Un-dirty Four Letter Words

Yesterday the Coad Table met, a group of foreign affairs buffs who gather monthly to discuss US policy toward a given country or region.  Our topic was overly-broad: US relations with the EU and the other, non-member European states.  Our consensus? First, that great damage is being willfully done to our historic partnerships with Britain, the EU majors (potentially even with Stockholm and Oslo should he-who-shall-not-be-named continue to lust after a Nobel Peace Prize) and that this intentional damage is being done to a Europe weakened with its own populist nationalism and threatening to come undone.  We are not acting as a concerned friend but, rather, as a playground bully demanding a weakling’s lunch money -- a far cry from the US of the June 6^th 74 years ago.  (Ann and I just returned from Normandy, steeped in the lore of '44.)

The second consensus was that to change direction requires focusing on ourselves, here at home.  We need to elect a Congress willing to take initiatives, to strangle via purse strings, to exercise the War Powers Act, to debate and resolve policy directives re global warming, immigration, trade and arms reduction. We need a Congress intent on reversing the eighty-year trend toward Executive power and on re-balancing respective Congressional and Executive Branch roles.

In the course of our discussion of accords and treaties, one of our fellows commented that “collaboration is not a dirty word.”   That set my mind to mulling four-letter dirty words and un-dirty words, four letter words that we should wield in developing our foreign policies and relations with others.  Words like read—as in reading history, position papers, and cultural profiles; words like meet, hear and look; like open, feel and care – as in empathy; like join and meld and team. Perhaps if we swore by these four-letter words, we might begin to treat others as chums rather than as chumps to be bested in contracts and deals.

   

Any change in our foreign relationships must start here at home, with us.  It may take years to undo the damage and re-build trust but the time to start is Now.  This November.  It’s only 150 days away.