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A peek inside the world of Davos Man
Book review: Nothing But A Circus: Misadventures Among The PowerfulDaniel Levin gives a good taste of the world of the rich and powerful, says Matthew Partridge.
The annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which took place last week, has become a byword for an out-of-touch global elite. Populists on both the left and the right decry the influence of "Davos Man", the "citizen of nowhere" who is more at ease making plans for global domination over cocktails with his own kind than listening to the concerns of his own countrymen and women.
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But what really goes on behind the closed doors of the gathering? If Daniel Levin is to be believed, the reality is far more banal and farcical than the conspiracy theories would suggest. His book, Nothing But A Circus: Misadventures Among The Powerful, draws on his own career as an international lawyer and entrepreneur in an effort to show the rest of us how global diplomacy works.
The book is more a string of anecdotes than a structured investigation into global politics, but many of the stories are both amusing and telling. In one, the head of a think tank persuades Levin to travel to Dubai in order to meet the country's leader, only to discover that the policy wonk is a compulsive fantasist who ends up being thrown out of the office of one of the Sheikh's right-hand men. In another, Levin is asked to deliver a lecture on basic economics in Africa but finds that nearby stall-holders have a grasp of financial markets that would put a City trader to shame.
However, mixed in with the farce is a pervading sense of creepiness. A Russian opposition leader turns out to have been planted by Putin's regime to give the impression that Russia is more pluralist that it appears. The head of a Chinese company boasts of the thousand-page dossier that he has compiled on Africa's countries and its leaders, including how best to blackmail them.
Western economies do not emerge as completely spotless either: a US State Department official admits to Levin that companies requiring assistance are expected to donate money to the Secretary of State's private foundation (although not explicitly stated, this is presumably the Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organisation founded by Bill Clinton that was a major source of controversy during the US presidential election).
Levin comes across as a pricklycharacter and some of his policy suggestions, such as America currying favour with China by abandoning Japan and forcing Taiwan to reunify with the People's Republic, are firmly outside the diplomatic mainstream. So it is not surprising that many of his adventures end in failure. Nonetheless, the book gives a good taste of the world he works in, while implicitly making the case for radical reform of bodies such as the United Nations and the African Development Bank.
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