The World Is Helping Americans Who Don’t Always See It

Heather Hurlburt published a New York Times oped on thinking globally to recover from coronavirus locally.

In our daily lives, we benefit from — but do not see — a web of international cooperation on everything from mail to air traffic to entertainment, not to mention disease surveillance. The international economy, in particular, we view as an immutable force of nature, rather than an environment we can shape with policy or consumer choices.

We are reminded of how the world links up with us when those links fail — pesticides in imported foods, for example — and especially when national security is invoked. Many more Americans will have seen U.S. soldiers conducting counterterrorism operations in West Africa than will have seen U.S. health workers supporting contact tracing there. TV news consumers will know much more about U.S. support for the drug war in Colombia than they do about pioneering efforts that let citizens help shape local government budgets in Brazil.

Yet the latter two efforts might be much more helpful to rebuilding health infrastructure and trust in local governments here at home.

Offscreen, too, rigid divides between domestic and international policy persist across the academy and the professions. It remains not only possible, but preferred, to get a doctorate in U.S. politics or public health without taking an “international” class — or to study “international” economics, development or politics without ever learning the U.S. system deeply enough to compare.