American Culture Invades Foreign Policy
By Nicole St.Pierre
Ronald Steel is one of the few international relations professors
in USC College who mentions Native American struggles, slavery and
Western movies when he talks about the United States’ occupation of
Iraq.
As a scholar who analyzes international relations from a historical
vantage point, Steel will spend the next semester as a Whitney H.
Shepardson Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, during which
he will study foreign policy from a cultural perspective.
“When we consider domestic policy, close attention is paid to issues
like a state’s historical origins, interstate relations, religion and
demographics. But these cultural issues are rarely discussed in the
context of how our foreign policy has evolved through time,” says
Steel, who has published three books that analyze the forces governing
American foreign relations since World War II.
In his next project, Steel’s research will culminate in a book that
identifies the various cultural, social and ideological factors that
have shaped the U.S. approach to foreign policy. “It’s a big
undertaking, but I hope my work will open the door a crack, and give
people a different lens through which to view and analyze foreign
policy,” he says. “By examining the social customs and traditions that
are unique to the United States, you can ultimately understand why we
have the foreign policy we do.”
So how does one begin analyzing 227-plus years of history? “You have to
take a very hands-on approach and not limit yourself,” says Steel. His
research will include talking with religious leaders about America’s
origins; reading publications that shaped the U.S. identity, including
Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin”; and studying issues unique to the American experience, such as
the present-day effects of the clash with Native Americans that marked
the Colonial experience in North America, the Civil War and the impact
of slavery.
A paramount part of the project will involve religion’s influence on
foreign policy. “Today, religion is often used to justify the policies
we pursue as a nation. Concepts aren’t ‘useful,’ they are called
‘morally right,’” he says. “We have a larger population of people who
declare themselves to be believers than any other Western society.
These beliefs influence how we behave today as a nation.”
Another recurring theme in Steel’s study of American culture is fear.
“To a large extent, our society was built around fear,” says Steel,
referring to the Puritans, who were consumed with a fear of damnation.
“Just look at the Salem witch trials and the idea that there was a
conspiracy by the devil. This idea of a society being afraid of those
outside the perimeter has stuck with us through time.”
Steel’s research of American literature and film has already shed much
light on the project. By dissecting classic American movies and
literature, he notices a recurring theme: a country committed to the
notion of solving, rather than tempering or adjusting to problems. For
instance, Steel draws parallels between U.S. foreign policy and Western
movies like “High Noon”—an emblematic film about a violence-ridden
small town, in which a sheriff rides in to protect people from outlaws.
The people back down in the face of violence, and the sheriff is left
to defend an entire community.
“There’s a shoot out—and then there is the sheriff, the last brave man
standing. In many ways the United States represents that sheriff,” he
says. “The U.S. approach tends to be, go in and have a big fight to
solve the problem, and then get what we describe as closure. But other
societies don’t look for closure. Instead, they learn to manage, rather
than eradicate, problems. This is a huge difference in approach,” he
says.
Terrorism is a more specific example of how two cultures can define a
single concept differently. While teaching in Paris at the time of the
Sept. 11 crisis, Steel gained a dual perspective. “While the United
States is focused on ‘ending’ terrorism, other countries view it as a
chronic problem that can be managed, similar to a disease such as
arthritis or AIDS,” he says.
He remembers the days immediately following the disaster, when French newspaper headlines read: “We Are All Americans.”
“But then there was something particular about the way we responded to
the events that was very American, and other countries had difficulty
relating to us,” he says, pointing to the rhetoric of the Bush
administration as an example. Steel says the speeches that followed
Sept. 11 touched on themes very specific to the American historical
experience, using popular cultural sayings like “you’re either with us
or against us,” “dead or alive” and “a struggle of good against evil.”
Piecing together details to gain a big-picture perspective is not a new
concept to Steel. A double major in English and political science as a
student, he also has written about cultural icons like Walter Lippmann
and Robert Kennedy. To do their biographies justice, Steel sought to
analyze the person, as he saw himself and how others saw him.
“In many ways, this is what I am trying to do with America. To
understand the forces and sentiments that framed our thinking and
approach to foreign policy over time,” he says.
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