Polly Diven, professor of political science and director of the
international relations program, answers a question on U.S. foreign
policy during the Hauenstein Center event on October 12 at the DeVos Center.
The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies welcomed four national
experts to discuss U.S. foreign policy and the importance of global
citizenship during a panel discussion on October 12 at the DeVos
Center on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus.
Since its formation as a nation, Americans and their leaders have
grappled with the role of the United States in international relations.
Should the U.S. be a nation that embraces isolationism and an
“America First” philosophy, or should the U.S. employ a stronger
presence to protect its interests and allies?
Grand Valley’s Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies welcomed
author and historian Christopher McKnight Nichols to lead a panel
discussion exploring the centuries’ of influences upon U.S. foreign
policy and how they will shape the nation’s path with current global conflicts.
Joining Nichols in the discussion were:
Polly Diven, professor of political science and director of the
international relations program at Grand Valley
Emily Conroy-Krutz, associate professor of history at Michigan
State University
Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential
History at Southern Methodist University
In her research, Diven pointed to four objectives that drive U.S.
foreign policy: national security, ideology (i.e. the Cold War),
humanitarianism and domestic economics.
“Most of foreign policy is the result of two or three of those
objectives happening at the same time,” Diven said. “There is no one
core value, but we see that foreign policy is an amalgam of certain
levels of people becoming involved and asking for different things.”
U.S. foreign policy will be tested with current geopolitical
challenges around the world and will likely shape how Americans
perceive their place in international relations, said Nichols,
professor of history and Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National
Security Studies for the Mershon Center for International Security
Studies at Ohio State University.
“The main questions really are oriented around what are the core
values and assumptions that have guided U.S. foreign policy,” he said.
“They obviously haven't been static, no one would argue that, but to
what extent have there been consistencies.”
It’s been nearly 20 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Taiwan is
facing the looming threat of an invasion by China and, most recently,
Hamas and Israel are engaged in a devastating conflict that will carry
repercussions for decades.
“One of the things that we need to really bear in mind is the
continued contest over what the U.S. should be doing, how it should be
acting and what its values ought to be,” Conroy-Krutz said. “This has
never been something that Americans have been in agreement with and
they've argued about it from the very beginning.”
Engel said since the end of World War II, every U.S. administration,
with the exception of one, believed that if Americans are not engaged
in the world, particularly in Europe, then chaos will emerge, and the
consequences will be larger than taking an isolationist perspective.
“The problem is the American public did not necessarily buy into
that,” he said. “The American public did not have the same viewpoint
as their elite policymakers. The American public asked questions of
the domestic economy or values or anything else that would say. ‘How
is this important to me?’”
The discussion evolved into the importance and ethics of global
citizenship, an idea that Americans have debated since the American
Revolution, Nichols said.
“Thomas Paine famously said, ‘I’m a citizen of the world, and my
mission in the world is to do good,’” Nichols said. “Gov. Morris made
an argument that if any of the people at the Constitutional Convention
identified as world citizens, then they would be bad citizens for the
United States.”
The panel was part of the Hauenstein Center’s 2023-2024 programming
theme of “Empowered Citizenship.” Throughout this academic year, the
Hauenstein Center will present authors, lecturers and experts to
discuss and examine what it means to be a citizen in modern society
and the responsibilities it entails.