America's Role in the World

 All my life, I've been hearing the old American story. My father, a WWII Navy veteran, was a patriot 'till the day he died. His strong sense of nationalism remained a constant in his life until the day he died. While he might not agree with all the political decisions of the administration, he truly believed that America was the greatest nation in the world.  My mother, too, loves America. Her parents immigrated here from Italy, and she heard stories of 'the old country' while growing up. Her father worked hard, and told his children that America was the land of opportunity, where all dreams were possible.

 While I was growing up, my mother and father passed this story on to me. They told me that we were living in the land of unlimited opportunities, where I could be anything I wanted to be. My mother thought that I should grow up to be the first woman president. I didn't really want the job, but I appreciated the thought that I could, theoretically, if I wanted to - run for the presidency some day. Any citizen could.

 When I was a child we were on vacation down the Jersey shore. My parents and I were walking down the boardwalk when a man came over and shook our hands. My father talked to him a while, and then he moved on to shake hands with other families. "Who was that?" I asked my father.

 "That's Bill Bradley," my father said.

 "Is he a friend of yours?" I asked.

 "He's our senator," my dad said. "That means he's a friend of everyone in New Jersey. Maybe even in the whole country."

 At that age, I took things very literally still. I was awed that Bill Bradley had so very many friends, and wondered how he had time to check up on them all.  I, like most American children, thought mostly of things on a community level. The rest of the country was somewhere 'far away', and the world? That was that globe the teacher spun when she wanted to tell us about something that happened far, far away.

 For a long time, I had my own version of the American story, formed from these views of my parents and from my own limited perspectives. We were the heroes. We were the ones who brought order to the chaos that existed in the world, which always desperately needed our help and guidance. I was a citizen of the best nation, and everything we did was right and just.  As I grew up, a lot of my idealism faded. I went the opposite way for a while - blaming the government for all my troubles, and wondering how they could be so short-sighted as to not see the needs of the people.

 In Bill Bradley's book, A New American story, he tells us that the story we all know, of America as the world's dominant power, only hated because that's the price you pay for leadership - is inherently flawed. He expresses the need for a new American story, one in which we are not a dominating power force - but rather a world leader, an innovative part of a global community.

 "The biggest flaw in the story we are told now is that it unfolds in ways that seem ignorant of the forces shaping the world," writes Bradley.  He tells of the need for global cooperation to face shared threats and challenges. Only through cooperation with other countries can we properly share information on terrorist threats, limit arms trade, stop global organized crime, prevent the spread of pandemic disease, and raise the living standards for the world's poor.  Environmental crisises such as global warming can only be combated with cooperation from many nations.

 Bradley states that we cannot win the war on terrorism with our current plan of attack. In fact, he labels the Iraq War as "... the most serious foreign policy blunder I have seen in my lifetime." We have started a war on terrorism, but we have not defined terrorism - and there, he says, is where the problem lies. All terrorist situations are not the same, and must be examined individually.

  Furthermore, the situation in Iraq diverts resources from other world events that bear our attention, such as relations between China and Japan, North Korean, the growing anti-American sentiment in Latin America, and situations in Iran.

 America has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. We have rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. We have stated the desire to develop more nuclear bombs.  "One hopes that we won't have to wait until a devastating nuclear disaster before we remember the value in cooperation," writes Bradley.

 Bradley believes that it is time for America to once again lead by example, by "soft power" - our free society state and our credibility as a trustworthy nation and decent place to live, instead of the "hard power" of military might.  Bradley tells us that after 9/11, a French newspaper called Le Monde expressed the sentiment of the world at that time when it headlined "We Are All Americans". Bradley calls this 'a teachable moment', in which the president could have stepped up and took the opportunity to initiate global change.  He might have initiated many reforms to change our dependence on oil, to end poverty in the world, to protect the environment, to work together towards some beneficial end.

 Instead, he dropped the ball.

 "When the world said 'We are all Americans', how did our president respond, beyond provoking war and vengeance and messianism?" writes Bradley.

 But that is not to say that the ball cannot be recovered. There is hope, there is a new American story to be told.  Bill Bradley puts forth a call for us to become not just citizens of a community, not just citizens of the United States, but global citizens of this new post-9/11 world.  He sets forth three principles to define this new story - global cooperation, global responsibility, and our special American role.

 Our special American role shows that we can still be world leaders - only we must lead by example, not domination.  We must face the new world challenges with international cooperation. Talk and diplomacy must lead the way, instead of rash judgments and war. We must continue to fight terrorism, but bring an end to the war in Iraq.

 When I shook hands with Bill Bradley as a child,  I didn't understand how we could be friends with people we haven't met yet. I had no concept of globalization, or responsibility for anything outside my limited scope of experience.

 Now that I have grown up, I understand.

 My name is Laura Cushing, and I am part of the New American Story -  I am no longer just a citizen of New Jersey, or even of the United States. I am a human being, with a moral responsibility to my fellow human beings, and to my planet.  I want to be a citizen of the world, a friend to people of all nations.

 I'm still young enough, however, to have hope that my government will lead the way.