Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2006/02/10/know_thy_enemy.php
Friday, February 10, 2006
“Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.” – Alexis de Tocqueville
The twentieth century began with the United States making her first steps onto the world stage, as she began to assert herself as a great power in every sense of the word. Thanks in great part to a booming economy and one of the largest navies in the world, the United States could begin its “Big Stick” and “Dollar” diplomacies that gave America political clout comparable to that of the European Great Powers.
Our own twenty-first century began with the United States as the only remaining superpower, producing over a fifth of the world’s wealth, spending nearly half of world-wide military expenditures, and with a cultural influence that is unparalleled in the history of the world. There is little debate that American culture permeates the world and it should come as no surprise that George W. Bush is the most recognized man in the world, or that KFC is the fastest growing business in China. Neither Imperial Rome nor the British Empire ever had the far reaching power that the United States does today.
However, American influence is nearly one-sided, and while immigrants have certainly shaped the United States they have not generated concern for the politics of their home countries. When a newscaster grilled George Bush on the names of foreign leaders during the 2000 election he only expressed a trait that has come to define Americans abroad: ignorance of not only language, but culture, temperament and history. This American ignorance of foreign cultures has historically been endemic, surely owing more to geographical isolation than a lack of intellectual curiosity, but since the ascendancy of the United States this international apathy begins to become dangerous.
One of the clearest signs of the influence American power has is English’s status as the global lingua franca. In practically every world capital, Americans are treated to hotels, restaurants, and informational packets that are all written in English. Knowledge of the local language has become unnecessary for an American vacation. Recent studies add weight to this Anglo-centric conclusion; one study shows that 47% of Europeans can speak conversational English, another study says that 533 million people living in India and China can “use” the English language.
These statistics are only reflective of the general population; the influence of English becomes starker when one examines English fluency of political, business, and scientific elites worldwide. Global business almost necessitates a working knowledge of English—236 of the 500 largest global businesses are incorporated in the Anglo-Sphere.
In the political sphere, American diplomats have long interacted with foreign officials who have had, at minimum, a functioning knowledge of English. The French President may never visit the Israeli Prime Minister, but there is little doubt that both will meet the President of the United States. Accordingly the influence of the United States upon elections in other nations is irrefutable, as support of, or opposition to, American policies has been a key issue in recent Australian, Spanish, British, German, Canadian, and Japanese parliamentary elections.
So it comes as no surprise that American universities now offer degrees in government with a specialization in international relations, and economics with a specialization in international finance. As a reflection of American influence and power these degrees are heavy on theory and analysis of current affairs and recent histories of major geopolitical areas. Higher level graduate programs tend to provide concentration on regions, ranging from Latin America to Southeast Asia, that gives a graduate student a deeper understanding of current political trends in a specific area, and like any other graduate program they demand a proficiency in a foreign language.
Yet these programs fail to provide any sort of intimate knowledge of a foreign culture. Graduate programs in international relations or economics are constructed in such a way as to provide the United States with a foreign service composed of thousands of Kissingers, but no George Kennans, the architect of Cold War containment. These programs train students in the methods of coercion, with the expectation that graduates will act at behest of the world’s preeminent power and the hope that by appealing to rational self-interest any negotiating partner will acquiesce to American designs. These methods have proven effective over the past decades. As long as an appeal to self-interest remains one of the central tenets of American foreign policy, it will cause American policy makers to lose sight of the fact that while all men are created equal, they are raised to be radically different.
The American proclivity for equality derives from the Constitution, which encapsulates those American ideals and principles to which the majority of the nation subscribes, including equal rights, equal opportunity, freedom, liberty, and capitalism. Those things which define an American also prevent an authoritative American identity from developing; collectively, Americans believe that they should have the right to do as they please and be left unmolested by their government, to varying degrees. Every American believes this to an extent. The businessman believes his business should be unregulated and lightly taxed, the priest believes his parishioners should have the right to worship as they want, and some believe a woman should have the right to do what she wants with her body. Most political debates are rooted on the ideas of freedom and fairness, principles that surprisingly can easily find themselves at odds. This shared political belief in perceived rationalism proves to be a hindrance when dealing with individuals coming from a culture with a deeply nuanced political philosophy that has been evolved over years of literature and revolution.
