The home team
THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: August 22, 2004) At July's Democratic National Convention � which the Republicans will counter in New York beginning Aug. 30 � a tantalizing subtext emerged: The diplomatic, French-speaking Sen. John Kerry, and his multilingual wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, would reach out to the world and restore our prestige abroad. Speaker after speaker played variations on that theme, until Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, who presides over a big union state, sounded another note by criticizing the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. In other words, we're for internationalism when we want the French, Germans, Russians etc. to support us (and forgive Iraqi debt). But we're against globalization when it means sending jobs overseas. The Dems aren't alone in delivering mixed signals. In "The Manchurian Candidate," a muddled remake of the taut 1962 thriller, a Hillary-esque senator (Meryl Streep) scoffs at a rival (Jon Voight) as a "one-worlder." But that very same rival says that America has "to turn inward, to tend to her own house." So what's it going to be: One world, with America as either hegemon or America tending to its own house? A mix of both perhaps, or something else? The very human question of what we owe ourselves and what we owe others in this life has haunted America since her bloody birth in a long revolt against the British Empire that escalated into a world war. It is an issue that could shape not only the course of the upcoming presidential election and the continuing Iraqi conflict but America's destiny as well. "The Bush camp is just as internationalist as the Kerry camp," says Michael Hardt, co-author with Antonio Negri of the new "Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire" (The Penguin Press). "What they are debating is the way of being internationalist, either Bush's unilateral approach or Kerry's collaborative one." "The deeper question is, Are Americans engaged in the world?" says Canadian historian Michael Ignatieff, author of the new "The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror" (Princeton University Press). "Europeans are always shocked by how many Americans don't have passports (almost 75 percent of adults). When Sen. Kerry says America is going to have an international foreign policy, Americans say, What's in it for me to be nice to the French?" At the same time, he adds, "Americans like to be liked, and they like to liked more than most." You could see this in the demeanor of the American athletes at the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics, their faces relaxed in the generally warm Athenian applause. But the desire for an audience, Ignatieff says, "is not the same as being engaged." "I'm not saying Americans are isolationists naturally," he says. "But they want to be left alone. Their natural place is to be back home." This may be why the Olympics, which conclude next Sunday, seem to capture the popular imagination. It's a chance to visit with the world in a very contained way while doing what we love � sports, competing, picking up souvenir hardware, then returning home. It's very much unlike war. "A key question is, How much popular support is there for the tough long slog of nation-building?" Ignatieff asks. Not much, others answer. In Niall Ferguson's absorbing new "Colossus" (Penguin Press), about America as an empire with chronic attention deficit disorder, the U.K. historian writes that at times, the United States has acted abroad like B.F. Pinkerton, the feckless American naval lieutenant who abandons his vulnerable geisha-wife in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" � "ardent in Act I, absent in Act II, anguished in Act III." These are perhaps the three stages of America's ambivalence toward the world, a complex attitude born of a history, geography and culture that has made us the Marlon Brando of empires � possessed of the talent but not necessarily the temperament for our role in the spotlight. Fortunate land
America is "a lucky country," says Rashid Khalidi, author of the new "Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East" (Beacon Press). That good fortune begins with its geographical position � surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and two friendly nations in Canada and Mexico. "Driving in Europe, you can be in a different country for breakfast, lunch and dinner," says Christine Lehner, whose short-story collection "What to Wear to See The Pope" (Carroll & Graf Publishers) offers wry observations on the prickly Franco-American relationship. "Here you can drive a week and never leave the United States." Unusual geography creates an unusual mind-set. The prospect of a land as seemingly limitless as your dreams has inspired wave after wave of tired and poor, not to mention huddled masses yearning to breathe free � of the past. As P.J. O'Rourke observes in his "Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism" (Atlantic Monthly Press): "We all come from foreign lands, even if we came ten thousand years ago on a land bridge across the Bering Strait ... If we wanted foreign entanglements, we would have stayed home. " No one understood this better than the Founding Fathers. "They saw the politics of Europe for what it was," Khalidi says. And they experienced the constraints of the British Empire, even as they absorbed the example of England, an island nation that today remains a part of � and apart from � the European Union. Historians warn against getting Freudian. But it doesn't take Freud to see that the American apple hasn't fallen far from the British tree. So much so that when President George W. Bush visited Buckingham Palace last year, he reportedly brought five personal chefs with him. Queen Elizabeth II, it is said, was not amused. Not like Beckham
