newzealandinc.com Informed. Influential. Indispensable.
“You are not the first people to walk this earth,” that’s how Pulitzer Prize winning author David Hackett Fischer yesterday dealt with (note not ‘dealt to’) clear impatience by some Future Partners’ to have a bigger role in the actions that will determine our combined futures.
“You can learn from experienced people as we learn from the experience of the US and NZ.”
To which I say, ‘Amen’.
Fischer’s book ‘Fairness and Freedom’ – a history of two open societies New Zealand and the United States – looks a bit heavy-going to easily digest during our forthcoming island-hopping trip back to New Zealand later this week.
But he raises an interesting point.
NZ media zeroed in on Jim Bolger for harking back to the 1980s Anzus rift during his opening address at the forum. A few said it was dischordant. A young American said she wasn’t even born when the 1980s fracture occurred. But it is clear there is still huge respect in DC for the early role Bolger played in trying to get bilateral relations normalized during the Clinton era – something that was commented on today by Stan Roth, a former US Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs now VP International Government Relations for Boeing.
US Ambassador David Huebner (Does this diplomat have any friends over 30?) was rather off-key with a potshot suggesting paramedics needed to be on standby to cater for older members who might have found the addition of “future partners” all too much. We all get who you mean, David.
The Future Partners asked plenty of questions. It is important that they become exposed to the big issues affecting the ‘now’ and the ‘future’.
But the event could usefully be improved by including more middle-career participants who are ‘half a click’ away from being the key decision-makers in their organizations.
The forum itself is probably too large to accommodate the kind of truly gritty dialogue where participants don’t just
ask questions from the floor but also make observations which they cannot do without running Chatham House rules. It notable that key US players who stayed the course during earlier forums have not done so this time round.