ST. LOUIS 鈥 Asked about the state of global affairs, Kevin O鈥橫alley, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, didn鈥檛 mince words.
鈥淭he world is on fire,鈥 he said.
W. Stuart Symington, a former ambassador to Nigeria, Rwanda and Djibouti, agreed with O鈥橫alley.
鈥淚 think this is the most dangerous time of my lifetime,鈥 Symington said.
The two former ambassadors, both from St. Louis, were on stage Wednesday night at the Missouri History Museum. They were joined by Jody Sowell, president and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society, and Gavin Sundwall, a managing director for policy and planning in the U.S. Department of State, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the .
Asked by Sowell about world conditions 鈥 with political division in the U.S., and wars in Ukraine and Gaza 鈥 the two longtime diplomats were succinct in their sober analysis.
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But they also challenged the St. Louisans in attendance to be part of the solution.
I was at the event because I鈥檝e played a small role in the 鈥渃itizen diplomacy鈥 that highlights the impact the World Affairs Council can have. Every couple of months, as part of the federal International Visitor Leadership Program, I meet with groups of visitors to St. Louis, many of them international journalists, and engage in discussions about our shared purpose.
Thursday morning, for instance, I visited with journalists from Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela and Guatemala. The challenges in our jobs 鈥 battling disinformation, fighting for government transparency, trying to reach readers who seem increasingly divided into camps 鈥 are much more similar than I expected.
The fire O鈥橫alley mentioned is spreading. The way to extinguish it, Symington suggested, is to apply in our everyday lives the citizen diplomacy practiced by the World Affairs Council. That means talking to people with whom we disagree. It means finding common ground. It means planting seeds of similarity among the weeds of discord popping up around us.
The truth about St. Louis is we鈥檙e often better at dividing than uniting. We divide by race. We divide by politics. We divide by city and county. We divide by which side of Delmar Boulevard we live on, or which side of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
This week, we are divided by a about the state of downtown St. Louis. The story suggested the city is in a 鈥渄oom loop.鈥 It focused on boarded-up windows in one section of downtown and minimized the revitalization in other parts of downtown and neighborhoods just blocks away.
The people in my inbox who hate when I point out that crime has been falling in St. Louis (it is) emailed me links to the story. On the other hand, the tens of thousands of St. Louisans who flooded downtown last Saturday to take in a baseball, soccer or football game could shrug off the story as a bit of parachute journalism.
Neither side is entirely wrong. Downtown has pockets of gloom. But it has success stories as well, as do nearby neighborhoods, many of which are thriving due to new investment.
My new friends from Central and South America, who enjoyed a morning walk from the Gateway Arch to the downtown Arcade Building, were excited to take in the City Foundry over lunch. The Foundry is a gem of new St. Louis development and shows that what was old can become new again.
Indeed, that has long been the story of St. Louis. When O鈥橫alley and Symington were done speaking, we got a peek at the at the Missouri History Museum that opens to the public on April 27. St. Louis was the fourth biggest city in the country back then and, for much of that year, the center of the world鈥檚 attention.
The leftover infrastructure downtown 鈥 from when the city was a different place with more than twice the current population 鈥 is one of the challenges leaders face today in remaking the city. Despite its struggles, though, St. Louis is still a city that shows well to worldwide visitors, Sundwall told the crowd at the museum. Then he teased at potentially brighter days ahead.
There are still world expos being held every few years, similar to what St. Louis hosted in 1904, he mentioned. The that runs them hasn鈥檛 chosen the United States to host one for 40 years. There鈥檚 no reason St. Louis couldn鈥檛 once again be part of that worldwide discussion.
鈥淚t would be very exciting to see a World Expo back in St. Louis,鈥 Sundwall said.
Maybe it was just a bit of optimism offered by a diplomat to a crowd hungry for some good news. But 120 years after the world met in St. Louis, what鈥檚 the harm in dreaming big again?