Yesterday, Bement Senior Policy Fellow Allison Roberts and I attended the US Global Leadership Coalition’s discussion on America’s Role in the World: Why Leading Globally Matters for Indiana.
The events featured speakers the Honorable Lee Hamilton, Liz Schrayer (President and CEO, USGLC), Senator Todd Young, Ambassador Lee Feinstein, and John Ellenberger of Land O’ Lakes.
This important discussion built the moral, political, economic and security case for maintaining and improving the US commitment to providing leadership abroad on eliminating hunger and poverty, reducing conflict and strengthening our economic ties to the global community.
Speakers emphasized that many consumers on which Indiana business and the US economy more generally depend are outside the country. More than 800,000 jobs in Indiana are supported by trade. The vast majority of companies exporting goods in Indiana are small and medium sized businesses, employing more than 170,000 people.
Indiana’s public Universities, including Purdue and IU, attract large numbers of international students each year, representing billions of dollars. Our economic interests in the state and the nation more generally, then, are intimately tied to the global economy.
Withdrawal is not an option. Understanding our economy requires a deep knowledge of these international connections. We need the diplomatic and development infrastructures, not just investments in defense and the military, to support our economic goals.
Arguments supporting the importance of investing in international affairs infrastructure such as the State department and in USAID are not only economic. We know that diplomacy is critical for international security. If we leave a leadership vacuum on the international scene, there are other nations who will rush will fill it.
Most crucially, this diminishes our sphere of influence, which we may need at some point in the future when we want others to support our initiatives and priorities. Moreover, as Senator Young, Schrayer and others pointed out, aid to those suffering in the aftermath of war or famine is a long-term investment in our own security.
Massive numbers of displaced people - we now have the largest number of refugees in the world since WW2 - destabilize front line states like Jordan. In addition, food scarcity causes conflict, and such instability is a breeding ground for terrorism and weakens protections for human rights. As Senator Young said, roughly paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, it may be that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of a cure.
The most powerful arguments for the need for US global leadership centered on the US obligation to defend human rights and freedoms at home and in the world. With great power comes great responsibility, and the US has the ability and thus the obligation to do what it can to feed the hungry, shelter the displaced, and to reduce violence and conflict.
Concrete benefits - including the elimination or reduction of disease, access to medical care, reduction in modern slavery, trafficking and other forms of violence against women - are tangible results of US leadership in the past, and renewed efforts can again result in making the world a better place.
Reducing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, respect for human rights, and reducing poverty, hunger and conflict are not just the right thing to do, they make our world more peaceful and prosperous for all.
If the spirit of bi-partisanship, or non-partisanship, that the event sought to channel can be summoned to work on these important issues, it may be that a better world is indeed possible and even necessary, even in these challenging times.
