Day one at the Brussels Forum
My observations and reportage from the first day of the 2009 Brussels Forum: The day starts with me being seated next to the CEO of The Elders. In a display of profound cowardice discretion on my part, I choose not to mention this blog post at all. The session opens with German Marshall Fund president ...
My observations and reportage from the first day of the 2009 Brussels Forum:
My observations and reportage from the first day of the 2009 Brussels Forum:
- The day starts with me being seated next to the CEO of The Elders. In a display of profound
cowardicediscretion on my part, I choose not to mention this blog post at all. - The session opens with German Marshall Fund president Craig Kennedy thanking the myriad donors — Fortis, Daimler, the Belgian government, the Latvian defense ministry, etc. I think to myself, "how many of these institutions will not go bankrupt this year?"
- The first session featured Bob Kagan, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Carl Bildt, and Mark Malloch Brown, moderated by the BBC’s Nik Gowing. The most revealing thing said during the session was when Kagan confessed, "I don’t understand anything that is going on in the economy." This is a big problem with foreign policy wonks — to many of them know too little about economics (this explains my man-crush on Bob Zoellick, by the way). Props to Kagan for at least admitting this fact.
- The second most revealing thing about the session was when Gowing offered John McCain a chance to say something/ask a question from the audience, and he passed. What a difference a year makes.
- Beyond that, there was mostly a lot of sniping between Slaughter and Kagan. Slaughter is still moving down the learning curve on speaking in sound bites — at one point she said "Europe has a plural head, but still one head." Kagan has done this many times before, and was therefore a bit sharper. On the other hand, he did not like being pushed into such an oppositionalist position by Gowing. Afterwards he lamented, "I’m don’t want to be the Simon Cowell. I Why can’t I be Paula Abdul!"
- Senator Bob Casey (D, PA) then gave a very long-winded introduction of the congressional delegation. This was boring, except for the fact that Casey forgot to introduce McCain. Again, what a difference a year makes.
- European Commission president Jose Manuel Barrosso was next on the docket. He tried his best to argue that the EU was doing its part on fiscal expansion, that the just-concluded EU summit was a success, and that the transatlantic partnership was never better. It was, in other words, pretty boiler plate. Later in the evening, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek undercut each of Barrosso’s talking points. He described the same EU meeting as "difficult," and challenged the EU to "speak less and participate more." Topolanek then declared that, the "Eurocentric days are over" for the United States.
That’s all for now.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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