April's G-20 meeting provided the perfect opportunity to test Asinus' farmyard theory of geopolitics, described in my last instalment. The theory is holding up, but the cast list of donkeys and chickens must be augmented by tantrum-prone infants. As background, Asinus knows of one small child who refused to share a banana with his friend until an insightful adult thought to slice it length-ways, rather than cross-ways. Immediately the child was satisfied, having had an unspoken need for his banana to be banana-shaped.rnThis true parable illuminates the G-20 spat between France and China over a list of tax havens named and shamed by the OECD. Rather than 'endorse' the list, as desired by France but opposed by non-OECD China, or ignore it as irrelevant to the immediate crisis, a course unacceptable to France, President Obama got the parties to agree that the G-20 would 'take note' of the list. Asinus believes this to be fully the second most creative act of banana-slicing in all his diplomatic experience.
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