Foreign policy expert urges innovation
Walter Russell Mead, the James Clarke Chace professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College spoke to students about American Grand Strategy and its future, giving students ideas of how they can participate in American foreign policy in the 21st century.
“Grand strategy is how you decide what wars to fight or not fight,” Mead said, “and by extension, what is your national vision? What are you trying to do in this world? What is important to you? How do you understand your vital interests and how do you go about trying to secure those interests in the world in which we live?”
Mead said American Grand Strategy is the nation’s hope and fears at the highest level.
“What is our approach to getting more of what we do want and preventing or protecting ourselves from what we don’t want?” he said.
America’s Grand Strategy is to shape the world to be more like Europe. The first reason for this is that Europe is peaceful, he said. While not everyone in Europe loves the U.S., and many countries compete with the U.S. economically, Europe is peaceful, he said.
“Nobody in Europe is trying to attack us,” Mead said. “The first and most basic fact of life is that nobody in Europe is trying to conquer the world.”
Increasing global prosperity to mirror Europe’s would bring economic and trade benefits to the U.S., Mead said. In addition to the value of trade, wealthy countries provide competition, which helps American industries improve. The other benefit of increased prosperity is it encourages peace.
“It is better for us if other countries are rich, rather than if they are poor. Rich countries are actually much less likely to decide that they want to come over and kill you,” Mead said. “Rich countries are soft.”
Mead also said Europe is free — something that the U.S. would like to see replicated globally. He said European countries emerged from histories of monarchy, fascism and communism to become stable democratic nations.
Mead said this grand strategy is possible, and most Americans he talks to agree with the idea while the majority in other parts of the world would like their country to be more like Europe. This grand strategy appeals to Americans from differing political views, he said, and the strategy is supported by both major political parties in different ways.
“A grand strategy usually can be sung in more than one key. It is a melody that the different parties can sing in different keys,” Mead said.
Accomplishing this grand strategy has challenges. Mead said that some nations would like to be more like Europe and cannot figure out how. These failures lead to anger and breed anti-Americanism. He also says that there are some countries who are opposed to this grand strategy.
“Just because we have a grand national strategy that feels good to us doesn’t mean that other people are going to spontaneously start singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ every time we walk into a room,” Mead said.
“The first and most important jobs we have are at home. The economic, social, and political revival of the United States at home is, I think, the first step towards success in grand strategy abroad in the 21st Century,” he said. “Some of our basic institutions, practices and ideas are out of whack.”
Mead said the U.S. has to learn how to compete. America’s advantage is that it’s more flexible, entrepreneurial and open to change than many other societies.
“America’s greatest comparative advantage going forward is our flexibility, dynamism and love of innovation. We are willing to experiment with institutions. I think that professions like the law, medicine, and the university are going to need to be reinvented by your generation and rebuilt in ways that right now are hard to imagine,” said Mead.
Mead said he wanted to challenge students to move this strategy forward by innovating and changing aspects of these institutions through voting and allowing change.
Travis Johnson, a sophomore majoring in law and constitutional studies said, “Students who want to become informed have the opportunity to listen to world class lecturers. You connect with a brilliant mind and someone with lots of experience, and come out knowing a lot more about the world and how it works.”
Mead’s visit was arranged by The Project on Liberty and American Constitutionalism along with the Institute of Government and Politics.
Anthony Peacock, director of “The Project on Liberty and American Constitutionalism” and professor in the political science department said, “I think Mead is a salutary voice because he defends what America stands for, and is willing to say that and explain why.”
– kstubbs88@gmail.com