I just emailed Angela Merkel to let her know that I and a majority of Americans fully support her and the world in vigorously pursuing the Paris Climate Accord. She won’t recognize my name – I’m no official or celebrity. I’m just an ambassador doing a routine task for the Grassroots State Department.
So was an American presenter at a recent professional conference in Mexico. Before delivering his paper, he expressed his vehement disagreement with our president’s viewpoints and destructive actions, and said, “I am deeply distressed by his (Trump’s) views about the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and I want to assure you that he does not represent the opinions of a majority of thoughtful caring Americans.”
Recently my wife and I met a Canadian on a hike and shared our alarm about the then-new president. The hiker was very relieved to hear this. We, too, were grassroots ambassadors.
These acts of diplomacy support an imaginary, informal, and decentralized Grassroots State Department (GSD) that seeks to restore bedrock tenets of American diplomacy shaped, by and large, by a bipartisan majority since WWII. The tenets include:
Embracing the UN and efforts to develop a community of nations.
Pursuing peace and security increasingly through respectful alliances rather than unilaterally, and increasingly through diplomacy rather than militancy.
Leading global efforts to reduce arms generally and nuclear arms in particular.
Pursuing global human rights, vigorously opposing exploitation, discrimination, and oppression while promoting democracy.
Expanding humanitarian aid (disaster relief, refugee assistance) and community development aimed at reducing poverty and global inequality.
Endorsing strong global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, develop clean energy, and promote clean air and water.
Obviously these tenets bridge substantial left and right differences and shift from administration to administration – this is America after all. But they are longstanding, reasonably clear, and largely bipartisan. (For regular My Turn readers, the tenets begin to offer a response to two fine, recent My Turns (June 11) critical of President Trump’s policies abroad, one by Dan Vallone urging an “alternative agenda” and the other by Robert Azzi urging us to right the ship of state.)
In the past few months, we have watched the president, with his administration and a Congressional majority thoroughly cowed by the Alt-Right, toss these tenets to the wind. He has reneged on our membership in the international community, urging major cuts, for example, in U.N. support generally and peacekeeping in particular. He has demeaned close allies and begun to act unilaterally without them. He has undermined a balance of Diplomacy and Defense by proposing deep cuts in the State Department budget and steep increases in defense. He has scrapped commitments to clean air and water, to the development of clean energy, and to the Paris Climate Accord. This is simply the tip of the same iceberg you’ve been watching, so add your own examples.
Most of the bedrock tenets have been developed since WWII by administrations from Truman and Eisenhower to Bush II and Obama and by Congresses during that period. For 70 years they have largely overwhelmed the voices of isolation, unilateralism, and eugenics with its forms of white and Christian supremacy, as well as voices urging military expansion at the expense of diplomacy, acting arrogantly and disrespectfully toward allies, flaunting the egotistical and greedy “ugly American,” and ignoring environmental threats.
From a mass of evidence, let me add a few specifics. After World War II, we chose to join and lead a world community rather than return to isolationism as we had after WWI. We shaped and joined a UN and have been its largest supporter since. We shaped NATO and have always been its core partner. We carried out the Marshall Plan and have been the largest contributor to humanitarian aid since. Almost every year, we have been the largest donor to development aid to poor nations, and George W. Bush considered Development to be a “Third Pillar” of American security along with Diplomacy and Defense. The small ratio of State Department to Defense spending has risen a bit, albeit sporadically, but in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
After our Cold War escalation of arms, and beginning with Richard Nixon and the initial Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) and agreements, all administrations have advanced disarmament and nuclear containment. Notably the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) was proposed by Ronald Reagan, finalized by George H.W. Bush, and eventually ratified 93 to 6 by the Senate. And, even with recently waning commitment to reduction, the New Start Treaty was signed by Barack Obama and ratified 71 to 26 by the Senate.
A recent New York Times report (June 4) described a longstanding bipartisan concern about climate change and commitment to reduce greenhouse gases, at least before 2010 when Koch Brothers’ money persuaded Republicans to about-face and deny climate change. Earlier, for example, presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush had backed the Montreal Protocol (protecting the ozone layer), and it was approved 83 to 0 by the Senate. And, the Times article reminds us that John McCain was stronger on global warming in the 2008 presidential election than Barack Obama.
We continue to struggle with human rights but have made huge progress since WWII, with major impacts abroad as well as at home. Our civil rights movement, for example, was a major impetus in the democracy and independence movements across Africa in the 1960s, and the reforms of our women’s and disability rights movements have reverberated around the world.
If you are among the majority of Democrats and Republicans who value the bedrock tenets of the Grassroots State Department, I’d urge you to imagine yourself as an ambassador and let the world know, through small actions on behalf of the GSD, that you are working to retrieve those tenets. There are dozens of acts of diplomacy you might design and perform.
You can act abroad. Travel to Mexico, Germany, or some other nation that has specifically been denigrated by the current administration. Once there, meet locals – stay in a B&B, attend a local church or Rotary Club meeting…. Learn what they are thinking about the U.S. and share with them what a majority of us are thinking and doing. Or travel to help refugees, deliver humanitarian aid, or join up with an across-borders type of health care group… and share the message.
Or act from home. Meet with foreign visitors, students, or those in school or church exchange programs or with refugees and immigrants. Offer to house them, invite them to dinner, host them at church, give them a tour of your town… and use these opportunities to share the message. Help start an exchange or join a sister church or sister city program or find a pen pal.
State departments welcome, protect, and support immigrants and refugees. You may get involved in supportive acts like teaching English to immigrants and driving refugees to appointments, or in protective acts like accompanying people to ICE check-ins or organizing sanctuary cities and churches. You may send money to humanitarian or development efforts abroad – and be sure to enclose a message.
As an ambassador you might attend relevant rallies and marches, write letters to representatives and editors, and support candidates who share the tenets. You also might devise new actions. For example, if you fly an American flag, you may want to fly it alongside a UN flag. If you are a lawyer litigating claims of folks with disabilities, add international claims based on the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. If you email your congressman not to cut back aid to NATO or the UN, you might “cc” Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO or Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN.
The world should know that those holding momentary political sway in America are a minority with an archaic agenda. Innumerable acts of diplomacy by millions of ambassadors serving a Grassroots State Department could help send this message to a watchful world.
(Paul A. Levy lives in Concord.)