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America's role in the world

Looking at things "on balance" ...

Framing an understanding of America's role in the world today

by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Society Issues Analyst
[3-29-03]

Gene TeSelle would welcome comments about this essay, which he has prepared for the next issue of Witherspoon Society's Network News.
Please send a note with your thoughts.

 

Richard John Neuhaus wrote, back in 1985, "On the balance and considering the alternatives, the influence of the United States is a force for good in the world."

Neuhaus may be, "on balance," right. We can all think of ways the U.S. has been a force for good, a model of democratic institutions and civil rights and legal due process, a source of food and economic aid, a rescuer when there is natural disaster or war. It would be nice to puff out our chests and pull ourselves up high in a fit of patriotism.

But it's that "on balance" that bothers me. The balance can tip at just a little over 50%. Even something healthy may have cancer on the inside or be a "Typhoid Mary" spreading disease to others. When you begin to think about it, you see more and more ways the U.S. is not a "force for good in the world."

Recent debates around the military buildup to attack Iraq have brought a number of ironies to light.

bulletThe Bush administration's unilateralist posture has alarmed many people. The Clinton administration was bad enough, dragging its feet on environmental agreements and refusing to sign the treaty establishing an International Court of Justice. But the Bush II administration has been far more arrogant, thumbing its nose at the international community in many ways, withdrawing from five treaties and refusing to sign new ones. The attitude is that "the ruler is above the law," that the one who makes the law does not have to obey it.

The record of the U.S. is mixed at best when it comes to supporting human rights and democratic institutions. In our own hemisphere we cannot help but be aware of U.S. sponsorship or approval of coups in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, where democratically elected governments were replaced with military dictatorships supported by the U.S. and whose human rights violations are still being covered up with the aid of the U.S. government. Expressions of concern for atrocities in countries like Iraq and North Korea look hypocritical in light of the see-no-evil approach toward other countries.

bulletOur massive military budget has flourished at the expense of medical care, education, and nutrition both at home and abroad. Promises of having guns and butter has always turned out to be false. The result of military preparation and military intervention turns out, all too often, to be an increase in human misery.
 
bulletIt was the U.S., ironically, that funded and armed the Islamic extremists who formed the core of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization that has the U.S. in its sights, and other Islamic extremists who are creating problems in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Northern Africa. The strategy planners in the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, in order to cause trouble for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, calculated that religious fanatics would make the best fighters. The result was that the U.S. triggered the first militant jihad in hundreds of years. Such heedlessness of consequences may be typical of a country where corporations look ahead only to the next quarterly report and office holders only to the next election.
 
bulletFinally, one cannot help reflecting on the bumper stickers and yard signs that call on us to "Wage Peace." A number of Catholic thinkers have suggested recently that, instead of asking only about what would constitute a "just war," we should ask what might make for a "just peace." As we look at the last few decades, it seems that the U.S. has not contributed very much to justice during peacetime. Instead we have had what goes by the name of "the Washington consensus," the doctrine that the world must be made safe for free trade by multinational corporations.

By approving NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, Congress and the Clinton-Gore administration effected a massive transfer of sovereignty away from the U.S. government, away from states and localities, to shadowy tribunals where corporations can sue for monetary damages if regulations make it more expensive for them to do business. The next stage that the "Washington consensus" has in mind for the world is to do away with all national restrictions on investment (and thus economic control) from abroad; to open up all services, public and private, to international competition; and even to privatize and commodify essential things like water, on the principle that as it becomes scarcer it will be a good "profit center."

Globalization has made the world not safer but more dangerous, doing away with traditional safeguards, putting steadily more economic pressure on everyone from hourly workers to middle managers, and making ordinary people compete with powerful corporations.

When we Americans make claims about our constructive role in the world, we have a responsibility to ask how well-founded those claims are, and even more than that, a responsibility to ask how our role in the world can be improved. We in the U.S. have often operated with a kind of "exceptionalism," asserting that we are "different" from other countries and thus are exempt from the pride and delusion that seem to be displayed so obviously in them.

True patriotism is not blind loyalty to a self-proclaimed leader, nor to an ideology. It is the readiness to examine our assumptions, our behavior, and the consequences of both, then to propose course corrections that will keep our nation faithful to the best in its heritage. Those corrections may be much more demanding than we expect, but if we refuse to consider them we will be turning our backs on all that is good - even great - in that heritage.

Please send a note with your thoughts.
 

Some blogs worth visiting

 

PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

You can post your own news and views, or initiate a conversation about a topic of interest to you.

 

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

After fifteen years of scholarship and activism, Voices of Sophia presents a blog. Here, we present the voices of feminist theologians of all stripes: scholars, clergy, students, exiles, missionaries, workers, thinkers, artists, lovers and devotees, from many parts of the world, all children of the God in whose image women are made. .... This blog seeks to glorify God through prayer, work, art, and intellectual reflection. Through articles and ensuing discussion we hope to become an active and thoughtful community.

 

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

Theological and philosophical reflections on everything between summit to shore, including kayaking, climbing, religion, spirituality, philosophy, theology, politics, culture, travel, The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), New York City and the Queens neighborhood of Ridgewood by a progressive New York City Presbyterian Pastor. John is a former member of the Witherspoon board, and is designated pastor of North Presbyterian Church in Flushing, NY.

 

John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

A Presbyterian minister, currently serving as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, Tenn., blogs about spirituality, culture, religion (both organized and disorganized), life, evolution, literature, Jesus, and lightening up.

 

Got more blogs to recommend?

Please send a note, and we'll see what we can do!

 

Plan now for our 2010 Ghost Ranch Seminar!

GHOST RANCH SEMINAR

July 26-August 1, 2010

WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
CONFRONTING THE STRUCTURES OF INJUSTICE

 

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