Nathan Gardels: Davos Forum Confirms Powershift Away from US

The Huffington Post

This year's theme of a powershift completes a cycle that began in 2000 at the high moment of American triumphalism, before the dot.com bust and 9/11. For the first time in its history, an American president, Bill Clinton, addressed the WEF, descending on Davos, helicopters arroar and loudly echoing across the pristine ski valley, with practically the entire American cabinet in tow. I wrote then that "paradoxically, Clinton's presence codified the triumph of the American challenge the WEF was founded to resist." It was paradoxical because this annual gathering two hours up the mountain from Zurich had first been organized 30 years earlier under the name "European Management Seminar" as a way for Europe's business leaders to come together and figure out how to respond to what French author Jean -Jacques Servan Schreiber had called "the American challenge."

I wrote then, not wrongly but now far less true, that "clearly, globalization is an American-led phenomenon. Those gathered in Davos were in awe of a US economy in the midst of its longest expansion in history with full employment and low inflation thanks in good part to freer trade and advances in information technology.

"Industrial titans from Europe and Asia sat gaping as Microsoft's Bill Gates, AOL's Steve Case and Viacom's Sumner Redstone offered their version of how to make billions in the new economy. Sessions on the other great revolution underway in genetics were also dominated by Americans, from the scientists to the regulators.

"From so high up in the Alps you can see clearly all the way to the future. And the future, if this year's Davos meeting was any indication, will be undeniably American."

In the intervening years, Bush's unilateralism, the war in Iraq, the torture at Abu Ghraib, the warrantless wiretaps, the revelation of racism and inequality after Katrina and the aggressive religious right have all tarnished America's luster.

Bush wanted America to rule the world, but was too unaware of international relations to know that we already did. Then he went in a screwed it up to the point that it will take generations for America to recover, if we ever do.

Way to go, George.