DATE=04-11-02

TYPE=Dateline

NUMBER=7-36166

TITLE=America's Myths and Realities

BYLINE=Carol Castiel

TELEPHONE=619-1101

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR= Neal Lavon

CONTENT=

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

HOST: America's geographical separation from Europe and Asia forged a national myth of innocence, independence, and exceptionalism. This myth, analysts say, may have been permanently shattered on September 11th. Critics believe on that day, the United States learned the limits of independence and sovereignty. Now, they say, America's watchword should be interdependence. Not all observers agree on this proposed course as we hear in this Dateline report from Carol Castiel.

ANNCR: According to Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad versus McWorld and Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland, the myths of American exceptionalismthat America is a very different country from all the rest and one marked by innocence and a fierce sense of independencewere shattered on September 11th.

On that day, he asserts, America learned the limits of innocence and independence that for centuries, guided the nation's domestic and foreign policies. Professor Barber discussed these views at a recent conference of the Fulbright Scholar program, an ongoing U.S. government initiative that sends American scholars abroad and invites foreign scholars to the United States. It was named for the late chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fulbright.

Over 100 scholars from sixty countries met in Washington last week where Professor Barber elaborated on this analysis.

TAPE: CUT #1 BARBER :59

"And we were taught a lesson in the limits of independence, the limits of sovereignty, and also the limits of innocence because though the men who came and did the dastardly acts might themselves be malevolent, perverse, and yes even evil men, they represented forces and were supported by people who were not themselves terrorists, but who clearly saw in the United States, not an innocent, isolated, nation, but a nation complicit in many of the problems from which people around the world were suffering. And right or wrong, it doesn't really matter, the perception increasingly was that America as a global hegemon had a role to play in how the world was organized or disorganized, in its equality or its inequality, in its productivity or the lack of a fair distribution of its products."

CC: However, other analysts of American foreign policy like Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, disagree that the U.S. has engaged in an excessively unilateralist foreign policy.

TAPE: CUT 2 CARPENTER, :46

"Well I think the attacks of September 11th were not exactly in response to U.S. exceptionalism or untilateralism. If anything, they were a response to very specific U-S policies that were dubious in terms of their wisdom. The policy of maintaining a highly provocative troop presence in Saudi Arabia, which Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network regard as defilng one of the holy places of Islam. The U-S policy of supporting corrupt and respressive regimes in the Islamic world, simply because they are friendly to Washington's policies. These policies ought to be changed. But that doesn't mean that the U-S is excessively unilateralist. I think that is a mischaracterization of U-S policy."

CC: Professor Barber agrees that specific U.S. policies such as the U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia and support of corrupt and repressive regimes in the Islamic world fueled the animosity that that led to September 11th. However, Professor Barber maintains that the American myths of innocence and independence helped lead to an isolationist and insular foreign policy until the end of the Second World War. Even throughout the Cold War, Barber says, America acted as if it could "go it alone" in the world.

He says this caused America to ignore many warning signs that pointed to what he considered a growing interdependence.

TAPE: CUT 3 BARBER, :45

"We should have known with the growth of a technology that suffuses borders, we should have known with the growth of epidemiological problems, public health problems, like Aids and the West Nile Virus that we were no longer able to protect ourselves all by ourselves, we should have known from the new telecommunications that was spreading around the globe that there was no longer that much meaning to national frontiers, we should have known when it became clear that AIDS carried no passport and stopped at no borders, that our nation's sovereignty and its capacity to simply do it alone, was no longer viable."

CC: The Cato Institute's Ted Galen Carpenter fundamentally disagrees with Barber's thesis America's unilateralism is any way responsible for what happened on September 11th.

TAPE: CUT # 4 CARPENTER 1:03

"I think equating the attacks of September 11th is nonsense. Yes, there is an interdependent world in many respects, but the people who attacked us are hate-filled fanatics. One shouldn't minimize that aspect of the phenomenon. And one can be unilateralist at least in security affairs. But the question is whether the United States chooses to be a restrained unilateralist or whether it is an excessively meddling and interventionist unilateralist power. And I think, unfortunately, that U-S policy, for a good many years, has been the latter. We need to decide to intervene less in world affairs, not become even more entangled or involved in the quarrels of other peoples. That's how we got into this problem, because of our excessive meddling policy in the Middle East. To propose, in essence, that we become even more activist, but do this within a multilateral framework, I think, fundamentally misses the point."

CC: Nonetheless, Professor Barber insists that America has been operating according to a nineteenth century logic that does not apply to a twenty-first century world.

