The Everyday Importance of International Relations: Walk a Mile in Your Own Shoes.

• Author: Ray, Charles
• Position: Viewpoint essay

Title: The Everyday Importance of International Relations: Walk a Mile in Your Own Shoes

Author: Charles Ray

Text:

When I served as the U.S. Department of States Diplomat in Residence at the University of Houston (TX) during the 2005-2006 academic year, in addition to recruiting and mentoring college students interested in taking the Foreign Service Exam, I did a lot of speaking on diplomacy and foreign relations in southeast and south Texas. One of the audiences I particularly liked talking to was high school students, the most interesting and challenging I've faced in my 30-year diplomatic career.

The principal of a Catholic school in Missouri City, a town just outside Houston, asked me to do a talk to her ninth graders on international relations. She asked that I try to relate it to them rather than giving the standard State Department lecture, which frankly is targeted to an older audience.

Up to this point in my career, my contacts with American teenagers had been almost exclusively with my own kids and the children of my Foreign Service colleagues. I went home that night to the house I'd rented near Houston's Astrodome, wondering how I would be able to find a way to communicate to this audience 'in its language.'

As I sat at my computer staring at a blank screen, an image came into my mind of the twelfth graders I'd spoken to at another school. For some reason, my mind focused on the fact that an overwhelming majority of them were wearing expensive running shoes; Nikes, Adidas, and the like. Why that came to mind, I don't know, but it reminded me of my tours in Cambodia and Vietnam, two countries where a lot of the shoes and other athletic gear for companies like Nike, Adidas, and the Gap are manufactured. Then, it hit me. I knew how to make international affairs relatable to an American teenager, and in doing so, make it more understandable for adults as well

While many Americans think that foreign political, economic, and social events have little bearing on their lives, a look at our everyday economy tells a different story.

Our Economic Dependence

Who, when reading or hearing about instability in the Middle East or the price of a barrel of oil, thinks of his or her shoes? Those expensive Nike, Adidas or Reebok athletic shoes, believe it or not, are made of a large number of petroleum-based polyurethane products, and glued together with an adhesive that is also a petroleum-based product.

The factory machines that are used to make...