US in the World, Talking Global Issues With
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CONTENTS 1. Introduction: Why a Guide? 3 2. Acknowledgments/Task Force Members 5 TAB 1 3. Key Background for First-Time Users 8 Getting 4. Core Concepts and Terms 10 Started 5. Where the Public Is Coming From 14 TAB 2 6. Top 20 Recommendations 32 Top 20 7. Wonk-Speak Translator 44 Recommendations TAB 3 8. MESSAGING RECOMMENDATIONS, HELPFUL ARGUMENTS & FACTS America’s Role A. Why Our Foreign Policy Matters So Much 48 in the World B. What Our Foreign Policy Should Look Like 50 9. COMMON CRITIQUES & EFFECTIVE RESPONSES A. “We spend too much abroad. Domestic needs come first.” 52 B. “Soft issues are nice, but security/survival issues come first.” 53 1 C. “No country is perfect. America is a benign superpower.” 54 D.“There is no such thing as an ‘international community.’” 55 E. “Peace is best achieved through strength.” 56 F. “You see the world the way you want it to be, not how it really is.” 57 G.“We can’t rely on the old strategies anymore.” 58 TAB 4 10. MESSAGING RECOMMENDATIONS, HELPFUL ARGUMENTS & FACTS International A. International Cooperation: Why We Need It 62 Cooperation B. International Cooperation: How to Improve It 64 C. Why What the World Thinks of Us Matters 66 11. COMMON CRITIQUES & EFFECTIVE RESPONSES A. “America must not compromise its sovereignty/flexibility.” 68 B. “We can’t entrust decisions about U.S. security to others.” 69 C. “We’re not opposed to all treaties ... just the bad ones.” 70 D.“International organizations/bureaucracies are inefficient.” 71 E. “Being resented for being No. 1 goes with the territory.” 72 F. “Leadership is not a popularity contest.” 73 TAB 5 12. MESSAGING RECOMMENDATIONS, HELPFUL ARGUMENTS & FACTS Terrorism, A. What to Do About Terrorism 78 Spread of Deadly B. What to Do About the Spread of Deadly Weapons 80 Weapons, C. Improving Cooperation to Prevent the Spread of Deadly Weapons 82 Use of Force D. Special Topic: Talking about the Use of Force 84 CONTENTS TAB 5 (CONTINUED) 13. COMMON CRITIQUES & EFFECTIVE RESPONSES Terrorism, A. “Why should we absorb the first blow?” 86 Spread of Deadly B. “We have no choice but to prevent through military preemption.” 87 Weapons, C. “New threats require new means.” 88 Use of Force D.“We should be able to develop any weapons we need.” 89 E. “Proliferation is inevitable.” 90 F. “Verification doesn’t work.” 91 G.“Only America can prevent proliferation. We must do it our way.” 92 H.“What do you propose we do when countries break international rules?” 93 TAB 6 14. MESSAGING RECOMMENDATIONS, HELPFUL ARGUMENTS & FACTS Poverty, A. Why it Matters How Other People Live 98 Development, B. Helping People and Countries Lift Themselves Out of Poverty: What Works 100 Trade C. “Nation Building” 102 D. Special Topic: Talking About Trade and the Global Economy 104 15. COMMON CRITIQUES & EFFECTIVE RESPONSES A. “The poor will always be with us ... there’s only so much we can do.” 107 B. “Foreign aid just creates dependency.” 108 C. “Poverty has nothing to do with terrorism.” 109 D.“The problem is corruption.” 110 E. “We’re already so generous. The U.S. can’t do it all.” 111 2 F. “The market will solve these problems—trade, not aid.” 112 G.“We invest in good performers, not every basket case.” 113 TAB 7 16. MESSAGING RECOMMENDATIONS, HELPFUL ARGUMENTS & FACTS Energy, A. Why America’s Energy Choices Matter 118 Global Warming B. Global Warming 120 C. A 21st-Century Energy Strategy 122 17. COMMON CRITIQUES & EFFECTIVE RESPONSES A. “What you propose would harm our economy.” 124 B. “The market will take care of this; let the private sector lead.” 125 C. “The science isn’t conclusive on global warming. You use scare tactics.” 126 D.“The international approach on global warming is unfair.” 127 E. “What you propose would restrict our choices and compromise safety.” 128 F. “Face it, oil is going to be central for a very long time.” 129 G.“You’re unrealistic. ... Yours are pipedream technologies.” 130 TAB 8 18. RECOMMENDATIONS Engaging A. Yardsticks to Help Citizens Evaluate U.S. Policy and Actions 136 Citizens B. Talking About What Citizens Can Do 138 DETACHABLE SUMMARY CARDS U.S. in the World INTRODUCTION WHY A GUIDE? Stephen Heintz, President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, The Aspen Institute This guide grows out of a deepening sense of urgency that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Aspen Institute’s Global Interdependence Initiative share with many other organizations and individuals in the United States. That urgency stems in part from the fact that U.S. and international responses to many global challenges—AIDS, terrorism and the spread of deadly weapons, poverty and inequality, climate change and biodiversity loss, and more—are still not commensurate with the scale of those problems or our capacity to make progress toward solving them. It arises, too, from the recognition that America now faces critical choices