TAPE: CUT #5 BARBER :44

"We're still working on a nineteenth century logic of sovereign nation states with defensible, territorial boundaries in a twenty-first century world of the internet and of technologies and of public health problems that spread around the world like wild fire, of global warming and they can not be handled one country at a time, they can only be handled together and the administration slowly is half recognizing it."

CC: Professor Benjamin Barber, author f Jihad versus McWorld. I'll be back with more on America's myths and realities along with comments by the U.S. assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, after this.

You're listening to the new Dateline heard 44 minutes past most odd U-T-C hours on VOA News Now. I'm Carol Castiel.

Coming up on the next edition of Dateline, VOA's Robin Rupli (ROOP-lee) talks with an accountant who shares her sense of tax regulations along with her sense of humor. . as she explains how Americans approach April 15the day we have to file our taxes to the federal government.. . That's Dateline for Monday, Tax Day, April 15. . .

Meanwhile on this edition of the program, we're talking about what critics say is America's tendency to go it alone in the worlda view argued by Professor Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad versus McWorld. Of course, not all analysts agree with this. The Cato Institute's Ted Galen Carpenter, for instance, has no quarrel with what he sees as America's more unilateral foreign policy, nor does he see it as contributing to global terrorism. But both might agree that the international fight against terrorism could be helped by a more positive American image abroad. Even if it is a multi-cultural nation, Benjamin Barber says the United States does not adequately project this likeness overseas. He believes that if America accentuated its multiculturalism along with a heightened sense of interdependence, the United States would have a more effective foreign policy.

TAPE: CUT 6, BARBER :38

"And I can think of no better model for such a world than I see in front of me in this room, scholars and thoughtful people from 60 or 70 countries around the globe, coming together here to talk about and exchange their experiences from their own countries--their own images of us. A world that was little more like this group of Fulbrighters, would be a world in which there'd be far more equity, far more social justice, and far more peace not just for Americans but for all the peoples of the planet."

CC: Patricia Harrison is U.S. assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. She thinks the best way to burnish America's image abroad is to promote international educational exchanges. She says the U.S. government's budget this year does reflect more money for exchanges such as the Fulbright program.

TAPE: CUT 7, PATRICIA HARRISON :37

"Right after September 11th, we responded with what I call a quick-start plan to focus exchange resources where we feel it's basically counter-terrorism. Because every time you educate, that's a force for something that's positive that helps really reduce the idea of anybody strapping a bomb to themselves and blowing themselves up and other people and with them the future. So, we allocated a great deal of our resources to increase engagement with Muslim societies and that includes Fulbright programs, international visitors. We're also focused on bringing over more journalists."

CC: Secretary Harrison just returned from a US-Arab Education summit attended by business leaders, educators, and non-governmental organizations from the Arab world who focused on how to create opportunities and hope for the next generation.

TAPE: CUT #8 HARRISON :50

"Out of that summit, something very important happened with an initiative called Partnerships for Learning that would be basically a global initiative so that people of good will and people of positions of power and opinion leader could bring their collective energies and expertise and wise counsel to looking at how we are going to deliver a better world young people. We also are looking at bringing over more women for example. As we look at Afghanistan, they're trying to restore what they once had in terms of teachers and providing teacher training. And our international visitors, they're the rising stars--Hamid Karzai was an international visitor, the late Anwar Sadat and we've had ten group projects since September 11th that have had a special Muslim world focus."

CC: However, Ms. Harrison says the focus on the Muslim world will not come at the expense of programs in other parts of the globe. She says the United States must guard against running from crisis to crisis.

TAPE: CUT 9, PATRICIA HARRISON :28

"It's very important that we sustain what we have achieved over the years in other regions of the world and that calls for several things, not only more resources but we need more people in the Foreign Service discipline. And that's one of the things that the Secretary has been pushing for to ensure that we have more people that are viewing this as a career and that's very directly tied into being able to deliver. These are labor-intensive programs."

CC: Ms. Harrison takes inspiration from the words of a Fulbright scholar from Syria, Mohammed Khalil, studying at the University of Arizona.

TAPE: CUT 10, HARRISON, :09

"And he said he felt that international education was really the answer to global terrorism. And with that mission statement, I am just going to push for more exchanges."

CC: While exchange programs alone will not be sufficient to combat global terrorism, most analysts agree they can help opinion leaders in developing countries understand America's democratic values. But as the United States has become the world's lone superpower as well as an economic and cultural colossus, its motives and policiesno matter what they arewill be subject to suspicion and attack. An understanding of who we are, and what we are, might help the world realize why we do the things we do.

For Dateline, I'm Carol Castiel.

MUSIC: GETTING TO KNOW YOU, MARY MARTIN, 2:36 TO TIME.