Session 14
The Alternative

          What will it take for the United States to reassume its historic role as a leader nation to bring about a rising standard of living, a growing sense of economic common purpose, and peace to the world? The 21st century presents an extraordinary opportunity for the United States to exercise its soft power and spread the benefits of democratic capitalism, to teach by word and example the only economic system that combines elimination of material scarcity and broad wealth distribution with the enduring values of freedom, trust, and cooperation.
          During the transition to peace, the U.S. must be an enthusiastic supporter of the United Nations as the only agency available to displace violence with the rule of law in the relations among nations. This does not mean abrogation of the national sovereignty of any country, but it does mean that all nations—including the U.S. —must be held accountable to the high standards for international behavior set by the charter and other declarations of the U.N. The U.N. must be the starting place for the occasional use of force against nations that refuse to abide by the rule of law. Military coalitions and even unilateral actions will continue to be necessary, and they can be acceptable, but only with U.N. approval. The delicate problem of supporting a multilateral approach to the use of military force without compromising sovereignty, broadly defined, will be solved for the simple reason that the world cannot afford the alternatives.
          For example, the war on terrorism ought not to be fought unilaterally by the United States but be coordinated by the U.N. Immediately after 9-11, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution in support of the U.S. , pointing out that the U.N. had the infrastructure in place to conduct the long fight throughout the world against terrorism. President Bush, however, never mentioned the U.N. in his address to Congress following 9-11.
          The U.N. is an imperfect organization needing both reform and further development. But why would one expect the United Nations to be anything other than imperfect when one considers how many officials in the world’s most powerful nation have treated it with contempt? For years, the U.S. refused to pay our U.N. dues, and in January 2000, Senator Jesse Helms (R., North Carolina ) even appeared before the Security Council and told them that they had to do it “our way” or America would quit! [62]
          The necessary reforms depend on steady support by the United States for a strong U.N. and renewed American leadership of the world in economic common purpose. The standard of living will then go up, and the violence will go down, when global corporations work with governments to help the poor countries. As costly as this undertaking shall be, global corporations will do this work for two reasons: A moral obligation and good business. Each country that joins the world’s free markets adds to total growth, and as long as the wealth is broadly distributed, all countries will benefit from free trade.
          Many of the politicians who undermine American support of the U.N. are the same people who keep America’s contribution to foreign aid at one of the lowest percentages of GDP of any mature economy. Foreign aid has often been poorly managed, but similar to attitudes about the United Nation, the American focus needs to be on fixing what is amiss, not using the failures as an excuse to abandon its obligations. Weak U.S. foreign aid, the contradiction of free trade implicit in agricultural subsidies, and other unilateralist policies, as well as the corruptions of ultra-capitalism, now combine to portray to the world the image of an arrogant, greedy, self-centered America, nothing like the “light on the hill” that inspired the world two centuries ago. The spirit of ordinary Americans has not changed, I believe, but the quality of the leadership has; the quality of leadership, however, is ultimately the responsibility of the people.
          Those Muslim nations suffering from the tyranny that results when religion and state are coupled, will either have to move towards economic freedom or explain to their people why they are being systematically deprived of the good things in life that can be viewed on television or read about over the internet. Once America espouses the system that not only can eliminate material scarcity but does so in a moral way, then the enemies of freedom and their repressive ideologies will lose credibility as morally superior among their followers.
          After the ultra-capitalist dragon has been slain, and wealth is more broadly distributed in each country and around the world, then people can unite in economic common purpose. Better education and a rising standard of living go together, and once the building momentum becomes visible, the violence will recede and the U.N. can begin to foster positive competition that will come to mean a contest of nations vying with one another to improve the lives of their people.
          Instead of geopolitical power struggles and wars, the international community will, for the first time, concentrate on measurement and accountability in improving lives. This new positive focus can be based on the existing U.N. Human Development Index that is a composite assessment of a nation’s GDP that measures productive growth, life expectancy that measures efforts to improve health, and literacy that measures how well countries are educating their people.
          People naturally like to compete and keep score. After the U.N. Human Development Index comes into broader use, people will become interested in which countries are in the top positions, and which are toward the bottom. The U.N can then add to the Development Index predictions made by countries’ leaders based on three-year average improvement targets. Competition can then expand from absolute standings to how well countries are doing in comparison to their own plans.
          Some may think that such measurement and accountability is game-playing, simplistic, or naïve in a violent world, but perhaps they have not had the experience in how quickly and powerfully people respond to a positive message. The positive message is that we can do better, and that we can do better in competition with those countries just ahead of us in the standings.
          When rich nations and powerful global corporations join together with emerging economies, performance will improve as it always does with trust and cooperation, except the improved performance will now benefit all of the world’s citizens. Great benefit will accrue when rich countries are measured not only in terms of their own performance but also in terms of their sponsorship of emerging economies. When global corporations are added to this roster of international commercial coaches, the competition will become even greater and more productive of progress. Instead of begrudged foreign aid, conceived as international welfare and dominated by bankers with limited experience in the management of change, competitive managers, experienced in training, motivation, and resource application, will compete to parlay funds from the mature economies into profitable long-term programs among the emerging economies. These experienced team managers will not predetermine failure by under-funding and inadequate training.
          In this scenario, dramatic improvement in the lives of people in various countries will put economic freedom on display as the universal solution, and best practices will spread under the monitoring influence of competition. Those countries stuck at the bottom of the list in absolute terms, or in terms of meeting their improvement targets, will be subject to pressure from their own citizens to restructure governmentally for better support of economic freedom. Over time, the benefits of economic freedom will lead to political and social freedoms. Democracy will grow naturally throughout the world, not from a political campaign for human rights but, rather, because of recognition that political freedoms enhance the capacity of economic freedom to get the job of improving lives done better.
          Aristotle, the philosopher of common sense, laid out the plan almost two and one-half millennia ago, but the system of production at that time did not have the capacity to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and provide good health and hope for all the people. Now that the productive system has demonstrated its capacity to do all of these things, Aristotle’s eudaimonia, life lived to its full potential, is no longer limited to the fortunate few but has become available for all. This is the same promise of the American Founders: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all; it is the vision of the French Enlightenment: “liberty, equality, and fraternity;” and it is the challenge of Marx’s manifesto: “ In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
          When the impediments are removed, and the conducive circumstances are in place, momentum towards a world of peace and plenty will be enormous and irreversible. The momentum will be irreversible because rising affluence and better education will equip more and more people to accelerate the progress and passionately oppose its reversal. The progress will be irreversible because the U.N.’s Human Development Index will shine a bright light on any nation that is not improving lives, and an even brighter light of stardom on every nation that is leading the way. Future generations will benefit from this self-perpetuating momentum toward the realization of full human potential, but they will wonder why it took so long because it will all seem so essentially human, so reasonable!