Pointless Davos
Anthony Hilton in The Independent:
The World Economic Forum in Davos was great about 20 years ago when you would get in a lift and find that the tall elegant upright guy sharing it with you was Nelson Mandela, or take the only spare stool at the counter to find you were alongside the US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
In those days most of the interesting meetings were relatively small seminars over breakfast, lunch or dinner, where you did actually get to meet and talk to seriously important people you would normally not get close to. And something in the mountain air meant they often said what they thought rather than what they thought they should say.
That’s all gone now and it is such a circus there is no point in going. Those in attendance are now given electronic passes which rank them by their importance and restrict where they can go, so the high and mighty are totally shielded from the low life. The great and the good on the panels spout empty bromides which demonstrate either how insensitive they are to what is happening outside their cocooned world or that they are prisoners of group think. And the atmosphere more than anything is one of uncomfortable self-importance and smugness, which seems to grow as the attendance by genuine A-list players goes into decline.
They, like me, probably takethe view that the pre-Davos discussions are much better value that the real thing.
At one, organised by Editorial Intelligence in London a couple of weeks ago, the American ambassador said the major issue facing the world was one of fairness; thefinance director of Rio Tinto said he was worried at the amount of political uncertainty and the possibility of new people in charge in half the countries in the Middle East, several of the countries in Europe, in the United States, and, most of all, in China. Someone else said we had not even begun to cope with the implications of the decline in western power and the rise of Asia, and the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf said that the collapse of the euro would mean a decade of pain, even in Germany.
All that for the cost of an Oystercard fare. Who needs to go to Switzerland?
I think it’s safe to say that even 20 years ago Davos was little more than the gathering of the world’s political and economic elite, classified by their proximity not to fresh and interesting ideas, but to power. I have no problem with a gathering of elites anywhere if the purpose is to discuss ideas that criticize power and orthodoxy. But if the purpose of the meeting is to reward credulous and self-interested thought by confirming the exclusive status of their expositors, then it’s nothing but a sad carnival of delinquency.
To usher in the New Year, Bogaards has put out a Top 100 Hierarchy of Book Publishing, which opens with “Brand-name authors (still),” moves through “Laura Miller when she is cranky” to “Laura Miller when she is not cranky,” and ends with “you.” Enjoy.
SOTU 2012: On Fairness
Not that you should care of my thoughts, but I thought it was a fine, nicely delivered speech. It reminded me of why the right would always remain upset with Obama: he’s a pragmatic centrist who likes to talk about fairness. It’s disarming to both those who wish for a society based on absolute equality, and those who think equality means less freedom to live at the expense of others. Obama has always stood at the intersection of equality and autonomy, in other words.
Of course, to those of us liberals, it’s more than unfair to be talking about fairness when the public has been so brazenly wronged by private multinationals. But given the unreasonable, plainly racially-motivated tantrums on the other side, one has to acknowledge its usefulness as a campaign strategy.
Results of the Egyptian Parliamentary Elections
The political science blog, the Monkey Cage, has a helpful entry on the results of the Egyptian parliamentary elections. Someone should do a study about why liberal-secular parties don’t join forces while (moderate) Muslim parties do.
“ I feel confident that sooner rather than later, the American people will come to see [Obama’s] first term from the same calm, sane perspective. And decide to finish what they started.”
Andrew Sullivan’s latest, a couple paragraphs after he calls liberals “deluded.”
Yet I remain less interested in us finishing what we started, and more interested in Obama beginning what he has yet to start. Or better, still less interested. From the Nation, two years ago:
Yet a year into the presidency of Barack Obama, it is already clear that this administration is an opportunity missed. Not because it is too conservative. Not because it is too liberal. But because it is too conventional. Obama has given up the rhetoric of his early campaign—a campaign that promised to “challenge the broken system in Washington” and to “fundamentally change the way Washington works.” Indeed, “fundamental change” is no longer even a hint.
Any liberal (or sane moderate for that matter) would be crazy to say that we’re not better off today than we would have been had Obama not been elected. Of course we are. But that fact doesn’t negate the (still ignored by Sullivan et al.) criticism of the President: That he baited us with the reform rhetoric, and then switched to the administration promised by H. Clinton.
(via lessig)
“Afterwards” by Thomas Hardy
Read by Jeremy Irons
Music by Jon Lord and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Iran, U.S. need a crisis exit ramp
At the link is my latest take on the crisis between the United States and Iran and what could be done to alleviate it. It is on the CNN Opinion page. It concludes:
U.S. policy has been one of pressure leading to negotiations. Iran has also pursued a dual-track policy of threats combined with offers of negotiation. These policies have resulted in the prospect of a war that would be disastrous to all. What we need right now is a crisis exit ramp. Perhaps this is the moment to explore the negotiating track that both sides say they prefer.
I tend to agree with almost anything Sick has to say on Iran, but this piece has left me puzzled. First, it amounts to yet another voice in the chorus that purports to be asking for “both sides” to step back from the precipice of conflict when it fact its prescriptions only concern the US. Now I’d be the last person to defend American foreign policy objectives, but surely the current standoff is largely do to the belligerence of the Islamic Republic for refusing to compromise on its enrichment activities. I’ve yet to read an honest, cogent argument taking to task the Iranian leadership for taking their country to the brink of war (just to ensure the survival of the regime). And this brings me to the second problem with this line of argument: whatever happened to understanding the domestic sources of foreign policy? As any good student of international politics would know, domestic politics play an important role in the foreign policy calculus of any state, especially autocratic ones that often find it convenient to combine national and self/regime interests together. At a time when the odious cabal in charge of Iran are literally raping and pillaging the human and natural resources of their country in the service of misbegotten interests, surely Iran watchers can muster the courage to step outside of their stereotypical roles and put forward a script more amenable to the interests of the Iranian people. Avoiding war is certainly the foremost objective; but it can be put with a hell of a lot more balance and sincerity than simply asking the US to back off.
