The Making Of An American World – OpEd
This is an essay calling for global political reform and best practices in the area of promoting human rights and establishing a lasting peace among diverse cultures and civilizations while at the same time supporting state sovereignty. It is about supporting and empowering the people of the globe and is directed at US policy makers in order to establish a long standing and respectable grand strategy of US foreign policy. Some of the suggestions will be well received and others will be highly provocative. The purpose is to generate new thought along the lines of peaceful long term international political stability.
Globalism, the National Interest and the Declining Hyperpower
The United States finds itself adopting a dualistic strategy of an American style globalization. The first is full force nationalism: America is the military adventurer and the Pentagon leads foreign policy with national security at the top. The second is the fall of empire: the fearful realization that the US is declining in power with threats on every side and where globalist infrastructure and international support is seen as necessary to hold on.
Americanization and globalization are false opposites and they are also incompatible policies. Americanization is the policy enforcement of utilizing America’s position as sole hyperpower to advance its own ideologies and interests: to imprint itself on others. In contrast, globalization is an international trend, not a fixable policy outlook. Only the most powerful actors have strong influence in globalization and the bedrock principles are nested in the global financial sector, engineered to benefit the wealthy.
Americanism’s core principles are based on its political innovations, identity and infrastructure. Where the end state of globalization is a borderless international world where state sovereignty is diminished and laws rise in the favor of the most powerful players, the end state of Americanism is an increased sphere of political influence, having altered the world in its image and favor where states and other actors become “American global citizens;” they retain the rights and privileges within their own sovereign nations.
Technically, Americanism is not political imperialism because the objective is to “free” the peoples from current oppression and not to exploit them politically. The reform of government will also ultimately be responsible to them. Where globalization favors the rich and powerful, Americanization favors the free and the individual.
Contrary to popular belief, globalization is not a tractable process that America can manipulate to its advantage. Already the beginning of an Eastern driven globalism, the backlash in South America, the Middle East and in Africa, all offer an unsteady political and economic future.
Globalism offers no unique ideals as to counter alarming authoritarian tendencies. Many of the members that belong to the UN and key international institutions involved are in fact paper democracies, pseudo-republics, and de facto constitutionless states. The growing trend of state politics is currently engineered toward maintaining the deception of democratic reform while raking up the financial benefits among the elites.
By focusing on the global financial system, globalization extends a free hand to tyrants and demagogues, proclaiming an “open sesame” policy as a magical solution to every liberal reform. Therefore it is either deceptively foolish as a state policy or deceptively naïve to the real threat of international political stability which is currently witnessing a tremendous decline in democracies and human rights.
Americanism is an Alternative to Global Political Collapse
The US presently faces a greater threat than communism or terrorism. Authoritarianism and failing democracies threaten global collapse and the remaking of a New World Order under non-Western oppressive powers.
The US cannot wait for its politically ideological enemies to implode, like it did with the Soviet Union. It cannot hide behind the Pentagon to protect it from Islamic extremism or the end of democratic hope. America must learn to target the whole ideology of authoritarianism, in all its forms, replacing it with something else. To do this it will need to start infiltrating and assimilating the major international actors involved.
The American advocacy of globalization is mostly economic. The US wants profits more than democracy. It is politically interested in a democratic world only in sound bites or removed objective. This is unfortunate because it is still the only international actor with the political ideology, know-how and position that can successfully influence a positive political international outcome. As its position slowly diminishes, it loses the world to other states adopting oppressive models.
The promise of Americanism is not in its military or its economy but in its inherent ideological nature to oppose tyranny. No other nation has proven itself time after time in confronting belligerent political systems or installing democratic ones. This does not make it morally superior, but it does demonstrate that Americans have the will to stand up to oppressive systems of governments, as well as the political identity to supplant them.
Strategic Solutions for Global Americanization
Fail to Be the Hypocrite. Lead the fight against authoritarianism not from principle alone but from full effort and example. Halt all large overt military operations immediately. Transition from current bombardment tactics and economic prerogatives to peaceful, subtle forms of political assimilation.
Supportive Role for the Defense Department. Transition from the Pentagon foreign policy planning and leadership to greater clandestine intelligence and special operations following the Department of State. Continue RMA and streamlining unnecessarily large “standing” or “deployed” conventional forces. Maintain high Army and Marine Corps reserve components.
Give Up de facto Occupations and Territories. Lose Puerto Rico, Guam, The Mariana’s and other populated lands. Establish mutual military defense treaties and retreat from large scale occupations and interventions.
Create a Nation of Sanctuary in the American Image. Will be needed after wars and during serious diplomatic efforts of lasting commitment. Could use one of the territories or islands in possession. Sponsor aid for political refugees from wars, orphans, and the politically oppressed. Educate and teach them Americanism, and then send them back to their own nations or regions, if they so choose, to help their peoples decades later as “born again” American global citizens.
Close Down Guantanamo Detention Facility. Relocate the most dangerous prisoners to a joint international prison run by Afghanistan coalition forces with US oversight. Put them on some unpopulated island somewhere and have international human rights groups establish that they are treated well. This ends the diplomacy scar and lowers the price tag and focus on the USA.
