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The future of 'Chimerican' relations
By Thomas Bork (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-11 22:59 Washington – American scholar and diplomat Dr. Patrick Mendis argues greater US-China relations in his latest book,TRADE for PEACE: How the DNA of America, Freemasonry, and Providence Created a New World Order with Nobody in Charge. In addition to Chimerica, Dr. Mendis coined the words like Chindia, Chirusia, Chifrica, and Chipan to describe China's peaceful rise in the global community.
Professor Mendis, who serves a Visiting Scholar in Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and the Vice President of the Osgood Center for International Studies, looks back to America's origin to see its future. He sees that the emergence of US and China trade relations is forging that American vision. In his book, he explained the rise of China's economic rise since joining WTO. Professor Mendis taught at the Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xi'an as a visiting faculty of the University of Maryland before he joined the US State Department. He has also worked in the US Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Defense as well as the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and the United Nations. He is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. His interdisciplinary exploration – the production of a quarter century of teaching, research and global travel – has earned much praise in academic, diplomatic and development circles. Dr. Lincoln Bloomfield, MIT professor of political science emeritus and National Security Council director during President Jimmy Carter, describes the book as "a tour de force." He adds, "Americans from other cultures sometimes show the keenest sense of this nation's values. In this insightful work, Patrick Mendis approaches the American narrative with a sharp scholarly edge, drawing richly on America's classical roots, including a near-mystical appreciation of Freemasonry in the political architecture of the new American order." Professor Mendis says America has been a nation of rivals ever since the arrival of Columbus. The colonists and the Pilgrims embodied a "plantation of Trade" and a "plantation of Religion" through which traditions the rivalry between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians has emerged to build the most dynamic Union. Even with their distinctive impulses for economic interests and moral sentiments, they favored freedom; hence, they were united for a common cause: peace. Fascinated by American ideas, Professor Mendis – with his Buddhist and Christian upbringings in Sri Lankaand Minnesota, and working in Washington– reveals the founding vision. The author does not pause there; he employs the Constitution's "commerce clause" to explore the global mission of the United States as the Founding Fathers envisioned – and manifested once more by President Barack Obama, the Mercury of America's global revolution. Professor Mendis is being compared with the famous French author Alex de Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America, which appeared in two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Dr. Robert Kudrle, professor of international trade and investment policy at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Law School of the University of Minnesota, says Dr. Mendis is "Like de Tocqueville," who “sees cultural connections that those born in theUSoften overlook”. Former US ambassador to Tanzania Michael Retzer writes: "Patrick Mendis, a perceptive world traveler whom I first met in South Africa, is a scholar and diplomat. Above all, he is a great American, who has visited all the 50 states. A Sri Lankan by origin and a Minnesotan by nature, he has seen them all. Like Alex de Tocqueville, Dr. Mendis writes about the promise of America and the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. In this book, he observes that America's inspiring history is still in the future.” Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of TIME magazine and president of CNN, says, “Patrick Mendis, in this carefully researched book, seeks to explain how trade is encoded in the DNA of the United States and expressed in its Constitution. He provides an interesting approach for analyzing the nation's commercial roots.” For over two decades, Dr. Mendis was a protégé of the late Professor Harlan Cleveland, a highly regarded US ambassador to NATO and assistant secretary of state under President John F. Kennedy. It was Ambassador Clevel and who inspired Dr. Mendis to become interested in American foreign policy and international relations at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, where Cleveland was the founding dean in the 1980s. Dr. Mendis was one of the three recipients of the first Humphrey Leadership Award in 1986 along with Ambassador Max Kampelman and former Vice President Walter Mondale. "We need to develop an integrative knowledge," Professor Mendis said, attributing it to his mentor Ambassador Cleveland. His book is a 624-page tome that combined history, politics, economics, architecture, esoteric knowledge, foreign policy strategies, and global trade relations. While growing up inSri Lankawith Buddhist monks and Catholic priests, Professor Mendis has evidently mastered the basics of astrology and early Christian esoteric knowledge. A Catholic by birth, he was exposed to a variety of religious experiences and diverse disciplines – and traveling to more than 75 countries. Most recently, he studied the "secret" knowledge of Freemasonry that had clearly influenced America's founders. After receiving the Benjamin Franklin Award from the US State Department as a diplomat, he learned more about Franklin –America's famous astrologer and the first diplomat. Professor Mendis will be visiting China to discuss his book and US-China relations at the invitation of several universities and the China Foreign Affairs University of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. More about the book and its author is found at www.patrickmendis.com. Thomas Bork has served as a visiting professor of international relations at the China Foreign Affairs University and the program director of the America's Development Foundation in Beijing, China. |
