What a difference eight years can make
I spoke with Ian Buruma, noted Dutch author, this morning about what he's been seeing in Davos. Buruma first attended the conference in 2000 and hasn't been back since, so he had an interesting perspective, eight years later, on how the discussion there had been completely upended: It's my second time, and it's the complete ...
I spoke with Ian Buruma, noted Dutch author, this morning about what he's been seeing in Davos. Buruma first attended the conference in 2000 and hasn't been back since, so he had an interesting perspective, eight years later, on how the discussion there had been completely upended:
I spoke with Ian Buruma, noted Dutch author, this morning about what he's been seeing in Davos. Buruma first attended the conference in 2000 and hasn't been back since, so he had an interesting perspective, eight years later, on how the discussion there had been completely upended:
It's my second time, and it's the complete opposite of the first time, which shows you how perceptions and moods can change. The first time was in 2000, and the mood of the conference then was that the United States was so far ahead of the rest of the world that nobody would ever catch up again, because it was the height of the high-tech boom and all that. And now it's the sort of the opposite, and the U.S. is kind of humble and clearly desperate for money from the Arabs and the Chinese and so on forth… Condi Rice talking about mistakes having been made.
What everybody's talking about in the halls, of course, is the economic crisis. And one of the subthemes is that the West and the U.S. in particular needs to be propped up more and more money from countries that are not democratic. And so the discussion is what the consequences of that are. One of the answers has been that the Gulf States and China and so on should be pressed for more transparency in their financial transactions.
So, just as the dominance of the U.S. was a given in 2000, the so-called shift in power from the Atlantic world led by the United States to a very new world seems to be the received opinion now.
Buruma's observation is a poignant reminder that recent news events have a way of distorting our perceptions. We humans have a tendency to make straight-line projections into the future, assuming that the trends we see today will continue inexorably tomorrow. Perhaps eight years from now, the Davoisie will be dissecting the reasons why China and India crashed and burned and Africa became the new global economic powerhouse. (OK, that may be a little far-fetched.)
Buruma also noted that one big name in particular has been a no-show this year:
The name Bush has been barely mentioned by anybody. It's like he's a complete irrelevancy.
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