Editor’s note: In advance of this week’s fifth annual St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs, several of the experts who will participate have written essays for today’s Perspective about key areas of concern: Russia, Turkey, the European Union and the Mideast, among them.
5 Months Ago
8 Months Ago
7 Months Ago
Frustration has grown with years of political stalemate in Washington. So America elected a political outsider who brazenly calls for America First. President Donald Trump wants to bring back manufacturing jobs and make the Europeans pay for their own defense. The establishment has been dealt a severe blow, and the little guy — not just the American variant — wants results.
Unsure of our nation’s trajectory, we may need some answers, and fast. But tweets are not policy, and a complicated animal like our many-tentacled government needs a road map.
To help understand what in the world is going on, join us this week at the fifth annual St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs. (See box on page 4P for details.)
As demonstrators protest new immigration bans, let’s remember how Congress in 1925 severely restricted southern and eastern Europeans — because they were getting too numerous and didn’t really seem "American." Jews prior to World War II had little hope of making it to New York harbor.
Times are changing. Drive across Florida or go to a building site and you will see, or — actually — hear a new America in the non-English languages being spoken. Go to Walmart and note that the cheapest products are produced in low-wage countries.
Some might recall hearing that "what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." Should we punish big American multinationals who move overseas to produce goods more cheaply? Should we try to thwart the basic economics we learned in school that lower trade barriers and freer movement of labor means cheaper products for everyone?
Calls to take back our country are not unique to the United States. They are heard across the Atlantic. The majority of British voters have directed their government to exit the European Union. The French people may elect Marine Le Pen as their next president. She calls for severe restrictions on immigration and breaking out of regulatory regimes written in Brussels.
The left-wing populist Podemos Party in Spain and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement in Italy (co-founded by a comic-turned-politician) want something new and less complicated. Meantime, conservative Polish and Hungarian leaders bristle at accepting the more secular mores of their West European partners. All the while, refugee flows snake through the Balkans toward the wealthiest societies of Europe, where (sometimes) jobs await. Is the new normal now the globalists vs. the protectors of national sovereignty?
Is Vladimir Putin really up for a reset of relations with the United States? The last administration tried and it didn’t work. Perhaps we can find common ground with Russia on issues like terrorism, but Moscow does things differently, owing to its very different history. Russian government is non-representative, and when Muslims revolt within their borders, Moscow ruthlessly suppresses them. The economy is a kleptocrat’s dream, operating through informal and non-transparent channels to the advantage of the ruling clique. Russian foreign policy is to crush revolt in Syria, destabilize Ukraine and take back (as they say) the Crimea.
Speaking of the new normal, will our tried and true NATO alliance uphold its treaty obligation to the Baltic states and others to resist Russian aggression? Turkey, a formidable military power within NATO, is moving less toward Europe and more toward the Middle East. Will the most successful military alliance in history implode or recoil in the face of external aggression?
If you trust our intelligence agencies, Russia indirectly intervened in our elections. America and China have the capacity to use their own cyber might to disrupt adversaries. It may not be a problem for authoritarian-controlled societies, but we still-free Yanks want to know what business or what government agency is scooping up our emails, online history and consumer preferences. Privacy and national security need to be carefully balanced. How we receive and evaluate information in the age of "false news" is a conundrum. No more editors, fewer newspapers and lots of Internet trolls and hackers with malevolent agendas.
And the sticky issues that refuse to go away — like Iran and Afghanistan and Syria. Does America have the right or obligation to intervene in cases of gross human rights violations? Self-interest? And what’s the end point? Colin Powell, the secretary of state who coined the Pottery Barn rule — "you break it, you own it" — told us to get in and get out. Overextend in the Middle East and you land smack in the middle of the conflicting interests of friends and foes alike. Since our direct interventions in the region, the agents of religious-based excess and tyrants whose only limitation is a shortage of means to eliminate opposition have savagely dispensed of the Arab Spring. And then there is the only true democracy in the region — Israel — which seems to have given up on negotiation with its unruly neighbors.
So. Let’s throw in the towel and move to Canada, eh? Often our northern neighbors are taken for granted, but they are a major reason we don’t have to worry about our shared border. Increasingly, we ask ourselves how we can be so similar and yet be so different. On the world stage, Canada plays the conciliator and we the protector. Conversely, our neighbor Cuba could not be more radically different. How are we doing after a year of renewed relations?
Just outside the NAFTA trade area is Central America, where countries still get pneumonia when America coughs. Since the convulsive wars of the 1980s, we hope against hope that the Americans retiring down there will find sunnier and more stable climes. But will they? And what do we make of phenomena like the Panamanian law firm of Mossack Fonseca, revealed by the massive leak called the Panama Papers to enable tax avoidance and evasion around the world? Is this an anomaly or accepted means of hiding assets from the taxman?
Farther away, when we hear about distress and chaos in Gambia or South Sudan or Somalia, it seems as though all of Africa is going up in flames. Is there another, more modern Africa that Western news sources don’t care to cover?
Closer to home, at our conference we’ll ask some folks new to our shores how it feels to be an immigrant. And because our own self-worth seems to be so deeply ingrained in our various identities, we’ll talk about politics and different interest groups like LGTBQ, out-of-work coal miners, women and racial and ethnic minorities. There will be educators on hand to talk about how education and ideas flow more freely across national boundaries in the cyber age. Similarly, the art world, once the exclusive bailiwick of booking agents, galleries and museums, has become truly more democratic and multicultural. But is the best of it still the property of the wealthy few?
We live, as the ancient (and probably apocryphal) Chinese curse put it, in interesting times. Come to our conference and serve your interest in these times.
After 34 years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, Douglas McElhaney retired from the State Department in 2007 following three years as U.S. ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina. He lives in St. Petersburg. He wrote this exclusively for the Tampa Bay Times.
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