Final events, thoughts and twists

Now on the flight to Amsterdam and Davos continues on. Across the aisle from me is Dr Kumi Naidoo who is the Secretary General of CIVICUS (World Alliance for Citizen Participation) and was on the governance panel yesterday. He gently but effectively challenged Bob Zoelleck and Pascal Lamy on the role of citizens in the processes of the World Bank and WTO. Not surprisingly he strongly supported the young man who argued for the new technology of network participation. Having begun as a supporter of Hillary and FOB he was now very enthusiastic about Obama…arguing that he could inspire not only America but the world as well.

This morning was the closing session with a few memorable moments. Tony Blair agreed that a peace deal in the Middle East was possible this year, but he explained that he come to learn a different perspective on the barriers to a deal since leaving office. He argued that the leadership on both sides, Israel and Hamas are willing to go for a deal, but the “facts on the ground are stopping it.’ Those facts are that the Israeli’s still feel insecure and the Palestinians feel occupied and oppressed. Until those conditions change no meaningful and durable deal is possible. An important insight I think. Elie Weisel agreed and was slightly more positive mainly because both sides are very exhausted from conflict. He also went after the Chinese representative, the CEO of China Telecom to prevail on his government to let the Dali Lama back into Tibet…a moment of fairly high drama. (I did have a private personal conversation with Eli afterwards..a remarkable man).

Jamie Diman CEO of JP Morgan Stanley and the other business types all saw a downturn in the short run, a US recession and somewhat slower growth in China and India, but no global catastrophe.

At the airport lounge there were also interesting conversations as often happens. Joe Joffe, the editor of Die Zeit talked about the absence of the Americans and he observed, no Germans either…not a cabinet minister from Germany had shown up. He put much of both the US and German presence as arising mainly from important local elections in Germany and the Presidential election in the US. Though he did support the notion that the Bush administration had pretty much marginalized the US on the world stage.

Looking back I notice that there were no dramatic speeches this year. Gordon Brown, the French, Japanese Prime Ministers, Condi Rice, Mushareff, etc…all gave forgettable speeches. There was a lot of recommitting to Millenium goals, dealing with climate change, etc but none of it seemed particularly real. Much more real concern about the global economy and in the absence of US consumption driving global demand whether China and India would also take a dive. While the theme of the meeting was collaboration I come away with a sense that collaboration was not on the minds of most of the political leaders there. And business leaders were very cautious as well. No one was really pessimistic, except George Soros. Only the prospects for clean energy created a sense of excitement about the future. Science and technology did feature much more strongly than it had in the past few years with a great deal of interest in nearly all the areas of advance. Though University Presidents were not quite rock stars they were last year. Probably the biggest hit of the week was Al Gore who was quite visible this year and much admired.


And two final Davos twists. It is now Monday morning and I have just had coffee with Victor Halberstadt at his spectacular home overlooking the Amstel. Victor, one of the Davosians of very long standing had as always several interesting observations on Davos. First, that while there was a lot of talk of climate change and many calls for action, in his view it was not actually high on the agenda for most companies, especially outside the US. Mostly PR talk and little action. Second he shared with Martin Wolf the observation that the rise of state capitalism ala China, Russia, the Middle East and even Singapore may indeed be a fundamental shift away from the democratic capitalism of the Anglo-Saxon world. And the principle vehicles are the sovereign funds and the terms of trade. Third Victor saw the Asians as no longer particularly interested in what the Europeans think. Indeed the European presence was lighter than usual. In other words Victor saw for Europe some of what I had seen for the US, increasing marginalization and a shift toward Asia. Though. Victor had recently returned from an extended stay in India and become quite concerned at the internal stresses in the country. It is not that India will literally come apart, but that the political energy required to hold it together will absorb all their political capacity and leave them as weak allies and less dynamic than they might have been.

And the final Davos twist is that Victor ran into Tom Friedman on the plane to Amsterdam and it turns out that we will all be in The Hague this evening. (I have to give a speech there tomorrow and Tom is researching his next book on energy and the environment) So we will all have dinner this evening with a few people that Victor is organizing. Davos has its ripples.

Well that is probably all for this year. Unless there are some other interesting ripples that are worth noting….