Focus 022815

The Greeks welsh on their debts. Africa is disease ridden. Palestinians are terrorist. Israel practices ethnic cleaning.  North Korea is insanity with a BOMB.  The Russians are coming.  Muslims are taking over the world.  Christians demand renew crusades. The United States is on the verge _____. (Fill in the blank)

It's all sound bite foreign relations.  Sound bites built around grains of truths but foreign policy is a very big sandbox.  Objective news reporting is a causality of the electronic age, there are some objective scholarly journals around but they are to esoterically objective for politicians to understand.  So they turn to their favorite polarized think tanks that support radicalized political agendas for grant money.  As a result foreign policy leaps from one crisis to another, resolving nothing and creating a chaotic bubbling stew that satisfies no hungers while leaving an offensive taste in billions of mouths.

Sound bite diplomacy, chasing polls and jumping from frying pan to frying pan is indicative of a lack of strategic vision in foreign affairs.  Can any national leader negotiate coherent foreign policies in the sound bite world?  According to some sources a print reporter coined the phrase, "all politics is local," back in 1932, meaning that politicians must bring home the bacon.  Politics were local back then while still true today it's also true that "All Politics is Global."  What a politician in a small remote village says in a campaign for dog catcher is instantly flashed around the world and picked up by foreign politicians as reflections of national policy.   It really doesn't matter what the official positions of governments are, minds hear the isolated sound bites of obscure politicians and holy men and react with a fear of uncertainty.

Uncertainty is fed by foreign policies that flounder from election to election.  Governments no longer speak with one voice but with competing political gibberish that fills media space while passing as authoritarian confusing reality with constant electioneering.  With all the foreign policy chattering it is little wonder that people hear what they want to hear and take offense at pseudo reality.

Until nations step back for a moment to see world reality, a coherent foreign policy can not be crafted.  The first step for a nation is to identify its core values and interests, consider its present and future capabilities and devise a long-term strategy for sandbox games.  Nations must get past sound bite diplomacy and selfies as world visions. 

Great Britain began to lose its greatness during World War One but after a 100 years it still struggles with its past power player self image even as the much diminished Britain itself faces internal fractures.  Failure to adjust to rapid changing foreign affairs dynamics may result in the New World Order increasingly becoming World Disorder as global sound bite politician battle for power. 

It is imperative that national focus shifts from sound bites to negotiations for a coordinated and comprehensive world vision of the 22nd century. Failure  is not an option.