Why the U.S. is the First Choice

This week I write first on why despite disappointments, jolts, and complaints the US remains the world’s strongest magnet for human talent, and then touch on President Trump’s peacemaking efforts. 

For 160 years, from the time the American Civil War ended, for anyone anywhere who has wanted or needed to leave her/his country and has kept in touch with what is happening in our world, the first choice for a new life and a new home has been the US – “the new world,” as it was widely seen and called. Behind this choice was more than the broad and rich spaces, the lands, lakes, rivers, and ports, of the US. It was the “new” country’s psychological substance. 

The old world had its fixed rules, rulers, ruling classes. Even those in the ruling classes found the fixity tiresome. The rest found it burdensome. The US offered, it promised, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”! Was it just words? The Civil War showed a willingness to pay a massive price to reaffirm liberty and equality. 

The world’s people were invaded by exciting thoughts. “In the US, you won’t have to lick any one’s boots. You won’t have to bow down before any throne or idol. And no one would prevent you from installing the idol you love or from kneeling before it.” Along with thoughts of this kind, images of America’s vast spaces spread to every continent. 

The US had room. It had freedom. Your religion, sect, or caste wouldn’t invite contempt or ridicule. In the US you will be free to do bold things, even wild things, knowing that others doing wild things would be some distance away. True, it seemed that in the US you would need to work hard and for long hours, but you were more than willing to pay that price. In fact you would enjoy pushing yourself. 

True, too, you had heard of the sad fate of indigenous Americans and of the harshness towards the descendants of those brought as slaves. However, the Civil War had shown a willingness in whites to fight fellow whites to defend black rights. And then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and his associates had come along and brought about a revolution in American culture. You thought that the blacks’ struggle might inspire you. 

SHOHEI OHTANI’S FEAT 

These semi-historical thoughts were revived in my mind by fresh news from the sporting world: Shohei Ohtani’s unbelievable performance on October 18 when his baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, defeated the Milwaukee Brewers to reach the World Series, which starts on October 24. The Dodgers will play the Blue Jays of Toronto, who last won the World Series in 1993. 

In that October 18 contest, thirty-one-year-old Ohtani, a son of Japan, who pitches with his right arm but bats left-handed, delivered one of the greatest performances in baseball history, smashing three huge home runs, pitching six shutout innings, and striking out ten Brewers batters. 

The story of another individual from Japan, Sanae Takaichi, who has just become the first woman prime minister in her country’s history, is also, of course, of enormous interest. We’ve learned that to attend university in the 1970s she traveled six hours a day by bus and train. Also that she is a “heavy metal drummer,” an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and a nationalist-conservative somewhat similar to other nationalist-conservatives presently in power in several countries, including Donald Trump. 

Whenever it takes place, Sanae Takaichi’s meeting with Trump will be analyzed by the world, but can she possibly capture American attention the way Ohtani has done? If she does, she will prove herself to be beyond extraordinary. 

For a person like Ohtani brings to light something even more than a relationship between two great nations or two great cultures. He seems to revel in endeavors that are beyond nationality or culture. When we marvel at the feats of one like Ohtani, Japan may no doubt enter our minds, but it is the human potential for unending advance that perhaps goes deepest. 

We have come across claims, bound to be contested by worshipers of other great players, that Ohtani may be the greatest baseball player so far. He himself asks us, quite properly, to acknowledge his Dodgers teammates, and he also asks, quite keenly, for good wishes for the contest that starts on the 24th, a World Series in which sportsmen with US, Canadian, Japanese, Latino, and other genes will try to exceed their best. 

MAMDANI & THE WORLD CUP

In the coming year, the US will be the primary host of what much of the world sees as the greatest sporting event on the global calendar, the FIFA World Cup, for which national soccer teams will compete. Some matches will be played in Canada and Mexico but a majority in the US, where the final has been scheduled for July 19, 2026, at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, a go-to venue for New York’s sports fans. 

If Zohran Mamdani wins New York City’s November 4 mayoral election, this American with Indian and Ugandan connections will be involved with many of the World Cup’s games. If he is a soccer fan, Mamdani may involve himself even if he loses the election. 

But I should return to the point with which I started: America’s ability to attract the finest talent with its promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Many allege that President Trump has gone back on that promise and curtailed freedom. College campuses and broadcasters have felt a hand of control that was not easy to imagine in the US. Cities and states in the US that thought they had protected rights are having to think again. Across America, protesters in impressive numbers have just reiterated, “No kings here!” 

There’s a formidable immigration debate in America. For the US to want to regulate entry into its magnetic space with strict and defined rules is natural and justifiable. But the rare mineral that has formed the magnet’s core, liberty, needs all the defense that can be summoned for it. An America that ceases to attract lovers of liberty (and chasers after the impossible) may become a burden, not a blessing, for our creaking planet. 

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Should distant observers with little access to the real content of agreements or negotiations comment on prospects of a reasonably just peace between Netanyahu and the Palestinians and also between Russia and Ukraine? Perhaps not, but plain citizens are entitled to have their hopes and express their fears. Like I am sure many others, I have in my mind offered good wishes for President Donald Trump’s efforts. Like many others, I would be deeply disappointed and offended by any acquiescence by the US in a plan where Palestinians are subjugated or pushed out of their lands. 

WHAT ABOUT UKRAINE? 

Justice and stability must similarly be demanded in any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The proposed meeting in Budapest, Hungary, between Trump and Putin that was earlier advertised has evidently been shelved, at least for the time being. 

According to CNN, the Russian foreign minister, Lavrov, has “rejected the notion of freezing the conflict — an idea put forward by Trump after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week and backed by Kyiv and Europe as part of negotiations toward an end to the war.”

There are suggestions, I don’t know how factual, that Trump had wanted Ukraine to agree to give up some territories of Ukraine’s contested Donbas region that Russia claims for itself. 

“US President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to give up the eastern Donbas region in exchange for peace during ‘tense’ talks [on October 17] in Washington, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.” 

The White House has not confirmed this report. In a joint statement published on October 21, European leaders, including France's Emmanuel Macron, Italy's Giorgia Meloni and Britain's Keir Starmer, warned that Russia was not "serious about peace". 

"We strongly support President Trump's position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations," the statement said.

TROUBLING SIGN 

Meanwhile, Francesca Orsini, a London-based scholar of Hindi and South Asian literature, was denied entry to India at Delhi’s international airport on the night of October 20 despite holding a valid, five-year Indian visa.

She is professor emerita at London’s reputed School for Oriental and African Studies. Peter Kornicki, her husband and emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge, confirmed the incident with the Indian online portal The Print, saying that Indian immigration authorities did not offer her an explanation for their action, but that she was on a return flight to London via Hong Kong, instead of a direct Delhi-London flight. 

Not an encouraging sign for democracy in India.