To say it’s a complex world is a cliché, but according to Frank Gomez, a retired foreign service officer with the U.S. State Department, this country is acting as if life is as simple as being the sole global superpower can be. But the reality is we live in what he calls a “tri-polar” world, where the American goliath is being challenged by our friends in the European Union and by possible rivals in emerging Asia and the Indian subcontinent, even as a new influx of immigration changes the face of our nation in ways that are being ignored. But we have the resources to cope, he says, if we use them well.
Gomez spoke at an event on Thursday, Feb. 7 at the Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home in Hyde Park, sponsored by the World Affairs Council of the Mid-Hudson Valley, a nonprofit, non-partisan forum engaging citizens in learning more about international affairs.
As a foreign service officer, Gomez directed the State Department’s foreign press centers and was deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. During his tenure there, he won five outstanding service awards. He later served as the director of media relations and executive outreach for Philip Morris Companies Inc. He founded the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Hispanic Leadership Council, and chaired the Pan American Development Foundation and the Hispanic Council on International Relations.
Gomez told the 50 or so attendees at the event that he views “pride, ethnicity, religion and language” to be the four primary causes of global conflicts. The way to build a more peaceful planet is to learn about each other in ways that allow for communication instead of misunderstanding leading to conflict, but on these scores, Gomez said, the U.S. is slipping in several important areas.
He said one need look no further than the current campaign for president of this country, during which candidates and the press are essentially ignoring foreign policy except for proclamations about Iraq. The strength of the euro, (the currency created by the European Union), the massive holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds by Chinese financial institutions, the situation in South America where emerging democracy is battling with new fledgling dictatorships and the horrendous situation on an African continent bedeviled by disease and civil wars, are all realities that are being largely ignored.
Worse, he said, the people of the world – attuned as they are to the new instantaneous communications mediums of satellite television and the Internet – are aware of being ignored. The new media, Gomez said, “blares the news every day that America has other more pressing concerns.” He noted that with the growth of China’s economy and the increasing success of the European Union, the world has gone from the so-called “sole superpower” of the U.S. in the post-Soviet era to “a tri-polar world – the United States, the European Union and China – yet the current political campaign is devoid of any suggestion of awareness about this new tri-polar world.”
We have the tools
The United States has the ability to cope with this changing world, simply by calling on the diverse skills and outlooks of our increasingly polyglot society. “The reality is our diversity is increasing. People are preserving their language and ethnicity,” he said, noting that newcomers to the nation are “retaining, not losing, their culture; and frankly, I see it as a plus.” Such diversity will allow us to deal with other peoples of the planet from a position of knowledge about their languages and customs, thus averting the misunderstandings he attributes to his big four causes of troubles.
However, he said, we as a nation are ignoring our potential strengths, and are proving particularly lax in education. “We are not among the world leaders in any area of educational achievement,” he said, referencing studies indicating that, of the top 29 nations in reading, math and science, the U.S. ranks 24th, 15th and 20th, respectively. The rate of American kids’ graduation from high school peaked at 77 percent back in 1969 and has not improved since then.
Meanwhile, things could get worse as our ability to understand each other diminishes. Gomez noted that projections show half of our population growth between now and 2015 will derive from the arrival of immigrants, and that rather than consisting of the traditional European nationalities that made up the bulk of previous waves of immigration, the current wave comes largely from Latin America and Asia. The result, he said, is that American society “is changing enormously.”
Gomez stressed that this new influx should be a potential strength in what he cited as the “global village” predicted by Marshall McLuhan, but said society in this country needs to reassess how to integrate the diversity into a newly flavorful melting pot, with new ingredients such as the children of single-parent households. He noted, for example, that half of all births are now from what he quaintly termed “out of wedlock,” and that those children are at greater risk for health problems and are more likely to be undereducated relative to the increasingly high-tech demands of the global economy. In short, he said, “They will be less prepared for the future.”
And Gomez posed a rhetorical question he said encapsulates the challenge America faces in seeking to retain its position of global leadership: Whose responsibility is it to integrate society into a cohesive and health whole? “It’s our collective responsibility,” Gomez said. “This is about us; it isn’t just about them.”