Larry D. Lauer

Recently I attended national security programs in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Atlantic Council. Together they provided helpful context for understanding the likely priorities of a Trump presidency and how to compensate for the uncertainties.

My take-a-way was that we can expect much less presidential interest in leading with traditional American values (i.e. human rights and participatory democracy), a significant and rapid military build up, and much more emphasis on individually negotiated bilateral trade agreements, including with China.

From my vantage point as a strategic and international communication professional, writer, and teacher, I concluded the following:

(1) If the Trump administration has little interest in championing human rights and democracy, advancing the American brand of “individual freedom and justice” will get little attention.

(2) Without American domestic and foreign policies based on fundamental human values there will be little hope for the U.S. retaining its leadership of the free world.

(3) Our allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia will no longer have a way of anticipating our response to the inevitable crises that will be threatening them.

During years of international teaching and consulting I experienced just how much people around the world admire the basic “idea of America.” People everywhere wear American jeans and T-shirts until they wear out, listen endlessly to “American songbook” music and jazz, and watch every Hollywood movie that comes their way, all because they admire the human values and promise of freedom they symbolize.

One major speaker at the CSIS program summed it up this way. He pleaded for hundreds of NGO’s, associations, universities, institutions and individuals to plan major activities and events that will compensate for a predictable lack of focus on the most basic of American values in the Trump administration’s approach to governing. In other words, in this time of uncertainty we must all become citizen diplomats and demonstrate that the “idea of America” that the world admires is still very much alive!