On loving your country

An Australian colleague reacted with surprise that our senior American delegation had agreed to a bilateral meeting with Brunei. Brunei is a nation of 300,000 people in Southeast Asia, with tropical rainforests honey sweet with truly fresh air. A Russian friend recently told me she was shocked when many of her American friends had asserted that the US-Russia relationship was no longer central to American foreign policy, implying that Russia’s significance had declined since the times of the Cold War. She felt quite the contrary. A Chinese friend of mine whose express purpose in studying in the US was to learn about the openness of the media, asked me why the US media could not be asked to self-censor when reporting on Tibet in the interest of keeping good US-China relations. She was offended particularly by the many mistakes of American reporting on Tibet and consequently was disinclined to believe other reporting as well. Another Chinese friend of mine, a Hong Konger who had heard similar questions from his friends, was ready to throw up his hands at China’s lack of sophistication in dealing with media. A Japanese diplomat casually over lunch mentioned to me that among his friends they agreed it was impossible to get good service in the U.S. He sounded like an American friend of mine complaining about service in France. Did I mistakenly leave the Australian with the impression it was as important as Brunei? What can I say to reassure my Russian friend? With my mainland Chinese friends, how do I avoid getting categorized with the British in the Opium Wars? And, to France, I apologize directly.