Davos Newbies

There’s an odd hiatus at the World Economic Forum. Davos is over (but we are still both generating and reading post-Davos thank you letters). The spring regional meetings of the Forum are just beginning to pick up steam (China, which opens on 16 April in Beijing, is the first). So it’s a time for more long-range, strategic thinking and, for many, some holiday time.

Among the issues I’m wrestling with is how soon is realistic to begin filling in the blanks for Davos 2001. We hold our Davos Global Issues Group brainstorming every spring, usually in April. We may need to move it ahead a few weeks this year to late March. Have useful ideas started to coalesce at that point? Or are another few weeks necessary for the right seeds to begin germinating?

I’ll keep you informed of the ideas we begin to sniff out as the process for 2001 gathers speed.

The axis

There would have been crowds in the streets of Tehran to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of their revolution without George Bush’s reference to the axis of evil. But the forces in Iran who wish to vilify the US have certainly been strengthened by his rhetoric.

There’s a wide rift of perception between most Europeans and the Bush administration on the nature of Iran. Attempts so far to engage Iran constructively may have been disappointing, but now the hand of the conservative clerics against the generally reformist government has been significantly strengthened.