Getting Schooled on the Future Posted by David Shorr

If you need to replenish your optimism about America's future, then you need to talk to high school students. I spent last Wednesday with students from across Eastern Pennsylvania and Western Ohio, and it did me a world of good. The occasion was the 40th annual World Affairs Institute of the Pittsburgh World Affairs Council and Rotary International, with the theme of "Forecasting Global Trends: Your World in 2020 and Beyond." 

What a smart and impressive bunch. For instance, if you asked me to name a topic that would really captivate teenagers, even smart ones, I probably wouldn't pick global demographic trends. Now, all due credit to my fellow guest speaker Phillip Longman of New America Foundation, who shared a lot of fascinating findings and implications (many of them outlined in his recent Foreign Policy cover story). But even more credit to the students in the audience for their excellent questions; they were deeply engaged and curious.

 

In the break-out session, I got an even better sense of the students as we held a mock NSC staff meeting about how to respond to the assassination of British Prime Minister Daniel Radcliffe in 2020. These guys were so on-the-ball that they could have held their own in similar seminars I remember from grad school. The students had excellent ideas and questions, especially as we asked about the "known-unknowns" we needed in order to advise President Chelsea Clinton.

I also want to mention an excellent question that came my way during the plenary session -- a question that could hardly be more pertinent to current foreign policy. As always, my presentation emphasized the give-and-take of international cooperation, the need to make concessions to the interests of other stakeholders. But what about the dangers of overpaying in this process of bargaining, one student wondered?

Indeed, what about inflation in the price of compromises? Two current examples spring immediately to mind. President Obama has showered his generosity recently on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and make-or-break swing voter Sen. Jon Kyl for their cooperation on Middle East peace and New START ratification respectively. It's only reasonable to ask whether he's paying too much for too little. Let me counter with another question, though. Stipulating that the president is pursuing the right priorities, would the targets of his solicitousness go along at lower prices?  Thinking back to my grad school classes, we were taught that the strength of one's bargaining position depends mainly on one's ability to walk away without reaching a deal. The current high prices are reflective of the relative interests of the parties.

Which brings me to another point: the danger for the other party of getting too greedy or coy. Having been so generous, Obama has made it harder for Netanyau or Kyl to demur. I don't think either of them are sitting as pretty as they were a few weeks ago; they've overplayed their own hands and are starting to feel the heat. I see a theme of current policy here, having to do with Obama's preference for the moral authority of looking like the reasonable one, but that's the subject of another post.

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