for dinner. "We don't need more phrases and philosophy from America," one Moroccan observer said. "We need to figure out how to deal with problems now." There's certainly no refuting the latter statement.