about who it is and wants to be in an increasingly interdependent world—choices that will have a profound impact on Americans, on other peoples and countries, and on future generations. And it comes from the belief that only a broader, more engaged and more active constituency of Americans can encourage policymakers to support the kind of sustained investment, involvement, and leadership needed from the United States to tackle global challenges effectively. These concerns are not new, and addressing these challenges will require years of sustained effort. In fact, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Aspen Institute began the collaboration that led to the Global Interdependence Initiative in the mid-1990s. Our basic principle was and remains simple: America's open and democratic system is a source of strength for its foreign policy. The collective wisdom of the American public, accompanied by its informed consent and support, help to give our nation's global engagements their moral legitimacy and their 3 sustaining power. The sense of urgency we feel today has led us and others working on global issues to acknowledge that whatever we have been doing to reach out to the American public, and however successful we have been in engaging citizens in discrete policy debates, it is simply not enough. At a time when our country faces fundamental questions of national identity and purpose, we still lack a broad, bipartisan public constituency for pragmatic, principled, effective, and cooperative U.S. global engagement. Though polling tells us that many Americans care about global problems and support such an internationalist vision of America’s role, non-expert citizens are often not confident enough of their knowledge and opinions—or of their ability to make a difference—to speak up actively on foreign policy issues. Highly specialized and jargon-filled debates among foreign policy specialists and advocates do little to invite citizens into the national dialogue on U.S. global engagement or to dissuade citizens from deciding they should leave foreign policy to “the experts.” So increasingly, advocates and experts who speak to Americans about global issues and this country’s role in addressing them have come together to ask themselves, “What do we stand for, what do we want to say, and how could we be saying it more effectively?” Some of these conversations have taken place within specific issue areas; a few of them have brought organizations together across issues. Inevitably, many such conversations are unfolding in relative isolation from one another. But common to all the discussions has been a new interest among groups in working together and in identifying shared values and outreach strategies around which to collaborate. The idea behind U.S. in the World was to create a space in which leading participants in those conversations—and others interested in similar questions—might work together on a project that would potentially benefit them all and give concrete form to some of their deliberations about shared values and strategies. The nearly two-year process that led to the publication of this guide involved at its core a Task Force of about 50 individuals representing many different areas of foreign policy expertise; in addition, the process incorporated advice from hundreds of experts on U.S. foreign policy, public opinion, and communications, collected through meetings, surveys, interviews, literature reviews, and other means. Some of the Task Force members had never met before, and most of them—development INTRODUCTION advocates, energy and environmental organizers, nonproliferation and arms control experts, foreign policy scholars, youth activists, faith-based leaders—had never rolled up their sleeves to collaborate on a common task. Together they worked to identify some of the key elements of a shared, nonpartisan vision of how America should engage with the world—a vision that would combine the common sense and common decency that has characterized U.S. global leadership at its best and most effective. They winnowed from their expertise the top-priority themes and arguments that they wished more Americans were hearing about a number of critical issues. And with extensive input from communications experts, their deliberations produced practical recommendations about how to articulate those key themes and arguments, and connect them to big ideas about what kind of global citizen America should be. The goal was to create a practical guide that would enhance efforts to build constituencies on specific global issues, while also reinforcing for the public some core elements of a shared, positive vision of America’s role in the world. The creators of this guide hope it will help communicators to meet the short-term objectives of today’s policy debates while also advancing the long-term objective of creating a broad-based, well informed, and active constituency for principled and constructive U.S.