The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2020

34 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL looking power with unparalleled global reach; the profane land of hyper-religiosity; the rules-based nation where those who flout the rules sometimes rule. One could go on. In his autobiography, Edwin O. Reischauer, the father of American Japanology, expresses gratitude that his own lifelong professional focus had been the relatively uniform and intellectu- ally graspable Japan and not the impossibly vast, complex and polymorphous United States. There is something in the sheer size and scope, the “Sturm und Drang,” the endless variety and churn of the United States that makes clear patterns difficult to discern, until they emerge from the confusion in some new and distinctive shape, perceptible in retrospect. Like Steve Jobs borrowing several characteristically Japanese design features to resurrect Apple into the most highly valued corporation in the world. Who knew even 25 years ago that almost everyone in the world would be walking around with a smartphone in their hand in 2020? What is the next new game-changing thing on the horizon? Will it emerge from outside the United States, and leave us in the dust? Really? Are you willing to place a bet? It seems to me that the vast and messy complexity of the United States can blind us to the beating heart, the inner dyna- mism, the endless striving of this country. We mistake cacophony for noise; unbounded movement, and the accompanying mistakes and false starts, with anarchy; endless bad news with inevitable doom. In fact, these things may well reflect democratic resourcefulness and open-society resilience at work. I will never forget my overwhelming initial impression on returning to Califor- nia for home leave after spending three years in Malaysia. We had taken off fromKuala Lumpur’s then brand-spanking- new international airport—its gleaming halls echoing, listless and mostly empty at the time—and landed in Los Angeles. LAX was a veritable assault on the senses by comparison, a hectic explosion of human energy, of seemingly chaotic hustle and bustle, bursting at the seams with taxies and minibuses and macrobuses and all the rest, the whole motley multihued gang of them on the make. You could all but feel the jostling for position, the unchained ambition, the money being made. It suddenly occurred to me that, whatever the creaky, aging state of the airport’s infrastructure (trick question: Which one was the “developing” country?), I was seeing more naked commercial and economic dynamism curb- side at LAX than I had seen the entire previous year in KL. It wasn’t necessarily pretty, but it pretty much put things in perspective. Things could surely be better, but they were probably not as bad as they seemed. Incomplete Understanding Now I’d like to double back to where I began. It seems to me that many of us err, to differing degrees, in the same direction George Kennan did. However keen our assessment of foreign countries, we have an incomplete understanding of our own country. For one, we are too emotionally involved, too closely connected with the object of study to achieve the needed perspec- tive. We don’t have the same kind of cool-eyed separation that we enjoy in assessing the challenges and opportunities of others. In consequence, our conclusions about the United States, its current predicaments and future prospects, will tend to be myopic and to some degree misguided. At the same time, we are often too far removed from its fundamental truths, unaware of the reality “on the ground,” out of touch with the real United States as opposed to inside the Beltway and within our own self-involved bureaucracy. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly urged his senior advisers to keep abreast not only of developments related to their areas of professional expertise but also of popular culture, to ensure that they remained psychologically connected with the people they (we) represented. Let me immediately point out a way that I myself have fallen short on this score. After serving several successive tours abroad, I was out of the loop with respect to key aspects of evolving U.S. culture. For one, I largely missed the importance and impact of reality TV—“The Celebrity Appren- tice,” in particular—on our political system. As a result, my ability to accurately read and interpret the United States for others was severely compromised and diminished. (I had been a bit more prescient in predicting the way in which the hit TV series “24” had helped pave the people’s way psychologically for the rise to the nation’s highest office of the current occupant’s predecessor.) In the context of these musings, I find myself less sure about my views on critical current events and controversial foreign policy questions than I might otherwise have been. For example, While the nature and mood of the current moment feel somehow different, the persistent critical questioning and unhinged, sometimes blistering criticism of the United States itself are hardly new.