The Benign Patron of States. The world looks to the United States for all the wrong reasons; chiefly money, might and military. Convince them that the “pure” path is in correct political reform, which will lead to all other advantages. America must take on the exemplary role again with a fresh new image as the saintly wise actor among states.
Restore Charitable Legitimacy. Champion sincere generosity. Promote and provide special aid and programs conducive to these ends of government reform but let non-governmental American charities take the lead.
Advocate Greater “Fair” Trading Practices and Principles. True liberty cannot be purchased, it can only be realized. Penetrate the minds, not the markets. Opening or free markets must be the advantage to a state’s respective internal economy, but not at the expense of the people’s freedom or wellbeing.
Strengthen Emergency Humanitarian Operations and Assistance. US military power will be required in preventing human rights atrocities in future wars. There must be a threshold using any military force as an option. Consider the civilian privateers or the possibility of an American peace-keeping force as separate from a military defending the homeland. Continue using US military to provide security in where American civilian humanitarian programs and emergency relief missions are involved.
Large Scale Reformation of State Department. The Department of State (Dos) must become the powerful and influential foreign affairs organization on the planet. Increase priority, prestige, and presence to revolutionary levels. Triple the size, at least, to handle the diplomatic mission.
Keeping Americans Safe Abroad. With DoS at three times the capacity, it can now engage in 24 hour consular operations service for American citizens, organizations and businesses overseas.
Stronger Hiring Practices and Better Officers Training. Lower testing criteria and raise entrance requirements for Foreign Service Officers (FSOs). Create testing in-house and train officers 7 months, not 7 weeks; including basic and specialty training. More senior and mid-level education requirements and intra-agency opportunities.
Large-Scale VIP Public Diplomacy Initiative. Take in highly experienced, influential, outsiders and director level government retirees. These “roving diplomats” will be “direct commission” FSO appointments, representing critical needs or special positions in a given field. They will set up foundational political networks and programs of Americanism abroad with influential foreign leaders in all sectors. [This is political assimilation, not cultural, or economic manipulation].
An American Diplomatic Officers Reserves. Similar to the military, these people pass the entrance test and are slotted for the reserves. They keep current jobs in the US and receive continual training and current employment. When called up on assignment, they mobilize and help direct foreign assistance and relief operations. Consists primarily of graduate students, teachers and junior professionals.
Unlimited Scholarships and Internships. Student internships must never again become closed. In return for graduate and professional scholarships, one must serve as as an “active” FSO for four years. This ensures candidates from diverse fields are represented at DoS.
Human Capital Program. Unemployed junior professionals volunteer to help fill the rising gap in human capital flight of another state. Also acts as a relief valve to rising unemployment in the US. The DoS pays nothing but initial training and discounted transportation. Young US citizens get job experience and language ability, as well as help fill a nation’s critical labor needs (i.e. doctors, lawyers, engineers). Paid the local wage doing both countries a favor by advancing American political objectives, they come back to the US better equipped and not interfering with the in-country human capital because there is a major deficit.
Redouble “Intelligent” Information Programs. The DoS must learn to market the USA through innovation and well-coordinated strategy. Enhance honest media programming, larger internet presence; more private participation with radio stations, channels, publishers, musicians, artists, and social media.
Diplomatic Villages. Transplant micro political towns overseas with innovative facilities to foreign national publics, where permissible. The now antiquated embassy design was intended to be “the” place to conduct political exchanges but has long since breed isolationism. Keep the embassies separate and secure and open diplomatic villages run by senior FSOs on the Public Diplomacy track with retired US city planners.
Become Less Visible. US power should be felt and not seen. It must learn to manipulate a hostile country from within it.
Indirect Methods of Public Diplomacy. Redirect the intelligence community to Americanization and the usage of massive [black] propaganda (i.e. information operations deniable to American sponsorship). Wage massive long-term covert strategic, regional and key state ideological warfare appropriate for each situation.
Increase Secret Smart Power. Intelligence agencies must also conduct subversive operations when the DoS is blocked from access to a country’s leadership, or the people through normal diplomatic channels; especially when the states are run by highly established brutal regimes. In most situations, creating front organizations, political action, and grassroots recruitment efforts will be sufficient for covert public intelligence operations. This takes tremendous time, planning and resources, including consistent full backing of D.C. and a unified foreign policy objective. In emergency situations with widespread atrocities, inciting a large political resistance movement or a revolution might be authorized. The latter being the exception, not the rule.
Suggesting a “Benign American Conversion Policy”
Realizing that America’s political and international paragon was obtained far less by warfare and conquest and more through the benign application of principled civilized reason and the results of assimilation, opportunity, and the American entrepreneurial spirit; recognizing that Americans are a nation of “builders” and “pioneers;” and understanding that Americanism offers no sanctuary for war lords or warriors contrary to its peaceful progressive development; not concerned with occupations, territories, trade or wealth but the opportunity to build a future of genuine international promise; through such ends, the primary focus of the US foreign policy shall be political conversion.
Americanization is not the occupation and takeover of an actor’s: culture, tradition, markets, history, or autonomy. The mission involves empowering the people of the world everywhere against oppression, intolerance and abuses, and towards the blessings of liberty, human rights and the American political dream. This is to be accomplished as originally intended, with the powerful words of diplomacy and sound statesmanship. To fail here at this critical moment of American supremacy is to fail achieve the future promise of a peaceful American world.
