Phil Noble hit a home-run when he opined (June 15, The Independent Voice) that “South Carolina Needs a Foreign Policy.” Our state, and town of Blythewood even, really does! Our economy and welfare are dependent on investment and involvement from abroad, and to compete we need to push – harder than ever – for connections oversees in our age of cascading global interdependence.
This is not the time for passivity. When (former) U.S. Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger and I co-chaired the Byrnes International Center at U.S.C., we aggressively pursued efforts to broaden and tighten South Carolina’s global connections, and boy did those efforts pay off then; South Carolina is still reaping huge dividends. So let’s accept Phil Noble’s challenge to grow our state by helping those beyond our borders to enrich us as they also enrich themselves; we benefit when others overseas also grow through mutually advantageous exchanges, for foreign actors are most capable of contributing to South Carolina’s success.
In that context, isn’t it about time that Blythewood negotiated a sister-city relationship with a similar town in, say, Switzerland, Germany, maybe China?
Dr. Charles W. Kegley
Blythewood
