National security is on the minds of most policymakers these days. Internationally the U.S. faces growing competition. America is confronting a hot war at Europe’s edge and a rising, nationalistic, and hostile power in Asia.
At home divisions continue to grow. The willingness of determined domestic forces to use violence was tragically highlighted by the racist murder spree at the Buffalo supermarket last year.
Individually, both phenomena are threatening. The danger will be greatly magnified if foreign and domestic threats merge. Although the differences among actors at home and abroad are great, their hatred of America and what it stands for is even greater. We already are seeing foreign forces exploit our internal differences. These problems will grow unless we confront them now.
Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election gained significant attention. Although such activity may have changed few votes, it helped inflame popular opinion and reinforce political polarization. The goal was never to create a Putin-friendly Congress or White House; rather, the objective was to strip our political system of the shared commitment, generosity, and trust necessary for democracy to operate.
There’s no need to persuade Americans to embrace authoritarian Russia if they can be convinced to fight one another. After all, they then won’t be willing to work together, even against Moscow. An America at war with itself is less able to carry the banner of freedom overseas, even if most Americans still believe in that message.
China also has targeted America’s home front. When the U.S. was swept by violent demonstrations two years ago, the New York Times reported, China was “reveling in the moment, seizing on the unrest to tout the strength of its authoritarian system and to portray the turmoil as yet another sign of American hypocrisy and decline.”
The U.S. faces other adversaries ready to use America’s political divisions to diminish its global role. North Korea is a cybercrime superpower. Iran plays an outsize role in the Middle East. All these governments work together: Russia and Iran in Ukraine; China and Russia in an “unlimited” friendship; North Korea long with Beijing and increasingly now with Moscow.
Various federal agencies seek to combat these and other threats, but that is not enough.
Like most Americans get a vaccine against the flu, we need to inoculate ourselves against the poisonous claims now infecting our civic and political life. The best way to defeat foreign forces attacking us at home is to work together to heal our internal divisions.
Not just any message will do. Using a traditional meme from either right or left, no matter how trenchant, is likely to fail, given the depth of distrust across the political spectrum in the U.S. today. Instead, Americans need to hear a credible message that is uniquely and broadly American, arising from the challenges and sharing in the successes of this nation. Precisely such a vision, originally formed to speak to Americans struggling with challenges from their past, comes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King articulated two vital themes. The first was every person’s unique moral value, our equality before God and the law, and the imperative to judge others based on character, not color. This understanding of who we are provides a firm foundation upon which Americans of even radically different backgrounds and beliefs can come together to confront common challenges.
His second principle was nonviolence. Americans could and must resolve their differences peacefully. That sometimes requires courage and sacrifice — as reflected in Dr. King’s life and those of so many other civil rights activists. However, there is no other way. Once some Americans begin turning to violence and other illegitimate tactics to get their way, other Americans will see no alternative but to respond in kind. Continuing down that path would wreck the America that most of us still love and undermine, if not destroy, this nation’s positive and essential role overseas.
Toward that end, Dr. Matthew Daniels of the Institute for World Politics has collaborated with Ambassador Andrew Young and scholars at Howard University and Bethune-Cookman, two of our nation’s leading historically black colleges, to develop the “MLK Educational Initiative.” They began by offering curricula for K12 students and are now expanding upward, in conjunction with a growing network of historically black colleges and universities.
Recently, the MLK Educational Initiative launched an Andrew Young Scholarship program with the Andrew Young Foundation and the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund that has won praise from leaders like Mayor of Atlanta Andre Dickens. With seed funding from McGraw Hill, the goal of this innovative scholarship program is to identify and support the next generation of Martin Luther Kings. These programs have generated enthusiastic endorsement for their positive impact on our rising generation.
The broader objective of the MLK Educational Initiative is to help heal America’s divisions — which is vitally important for our nation’s future. The U.S. has come through worse before. In 1861 America’s divisions led to the bloodiest conflict in our nation’s history. As a proportion of the population, the 750,000 subsequently killed during four years of that fratricidal conflict would be nearly 8 million today. We must ensure that we never travel down such a road again.
However, the benefits of righting ourselves at home would not stop at America’s borders. Doing so would leave fewer weaknesses for foreign adversaries to exploit. And the U.S. would be a more effective international player as well. Americans would be better able to lead in what threatens to be a twilight struggle between democracy and autocracy.
America faces increasingly serious challenges abroad. We must order our domestic house to be at our strongest in defending democracy, freedom and human rights abroad. That can be best achieved by transmitting the unifying, transcendent principles for which Dr. King sacrificed his life to the next generation of Americans.
Derrick T. Dortch is an expert on countering violent extremism and the Director of Career Services & Special Programs at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.