However, American identity extends little past these beliefs in freedom, equality, and capitalism, for there is no great American philosopher or author that every American can associate with or about. Though the Bible once served this role, a seminal work no longer exists that filled what it is to be American. Even if many have read Hemingway or Twain, it is a trend increasingly far from being universal. The man most frequently found when trying to define who an American is and what he is defined by is, ironically, a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. It was Tocqueville who tells us, “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” Perhaps this mentality of equality arose from a colonial mentality and a lack of a cultural history of dominance and empire, which so many peoples in the world have.
Despite claims of equality, no European nation subscribes to the idea of liberty as deeply as the United States. This is reflected by assimilation patterns and the effect of assimilation on placating societal unrest, such as the recent riots in France, where disillusioned Islamic youth lashed out at a society that excluded them. It is because European ideas of assimilation can only be achieved over generations, because the qualities that make a man French are imbued from birth. Since the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man,’ in 1789, all French political thought has been changed; the views expressed in the Declaration have become ingrained in the French consciousness when dealing with issues of equality and powers of the state. For instance, it is not uncommon for Frenchman living in a town in Provence to be the descendant of a family that has been there since Charlemagne expelled the Muslims from France a millennia ago. The Frenchman’s family has been French for so long that he cannot trace his family back far enough to find a time where a family member did not live in Provence, it is because of that heritage that he can refer to France as his patrie, his fatherland. This is not unique to the French, or even to the Europeans, for many if not most peoples of Eurasia have roots so deep in their nation that they identify with the land itself and makes it impossible for an immigrant to assimilate. English children are reared on Shakespeare, Chinese children on Confucius, and Arab children on the Qur’an; it is impossible for a person to adapt all the traits that are taught during those nascent years.
Though this diversity of culture creates a problem for immigrants, it should not be disparaged, for without it there would be no Shakespearean theater or Wagnerian opera. The fundamental problem with multiculturalism is that in telling someone all cultures are equal, the truly exceptional works are forgotten in the storm of mediocre works that are taught because of who wrote them where, rather than by their merit. Multiculturalism also appeals to the American ideal of equality, which allows Americans to see all cultures as essentially the same and peoples as having the same basic beliefs and wants. The belief in cultural equivalence provides implicitly for the foundation of programs in International Relations; to believe that all people have the same values and aspirations is, to put it mildly, deluded.
However, that belief has been placed as a central principle in American education, and thereby American policy. At Dartmouth a student can major in International Relations with only a basic knowledge of one language beyond English and a cursory knowledge of several different governmental systems. While the importance of the knowledge of a governmental system for a diplomat cannot be of overstated, that knowledge glosses over the critical need for knowledge of the people that influence that system and who created that system. A degree in International Relations breeds a professional, a man who can enter a system and adapt to it with ease, but with little grace or enthusiasm.
Contrast that student to a student of Asian Studies who concentrates on a particular area or country and develops a scholarly interest in the nation itself including its language, literature and people. Programs like Asian Studies produce scholars of a people, men like George Kennan who come to realize that a government is little more than a reflection of the attitudes of the people who created it. Scholars are useful not just to teach other scholars, but are important individuals in international affairs, since they can bring an intimate knowledge of a culture that can give an indication of action that a diplomat could only rationalize in hindsight. Few people serve as important a role in American success abroad as scholars who can weigh in on issues and speak with authority about the effects policies will have on a certain group of people.
A government major can say that all people want democracy and that equality is the default existence of man until it is perverted by external forces, but a Chinese scholar can tell you that democracy may never come to China for reasons that are rooted in the cultural consciousness of its people. Any liberal arts institution that wishes to provide its students with true tools must realize that to create men of influence in this world, the institution cannot concentrate on men of average skills in many things, but men of profound expertise in a few areas. The proverbial “jack of all trades, master of none” cannot rise above perpetual mediocrity.
Of course, a college in a nation such as the United States can disregard the peculiarities of foreign cultures with little consequence, especially as the world assimilates more and more American culture. Yet if the United States wants to remain a superpower it must work to maintain and grow its soft power through policies and diplomats who are well acquainted with the nations they deal with. In this way American ideals of democracy and free markets can be instilled in foreign locations more easily, for American policy makers will be familiar with the people they are dealing with. Even on the less grand scale of changing the world, a graduate of a cultural studies program will be better prepared to serve in international institutions, settle agreements, and, as is always important to a collegiate, find employment.