Guest Op-Ed: St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs: Take a Tour Through a World of Trouble and Toil

Roseanne Roseannadanna, the great modern philosopher of the original Saturday Night Live, once uttered a phrase both timeless and profound – "it's always something."

When the Cold War ended, Americans were ready to turn our attention to home and start spending our time and treasury on ourselves. We thought we were in for a good run – until 9/11 shook our faith in the future. Today, we would very much like to put our Middle East adventures behind us, but ISIS, another unintended consequence of history, continues to rear its ugly head.

So Ms. Roseannadanna may have stumbled onto something: When we think we've moved beyond a crisis, another always follows.

We need to talk. And the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs, now in its fourth year, will look at issues from around the globe as well as those close to home to help to frame the discussion. It occurs from Feb. 17-19 at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

When the flames of ethnic, religious and political strife destroy whole countries in Africa and the Mideast, should we step in to try to rebuild? Building a state from zero reminds me of my time in Bosnia in a period of reconstruction. There was a plethora of criminals but no courts to try them, nor cops to arrest them nor jails to house them. Very often, the ideas we export are too little, too costly or inappropriate.

On the home front, are you confused or frustrated about the U.S. health care system? We bring you non-Americans who will talk about their single-payer systems, as well as U.S. medical industry specialists who will endeavor to explain ours.

Wonder how millennials perceive the world? (They drive cars less, are more concerned about the environment, often live at home with mom and dad, and spend hours on end on their smartphones.) Come hear about and from them.

Wonder whether women have shattered the glass ceiling that long impeded their professional advancement in both private and public sectors? Come listen to those who have done it and survived to talk about it.

In Europe, we see the social effects of uncontrolled migration into societies unaccustomed to strangers in their midst. Fifty years ago, the first trickle of North African Arabs began migrating toward the Old Continent in search of jobs, much as they did centuries earlier. Although they may have filled the employment gap in aging societies, they brought associated issues of culture and religion, which the Europeans didn't anticipate.

When I lived in Brussels in the '80s, I was quite used to seeing scenes such as young Moroccan men slaughtering lambs by the curbside during Ramadan. Most Belgians found it savage.

Conversely, imagine the bewilderment of young Mideast Muslims who end up in an Italian elementary school where each classroom hosts a large crucifix right behind the teacher's desk.

Today, Syrians and others fleeing conflict arrive however they can on Europe's southern shores, sowing concern about whether they can find a peaceful place to live and work in a new and more liberal society.

And if the social dislocation of mass immigration is not enough, witness how the Greek economic tragedy has shaken the foundations of the European Union. Can "profligate" Greeks and other Mediterranean countries count on thrifty Germans to bail them out, all while our British cousins look to shrink their contribution and allegiance to the European Union by striking a new deal with Brussels?

For their part, Europeans love to look across the pond at America when things seem bad at home – at the very lively discussions in this country on abortion, the proper place of religion in society, gay rights and so on. The American back and forth on the appropriate use of firearms in a modern society remains loud and shrill.

Secular as they may be, however, European publics may well have swung farther to the right with the birth of nativist political parties that call for stemming immigration, question the democratic nature of the European Union, and advocate political control being returned "to the people." Do they share a common outlook with America's tea party?

America too is in the throes of redefining itself. Not since immigration was suspended in the 1920s for fear of "too many Catholics and Jews" have we heard from anyone that we should build walls to stem the flow of Latin Americans and suspend all arrivals from the Muslim world.

On the other side of the political ledger, changes in marriage laws are accompanied by revisions in immigration regulations permitting LGBT people to apply for refugee status in the United States. Left and right continue to debate the fate of 11 million undocumented workers in our midst. It might be hard shooing them out – but how will a country proud of its immigrant tradition deal with people who will do anything to escape poverty and violence at home?

Every year our audience wants to know where the American jobs have gone, or why they have not felt the beneficial effects of higher growth rates. Will our kids and theirs have to support us in old age, and will we be better off if Congress ratifies the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact? Further afield, many people in the developing world still live daily on what it costs for a large coffee at McDonald's.

On Syria, have we decided whether we have a dog in that fight? We now have a nuclear agreement with the Iranians, but can we guarantee that their radical religious leadership will eventually eschew assistance to terrorist movements, stop threatening the Israelis and become, from our view, part of the solution?

Can we mend our ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two dictatorships who essentially oppose what we stand for? When I worked in Cairo in the late '80s, I recall how violently the Mubarak regime treated the Muslim Brotherhood and others, and how they brushed aside our friendly advice to give Western concepts of human rights a chance.

My sister is just returning from a trip to Havana, noting that Cubans can tell about life like it is – barely enough food to go around, government ownership, low pay and a universal "yes" to America lifting the embargo – but they are afraid, still, to talk about politics. How does that compare to post-Chavez Venezuela, where the government and the economy are verging on collapse?

When I worked in the State Department, the European office was the place to be. We had a quarter of a million troops on the Old Continent, and protecting Bonn and Paris and London from the Soviets and from themselves was the focus of our foreign policy.

Things have changed. China is undoubtedly the country that, day to day, garners the most attention. Our Chinese friends, or adversaries – take your pick – have learned a lot from us, but they've eschewed lectures on democracy, and their Confucian self-image is far from our own. They're building a proverbial silk road of investments from Asia to the Middle East to Europe to Africa to invest the riches of their export society.

Their relations with an autocratic Russian neighbor worry strategists, and neither has qualms about supporting despots and dictators when they choose their allies. They're literally building islands in the South China Sea, challenging our supremacy of the seas, and their use of technology troubles all of us who want our cyberspace free of snoopers. Just a few months ago, I and thousands of other former and current federal government employees received notification that Chinese hackers had gained access to all of our security files.

And Russia, once reduced to also-ran status as an economic and political player, has relied on its authoritarian leadership, and a substantial dollop of nationalism, to challenge those who escaped their control and joined NATO and the EU. Concurrently, they have diverted our attention in Syria, where they argue that the current dictatorship of President Bashar Assad is better than the alternative. What is President Vladimir Putin's next move in the Middle East or Eastern Europe? Will he turn his attention to defeating ISIS?


Diplomats, academic experts and specialists will gather at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg Feb. 17-19 for the fourth St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs. It is free and open to the public. Park for free in the campus garage. Find details on talks and times at stpetersburgintheworld.com.