As with the British, Americans have gone outward to stay inward, fighting a series of wars overseas to protect our freedom and that of others. "Foreigners think of Americans as naturally imperialistic," author Ignatieff says. "But the popular appetite for this is very limited." Indeed, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 � and our rise to sole-superpower status � we seem to have become more insular in some ways. Recent articles and studies report that less than 3 percent of literary books published in the U.S. are translations, while European films accounted for only 1.6 percent of the 2002 American box office. Whether you're delving into foreign works may depend on where you live. At the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, programming director Brian Ackerman says "a good part of what we play is world cinema, because people are interested in a wider world. But it's a reflection of Westchester (County). There are not a lot of suburban communities where that kind of attitude holds true." The appetite for foreign cultures also depends on subject matter and demographic group. The Modern Language Association reports that between 1998 and 2002, there was a 17.9 percent increase in the study of foreign languages, including Arabic, among college students. At the Alliance FranCaise de Westchester, executive director Gisele Carruth says more parents are enrolling their children to learn French. Meanwhile, municipal funding for school arts programs has dropped precipitously in urban and low-income districts. So has foundation and corporate support for arts institutions, nationwide. The not-so-funny thing about "Culture" is that it is often an entree into "cultures." It's hard to ridicule the French when you're admiring a Monet. "And," the Burns Center's Ackerman adds, "I would challenge anyone to see an Iranian film and see the Muslim world in the same way." Trouble is, much of what passes for culture in America is pop in nature. And unlike the fine arts � which invite intellectual investigation and multinational participation � pop culture is, observers say, no two-way street. While pop America is eminently exportable � even to resistant France, author Khalidi says � there's little return flow. The list of imports that have failed to ignite the American imagination is legion, from the French-invented metric system to professional soccer and its cover-boy sensation, David Beckham. Even when imports succeed, like actors Russell Crowe and Colin Farrell, they often do so by playing Americans. Guess we don't care to bend it like Beckham. Beyond borders
The media certainly don't. With all our celebrities, human-interest stories, crimes, natural disasters and scandals, the American press doesn't have to range beyond its shores for daily fodder. Still, experts are disturbed by the lack of international news on American network and cable television. According to the Toronto Star's Insularity Index, there were 132 countries that received less than one hour's coverage on the networks' evening news programs during the '90s and 41 countries that received no coverage. The emphasis on home-grown news leads to a skewed world view, as brilliantly crystallized in a cartoon by Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune that shows a TV viewer bemoaning the murderous fate of Laci Peterson and her baby. Behind the oblivious viewer sits a multitude of black Sudanese mothers and their babies, who are facing rape and genocide at the hands of countrymen. Ignorance is bliss � unless you're the leading nation of the free world. So what's it going to be? Bush's unilateral internationalism, which has been criticized for losing hearts and minds in Iraq and elsewhere? Kerry's collaborative internationalism, which must be weighed against jobs lost to overseas markets? In any event, we will no doubt continue our uneasy balancing act between home and abroad. And for that, observers say, we'll need to become a lot more knowledgeable. The 2002 movie "The Quiet American," based on Graham Greene's novel about the early days of American involvement in Vietnam, demonstrates how the path to hell can be paved with Yankee good intentions. Says Christopher Hampton, who wrote the screenplay: "You can't do things for the good of the world, unless you know what the world is."
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