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GILLES LEIMDORFER/RAPHO for TIME
FACE OFF: Protesters outside the WEF meeting in Davos
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Doubts At Davos |
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At this year's World Economic Forum meeting, misgivings about America are the talk of the town
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By MICHAEL ELLIOTT/Davos |
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Posted Sunday, Jan. 26, 2003; 2.22 p.m. GMT
Pity Richard Haass. For the first two days of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department wandered around the conference like a walking sideshow in a circus; wherever he was, people lined up to throw verbal beanbags at him. By the end of Friday, Haass could at least look forward to the arrival in town of a bigger target — his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell — and the certainty that the bashing of any member of the American Administration who braved the snowy streets would continue.
Whatever the text was meant to be of Davos sessions this year, the subtext was clear: the U.S. isn't trusted. Indeed, a poll commissioned by the WEF in 15 countries, released earlier this month, found that American political leaders are less trusted not just than those of any other nation, but even less than the bosses of multinational corporations, who are supposed to be the favorite whipping boys of our time.
To an extent, this is neither new nor surprising. Despite the influx of American CEOs and political leaders in the last few years, Davos remains at heart a non-American event — that's why some of us like it so much — full of worthies from the developing world and European business leaders. Peter Foges, a filmmaker from New York, once described the conference as "one great adult education class for the Mittelstand," as good a description of the long weekend of seminars and skiing as you'll get.
To be sure, there have been exceptions to the rule that Americans don't go down well in Davos. Bill Clinton, Europe's favorite American President, was received rapturously here in 2000. But when representatives of the hegemony brave an audience made up of those who are jealous, resentful, incensed or just awestruck at the reach of American power, they should not be taken aback if — like a Roman senator braving the groundlings in the forum — they occasionally get ordure hurled their way.
Still, as old hands gathered at the traditional parties, there was a consensus that nobody could remember a time when the criticism of American policy had been so loud and sustained. The tone was set at the very opening of the conference, when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said: "You cannot trust someone who says [he] will go along with other people, but if they don't want to follow, [he] will go on [his] own." And that, of course, was a message in easily deciphered code that U.S. determination to disarm Iraq, with or without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, was deeply unpopular. "The alienating thing is Bush's rhetoric," says Jusuf Wanandi, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Indonesia. "His words are awful and alienating. He is courting disaster and damaging America's reputation."
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