As you know, I'm a big fan of Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People philosophy. In 1990, I went through the program's facilitator training.

Dr. Covey begins with "inside-outside" effectiveness. People must first be internally congruent and effective. Then and only then can people work effectively with others.

America's role ought, first, to live up to its promise to its own people. America can't preach democracy and human rights while we're losing them at home. America must be admired and emulated for what it does for its own people, not for what they say to the outside world.

In a larger sense, America's role is to be the behavioral model for freedom, humanity, and stewardship of the planet.

The answers to your questions, Crissie, should come as fallouts from what America values. America must recommit to the ideals set forth by the Founding Fathers.

Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
If not now, WHO? If not now, WHEN?
BE THE CHANGE you wish to see in the world.

Hi Stan,

America's role ought, first, to live up to its promise to its own people. America can't preach democracy and human rights while we're losing them at home. America must be admired and emulated for what it does for its own people, not for what they say to the outside world.

In a larger sense, America's role is to be the behavioral model for freedom, humanity, and stewardship of the planet.

The answers to your questions, Crissie, should come as fallouts from what America values. America must recommit to the ideals set forth by the Founding Fathers.

In light of what you believe those values are -- and I agree with the values you've cited here -- how would you answer those questions?  You've begged the question.

Crissie

Hi Stan, Guyman, and others:

For the record, here are my answers on these foreign policy issues.  Some of them may surprise you.  Most won't.  Feel free to disagree. :)

• Should the United States try to manage the growth of foreign economies, through energy or other policies, to preserve the dominance of the U.S. economy?

NO.  While most of us have enjoyed the benefits of the U.S. being the dominant economy in the world, that loftly perch was never something we "earned" or to which we were "entitled."  It's certainly not something we're entitled to preserve at others' expense.

• Should the United States ratify and participate in the International Criminal Court, even if we don't have veto power over what cases are investigated and tried?

YES.  The U.S. declined to ratify and participate in the ICC because we held firm to our demand that ICC cases must be referred by the U.N. Security Council -- where we have veto authority -- rather than allowing it to function as an independent arbiter of international law.  Yes, participation in the ICC would cede some of our sovreignty, and yes, it would open up U.S. leaders to politically-motivated foreign prosecutions.  But the U.S. has no shortage of skilled lawyers, and we're up to that challenge.

• Should United Nations authorization be a necessary precondition for U.S. military action, except in direct defense against attacks-in-progress (not merely in contemplation) at or within our borders?

NO.  The U.S. Navy is the world's maritime police force.  Global trade relies on the safety of the world's sea lanes, and no other nation currently has the resources to protect them.  While I do believe the U.S. should seek U.N. authorization, and while Congressional authorization is a Constitutional mandate, I believe the specter of prosecution in the ICC (above) is the better institutional deterrent to ill-conceived and illegal interventionism.

• Should the United States sponsor covert "destabilization" efforts against regimes that oppose our interests?

NO.  Transparency is one of the touchstones of democracy.  When our nation engages in covert "destabilization" schemes (coups de etat, assassinations, funding insurgencies, etc.), these undermine democracy here at home.  Covert actions, by definition, happen outside the purview of Congress and the people.  When those actions rebound -- as they all too often do -- we the people are then unprepared to understand why an event occurred, and we are too easily led into compounding the covert mistakes by overt aggression.

• Should the United States offer a new "Bretton Woods" initiative to the European Union, offering a fixed exchange rate on the U.S. dollar and Eurodollar, even if the agreement would impose limits on U.S. fiscal policy?

YES, PERHAPS.  The Iran Oil Bourse is a ticking time bomb; it is, analysts say, Iran's true "nuclear option."  Full adoption of the IOB by OPEC nations would displace the U.S. dollar with the Eurodollar as the preferred "reserve currency."  With no reason to continue holding U.S. dollars for oil purchases, our lendors would have no disincentive to call in their U.S. debt, which would gut our economy.  A new "Bretton Woods" would immunize the U.S. from the IOB's "nuclear option."  However, such an agreement must be carefully crafted, so that we retain enough fiscal sovreignty to respond to crises, and so that the EU member nations are held to their fiscal limits.

• Should the United States encourage the World Trade Organization to adopt so-called "fair trade" rules, which for example would require U.S. companies that produce goods in foreign countries to pay "comparable wages," that is, wages equivalent to what they would pay U.S. workers, indexed for cost-of-living?

NO.  First, the middle class American lifestyle is so energy-intensive that we simply cannot establish it as the world standard.  (Indeed, we need to trim it; see "Transit 2020" below.)  Second, cost-of-living indexing between very different cultures is an exercise in self-delusion.  How do you value-as-income the food grown on individual family farms (decreasing COL), or the lower life expectancy caused by inadequate health care, poor environmental protections, and violence (increasing the COL)?  You can't legislate Leavittown into existence in Sri Lanka or Niger.

• Should the United States press the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for a "Jubilee 2010," that is, a forgiveness of international debt in countries where debt service consumes more than 25% of their federal budgets?

YES.  The "Jubilee 2000" program, spearheaded by Bono and the Catholic Church, was a good start.  But it was only a start.  Smaller emerging economies can never lift up their peoples' standards of living when those economies are saddled with crippling international debt.  International bankruptcy is a blunt instrument.  The "Jubilee" initiative was carefully crafted to protect over-indebted nations without deterring the very investment that offers them hope.

• Should the United States commit to a "Transit 2020" program, that is, to have the most advanced, most energy-efficient mass transit program in the world by the year 2020, if the funding for that program would require cuts in military spending?

YES.  In fact, this might well be the most important national security policy the U.S. could undertake.  Because the greatest national security risk is not Iran, or nuclear proliferation, or terrorism ... it is global warming.  "Transit 2020" would also be the most effective long-term solution to our dependence on Middle East oil.  Moreover, when many Americans are increasingly frustrated at the lack of quality jobs available, "Transit 2020" would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, most of them jobs that could not be exported because the work must be done here.  Finally, "Transit 2020" would yield an "infrastructure-industrial complex" as an alternative to the military-industrial complex ... something Wes Clark has identified as a fundamental social and political issue.

Each of these answers is, I believe, a position with which reasonable people may reasonably differ.  I'd like to explore those differences.

Crissie