{"id":11161,"date":"2018-01-26T02:17:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T02:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=11161"},"modified":"2018-01-27T02:22:16","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T02:22:16","slug":"what-trumps-every-country-for-itself-rhetoric-gets-wrong-about-davos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-trumps-every-country-for-itself-rhetoric-gets-wrong-about-davos\/","title":{"rendered":"What Trump\u2019s every-country-for-itself rhetoric gets wrong about Davos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen D. Smith<\/a>, University of Southern California<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a disarming and almost touchingly naive belief among the presenters and the government delegations in the cloistered mountain village of Davos that \u201ccreating a shared future in a fractured world<\/a>\u201d \u2013 the title of this year\u2019s World Economic Forum \u2013 is actually possible. <\/p>\n

To the outside world, the panels and speeches fleetingly catch the news cycle, doing little to alter the perception that it\u2019s just a gathering of elites and billionaires<\/a>. But inside the forum, political leaders mingle with entrepreneurs, scientists and humanists. It\u2019s a menagerie of power, money, brains and innovative thinking mainly, though not exclusively, being channeled toward social good<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So what happens when the \u201cleader of the free world<\/a>\u201d walks into the room and promotes a form of isolationism as his recommended method for creating that shared future?<\/p>\n

Universal values meets \u2018America First\u2019<\/h2>\n

Like Trump, this year was my first at Davos. But my reason for being there was markedly different. <\/p>\n

As the director of the University of Southern California\u2019s Shoah Foundation, I was invited to present \u201cnew dimensions in testimony<\/a>,\u201d a collaborative project that aims to bring the stories of Holocaust and other genocide survivors to three-dimensional life by using articial intelligence to simulate a conversation.<\/p>\n

On a typical day teaching on Holocaust and genocide<\/a>, I would never have the chance to speak with Iraqi clerics or Saudi journalists. The distance is just too great physically, intellectually and emotionally. <\/p>\n

Not so at Davos. In the last few days, for example, I have had detailed conversations with members of the United Arab Emirates government who agreed that Holocaust testimony could be used to teach universal human values at home. Davos allows such boundaries to be crossed.<\/p>\n

Enter Donald Trump, the \u201cAmerica First<\/a>\u201d president whose rhetorical track record at first glance seems at odds with the Davos globalists. In a keynote address<\/a> on Jan. 26, Trump chose his words carefully and stuck to the script, ostensibly encouraging collaboration.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether let us resolve to use our power, our resources and our voices, not just for ourselves but for our people, to lift their burdens, to raise their hopes and to empower their dreams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trump described himself as America\u2019s \u201ccheerleader,\u201d but the effect was more salesman, as he anchored his speech in the revival of the American economy<\/a>, reassuring investors that their money is safe with him.<\/p>\n

While Trump\u2019s critics<\/a> saw his speech as out of touch, the globalist gathering at Davos is known for embracing a broad spectrum of political, social and fiscal perspectives. It could be argued that Trump\u2019s rumbustious isolationist rhetoric adds a healthy disruption to the remarkably polite company at Davos, but it is also a fact that the United States is by no means the only power here, a point not lost on the Davos die-hards<\/a>. <\/p>\n

An invitation to isolation<\/h2>\n

More to the point, it was not what he did say but what he did not that was so at odds with the tenor of the forum. <\/p>\n

Trump focused on the fiscal performance of his country but said nothing about the shared global values at the heart of this year\u2019s forum. Trump\u2019s thesis is that if every country looks after its own interests, then ultimately common outcomes will prevail. This flies in the face of the hard work leaders in government, business, academia and others have put in at Davos this year to create multilateral agreements on key issues of global security, such as international efforts to tackle climate change<\/a>. <\/p>\n

While most leaders who attend also speak to their own country\u2019s interests, only Trump promoted a \u201cmy country first\u201d brand of isolationism. <\/p>\n

Even his invitation for delegates to visit America, as generous as it sounds, is disingenuous, as some \u2013 such as the delegates from Chad and Iran I have been working with this week \u2013 cannot get visas because of his travel ban<\/a>. Trump\u2019s insistence that \u201cputting America first\u201d is his duty as president \u2013 just as other heads of state must do so in their own countries \u2013 ignores the many political leaders at Davos, such as France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron<\/a> or Germany\u2019s Angela Merkel<\/a>, who were genuinely trying to find shared interests at the forum. <\/p>\n

Trump and even a few of the Davos delegates may believe that his administration\u2019s policies, such as corporate tax cuts, deregulation and increased military spending, do in fact create the \u201cshared future\u201d promoted by the forum. The reality is doing so requires a less self-interested strategy, one that doesn\u2019t put \u201cAmerica first.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, his claim that \u201cAmerica First does not mean America alone\u201d rings hollow.<\/p>\n

Rather, the goal of a shared future was being met elsewhere at Davos, such as in a conversation I had with Salih Al-Hakeem, a cleric and director of the Hikmeh Center for Dialogue and Cooperation in Iraq<\/a>, who lost his entire family during the Saddam Hussein regime. I watched Al-Hakeem as he listened to the interactive testimony of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter<\/a> describing the destruction of his family by the Nazis. <\/p>\n

After interacting with the holographic Gutter, he invited the real one to visit Iraq to tell his story to Muslims there. Al-Hakeem then turned to me and said, \u201cWhen he speaks about the Holocaust he speaks for all of us.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TheThat for me is the Davos not seen in the glare of the cameras. Call me naive, but it just might help create a more shared future in an otherwise fractured world.<\/p>\n

Stephen D. Smith<\/a>, Director of Shoah Foundation, University of Southern California<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen D. Smith, University of Southern California There is a disarming and almost touchingly naive belief among the presenters and the government delegations in the cloistered mountain village of Davos that \u201ccreating a shared future in a fractured world\u201d \u2013 the title of this year\u2019s World Economic Forum \u2013 is actually possible. To the outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[826],"tags":[1354,1887,3920,3919,1602],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11163,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11161\/revisions\/11163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}