Interview with Mort Rosenblum - Georgetown Public Policy Review Online

Mort Rosenblum has worked for the last 40 years in over 200 countries as a foreign correspondent. At age 23, the Associated Press sent him to the Congo to write about mercenary wars there. He has covered nearly every major conflict since then, including the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has headed bureaus in Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Singapore, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Kinshasa, and Lagos. He was editor of the International Herald Tribune from 1979 to 1981. He has written 12 books, contributed articles to Foreign Affairs, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker, and serves as visiting professor at several universities. He is now a freelance writer living on a houseboat on the Seine River in Paris. Recently, he stopped by Georgetown to give a talk at the Mortara Center about his most recent book, “Escaping Plato’s Cave: How America’s Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival,” out this month through St. Martin’s Press.

Ryan Winger: My first question is about the title of the book. You called it, “How America’s Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival.” I wonder if you could define what you mean by “our,” if it’s an inclusive term, if it’s exclusive – is everyone included in that statement?

Mort Rosenblum: We had trouble with the pronoun, but in the end I decided it could go either way. I mean, our survival as a country – that’s not in peril as long as the rest of the world is still here. But our society as we know it could change quickly. I’m looking at ‘our’ as a more global term. I’m very proud to be an American – seriously. I’m very much an American, I just live overseas. But when I say ‘our,’ I’m thinking ‘human being,’ not American. To me, borders and nationalities are secondary to the human race.