FOREIGN POLICY: NOT JUST FOR YOU BUT BY YOU AS WELL First Session:   THE IDEA OF PARTICIPATORY  NATIONAL POLICIES: MAINLY (BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY) FOREIGN POLICIES The first step towards making a policy is to notice the general collection of things, persons and problems which will later become the object of our choices, priorities and policy. If a reality is global, then it also by defnition rears its head in our neighborhood. Our supermarket offers bananas from Surinam, coffee from Columbia. Our bank whisks our deposit in minutes off to New York or London to finance a dam in the Sudan. A tree burned away in a Brazilian rain forest affects the quality of your air and mine. Groups in our midst, money-making, religious, study clubs link us to the wider world. Our Presbyterian church supports an observer group at UN headquarters in new York. Our Rotary Club provides homes and host familiies for high school students from abroad. First we look around and noice these linkages. Then we decide either to ignore international ties in our midst or use them or even create new ones. We read about Bosnia. We subscribe to magazines about our hobby as practiced in Ireland or Armenia. We develop intense relationships with the world outside the United States almost as if our own national government did not exist. We might ask our schools to offer selected foreign languages, do a better job teaching about government, geography and history. We can make a difference. But what if we want to make more than purely private policy? What if we want to persuade our Federal Government itself to link us abroad, to express some part of our vision for the world? We know that our national government relates to the world primarily through its executive branch. This means especially the President, the Secretary of State and the National Security Council. Secondarily, our government reaches out through Senate and House of Representatives. Moreover, our State Governors and Legislatures want foreign investment, promote exports and seek tourists. How do we judge this complex national network or governments going to work for our benefit and that of the world? We want cooperation, not gridlock or eternal bickering. A President, we think, should work through his Secretary of State but also be able to use other officers and even informal "executive agants" as Woodrow Wilson used Colonel Edward House or FDR used Harry Hopkins or President Clinton assigns tasks to wife Hillary Rodham. A President and a Secretary of State should, on vital issues, take advice and more from Senators and Representatives. The State Department should seek out and speak with individual citizens and citizens in groups.  Good men and women, do we not agree,  should be able to move in and out of government within a disciplined, welcoming framework invigorated by President and Secretary of State.  Ideally, the Preident should know when to bring even the warring political parties together on a vital issue and not constantly goad the parties into drawing daggers. You and I as individuals, family members, as dwellers in neighborhood, towns and counties, as free members of churches, synagogues, service clubs and study groups, as Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or Independents, may prefer a foreign policy not simply put together by others behind closed doors but made for us by ourselves. We want a hand in making policy before others set policy in concrete. Can we do this? Is democratic foreign policy possible? Have there been periods in our national history showing us how to create a modern democratic foreign policy? Let us now now discuss these ideas I have been throwing out. Next week we will look together at some historic highlights. -OOO- presented orally 07/11/1993 revisited and edited lightly for internet 03/26/2004 Patrick Killough Black Mountain, NC