By Ramu Damodaran
The writer is Chief, United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) hosted in the Department of Global Communications. This OpEd first appeared in the latest #WhyWeCare, @ImpactUN.
NEW YORK (IDN | UNAI) — "STOP" said the imperious red sign (actually two red signs) as I ventured to the frostily frigid February frontline of the Atlantic coast, an injunction reminiscent of an earlier time when the United States chose to inhibit its interests within an isolated domain, a time that the Second World War brought to a definitive end when, in 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill concluded the Charter named for that ocean, one of whose clauses spoke of a peace that "should enable all men to transverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance", "voyages as metaphorical as literal, the nascent nautical navigations that we speak of today" as "global engagement", in the phrase of the title of the annual summit convened by the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA) and the United Nations Foundation (UNF).