Foreign Policy

(Rant warning: I am generally unhappy with the way things are and seem to be going through a mild bout of reverse culture shock combined with uncertainty of where I could be happy.)

I think that the US is seriously misreading where the future is going and I think the US is seriously forgetting where the past came from. CNN said yesterday that the Euro is the strongest currency on Earth compared to the dollar. The EU would have been thought a miracle 50 years ago. Cooperation, dialogue, and negotiation to secure real peace in our time have been shown to work in practice - it produced the world's strongest currency, among others. It has produced what hundreds of years of war couldn't. The future does not lie in soldiers and occupations. The future does not lie in attacks, terror, or mobilization. The future lies in openness, negotiation, and peace. Let the mission civilicatrice begin, then.

The reason peace is the future is the past. Humanity has seen centennia, if not millennia, of war, terror, and oppression of different kinds, that culminated in the deaths of millions of people in World War II and then in the gulags. Millions of people have disappeared during the night never to be seen again in the name of security. At least all of Europe has to live with the collective memories of the war. It doesn't seem that it has touched the US nearly in the same way. I hear news of things like Guantanamo and Iraq and no matter how I try not to think about it, the associations to the war come up, and it seems like no one else remembers here. We swore never to forget, but are we forgetting? Or, are Europeans remembering, but no one else? But how could anyone forget? One of our family friends was rescued by the Red Cross from a concentration camp. He still had the serial number tattooed on his arm. Part of our family lived behind the Iron Curtain. Another part had to fight for independence. Is it really so that without the personal connections to what happened, one doesn't care? Could it really be so? That others haven't learnt what can happen? That others maybe don't even know exactly how everything happened, how it could end up this way?

If this is so, I am afraid of what might happen here. It seems so ridiculous to make a comparison, but I seem to know very little sometimes. And it was unthinkable for it to happen in the first place. Our graduation speaker said that we live in interesting times, and I thought it an exaggregation. I sincerely hope he was wrong.