Originally published on the CGS blog on May 4, 2015.
The drama over a nuclear control deal with Iran displays the United States as a global visionary. We seek to bring a proud, powerful, and estranged nation back into the wider global community. At the same time, we would reduce the risks of nuclear war by imposing tight controls on bomb-making technologies.
Some allies are horrified. Many conservative legislators are rebellious. Some intelligent commentators seem so mired in regional rivalry issues that they miss the broader (and even the regional) benefits of opening up the region to more peaceful trade and political interaction.
The initial American opposition to the Chinese-sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and our exclusion of China from our proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would put us in the position of acting as a conservative empire protector. That role would have us so concerned with maintaining Western internationalist-oriented global political and economic structures that we risk failing to accommodate the rise of governments having over two billion citizens (including China and India, as well as other BRIC countries).
Fortunately, President Obama has reportedly backed off opposition to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The architecture of TPP remains the same.
How multipolar will the world will be? How do we craft over time a globalization that allows for some economic and cultural competition while maintaining a sustainable and productive over-arching framework? I have addressed some of those requirements in a posting on the International Affairs Forum. A useful analysis is Power Shifts and New Blocs in the Global Trading System, published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies. We need to see where the world is going and needs to go if we are to maintain a leadership role in it. It is not clear that we do or will.
In first example above, I laud the current Presidency and chide much of Congress. In the other two, the President is making progress in the right direction, but the evidence of parochial constraints is clear, and Congress expresses much of that parochialism.
One of the glories of democracy is also sometimes acutely embarrassing. Democracy gives political expression to a wide spectrum of the public. Some of that expression reflects intensely local, limited, and faction-oriented viewpoints – for example, denying climate change or asserting that there are no norms in international relations (as John Bolton has on his bad days).
What is the remedy? You.
You can, for example, support Citizens for Global Solutions through donations, online interaction, or volunteering. The larger task is to pursue the continuing education of yourselves, your fellow citizens, our offspring in coming generations—and the people we put in office.
Academic degrees are not enough. Senators Cotton and Cruz, graduates of top-ranked colleges, seem to have a limited grasp of how a global society works. Perhaps their constituents haven’t figured that out yet.
Much of this is local work. You help shape the curricula of our public and private educational institutions. You participate in electing public officials. CGS can keep you updated on needed actions and key issues in international affairs. CGS can also play a role in identifying and trying to help you support candidates for public office who seem to be capable of thinking clearly in a global framework.
CGS members need to keep their feet on the local ground and their eyes on the challenging heights before us. So do our elected representatives.
