My Little Corner of the World

In exactly 1 week's time I will touring the State Department (then having a meeting with State Department officials). All because of one UNF class.

Ambassador Nancy Soderberg (formerly the third-highest-ranking official at the United States National Security Council under President Clinton and US Representative for Special Political Affairs at the US Mission to the United Nations) is a distinguished visiting professor UNF. I'm not sure exactly what that means for the school but I know what it means for me. The class I'm taking with Professor Soderberg is titled "Real World/Super Power Myth," a title I find very misleading. The class basically works like this, the first half of the semester we covered foreign policy topics all over the board (from Russia to North Korea, from terrorism to foreign aid, we read extensively on all topics). At about the half way point of the semester, the class choose a topic to take to DC with us. Our original list included nonproliferation, North Korea, Turkey, and cyber security, among other things. The criteria for choosing a subject was that it was a topic on which we wanted to advocate change in government policy and one that was a bit "off the radar." The goal was to get "ahead" of the government in our recommendations, present our ideas to the bigwigs in DC, and learn something while doing it.

The topic we choose was Brazil. I'm more than wiling to admit I knew little about Brazil before this class (lots of rain forests, lots of crime, lots of drugs, that was about it) and I still wouldn't consider myself an expert on the country but I have a learned a lot. A few of my favorite Brazil facts:

Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world (by land mass and by population).
About 12% of the fresh water in the world is in Brazil.
Brazil has the 2nd largest number of airports in the world (after the US).
Brazil has the largest population of Japanese descent outside of Japan.

Anyway, our recommendations range from increased cross training for police and peacekeeping forces to UN Security Council reform to strengthening economic ties. While we are on DC some of the people we are meeting with are: Department of Defense Deputy Secretary, William Lynn; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the
Western Hemisphere, Dr. Frank O. Mora; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics and Global Threats, William Wechsler (who was on the NSC with my professor) (all at the Pentagon); Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo A. Valenzuela (who also spent some time on the NSC); Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Esther Brimmer (both at the State Department); Special Assistant to the President for Latin America, Dan Restrepo (at the White House); the staff of Sen. Nelson (Congress is out of session of course); someone at the CIA (not sure who yet); Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative at the Organization of American Sates, Lewis Amselem; and someone at the Brazilian embassy (we are also not sure yet who exactly this will be). We may also have a catch to meet Secretary Clinton and Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

All that having been said, I need to work on my assignment for class tomorrow! I plan to blog on the trip as I really want to have a record of the meetings we hold. The assignment due tomorrow for this class is the first draft on an op-ed we will be sending to the Florida Times Union about Brazil. When I finish this and feel good about it I plan to post it here as well.