Ted Smyth, Mr. Ambassador

Ted Smyth
Ted Smyth: Bring back Heinz to Pittsburgh! Ted Smyth Special to the Post-Gazette, September 30, 2025 The plans to split Kraft Heinz into two publicly traded companies suggests that it’s time to attract a renewed Heinz company back to its roots in the city of Pittsburgh. Kraft Heinz plans to separate the faster growing $15 billion sauces and mac and cheese products from the slower growth products. As the former chief administrative officer for HJ Heinz, I believe it would be a very positive development both for Heinz and for Southwestern Pennsylvania to bring the faster-growing $15 billion Sauces company to Pittsburgh, where Heinz Kraft still has research and management facilities. One reason: Heinz’s historic reputation as the “pure food company” in a society, and market, in which so many seek to live healthier lives. Pittsburgh’s future growth The key to future growth in this region is to renew the old and invent the new. Heinz is a perfect company to do both. A trusted brand, building on its past as a food company that cared about the quality and safety of the food it sold, Heinz could supplement its collection of favorite sauces with highly nutritional and fresher foods, availing itself of Pittsburgh’s innovative technologies in food and materials science, and the latest thinking in nutritional health. This would be a commercially winning recipe, combining superior taste and safety with affordability and convenience. Many people today, bewildered by rapid change, find something comforting in a brand like Heinz with its rich heritage of being “the Pure Food Company.” This dates from the 1890s when Henry Heinz built a successful business by using clear glass to contain his tomato products so that people could see that his sauces were made without fillers, whereas those of his competitors were in dark glass to hide their adulterated contents, such as saw dust. Teddy vs. Trump Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” describes what food production was like at the turn of the last century. In making sausage, for example, “There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage. .... There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billlons of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it.” Unlike many business leaders, Mr. Heinz welcomed regulations that enforced higher standards so that he could compete on a level playing field with other food companies who did not have his company’s sense of responsibility for the quality of the food they sold. In fact, the creation of the Federal Food and Drug Administration dates to 1905, when Henry Heinz's partner and brother-in-law Sebastian Mueller joined Dr. Harvey Wiley in lobbying President Teddy Roosevelt to enforce food standards. The group made little progress in the Oval Office until Wiley produced a bottle of whiskey and showed how contaminated it was. Whereupon President Roosevelt said, “If a man can’t get a good drink of whiskey in the evening when he comes home from work, there ought to be a law to see that he does." At a time when President Trump and his HHS Secretary are undermining federal health and safety standards, there is great need for companies like Heinz to assert high standards of health. A renewed Heinz in the vibrant city of Pittsburgh would create delicious and healthy foods for people hungry for new tastes from a trusted brand. Come back, Heinz Companies who wish to grow in this tough economic environment can benefit from an unparalleled work ethic in Southwestern Pennsylvania, a skilled workforce, world class universities, and brilliant innovation in robotics, AI, healthcare, and life sciences. Pittsburghers have a long history of creating and growing great companies. The region remains a major headquarters center with expertise in law, marketing and finance. Gov. Josh Shapiro recently announced a major achievement in attracting Amazon’s $20 billion investment to Pennsylvania. Ideally, the governor would lead a group of state and local leaders to create a public/private partnership to secure the future of Heinz here in its hometown, serving as a template for future investment. Attracting a bigger and faster growing Heinz sauces company to Pittsburgh would be a major addition to the region, serving both its industrial development and providing new and well-paying jobs. Heinz should come home. Ted Smyth was Chief Administrative Officer at HJ Heinz until 2009, when he joined McGraw Hill/Standard & Poor’s. His previous article was “The politics of Irish Americans.” First Published: September 30, 2025 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reconciliation still needed in Northern Ireland The Adams case is the result of unfinished business May 6, 2014 By Ted Smyth I have frequently argued that the peace process in Northern Ireland is a model for conflict resolution elsewhere in the world. The 1998 Good Friday agreement had built on earlier breakthroughs like the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement to enable pro-British Protestants and pro-Irish Catholics to join in a power-sharing government that ended decades of murder and violence. The peace has since held, despite efforts by hardliners to rekindle the old hatreds. But in one crucial area the Irish peace process has failed compared to that in post-apartheid South Africa, which is how to come to terms with unsolved murders and how to offer amnesty for past crimes. South Africa tackled this issue with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which had the power to grant amnesty as long as crimes were politically motivated, proportionate and there was full disclosure by the person seeking amnesty. The failure to deal with Northern Ireland’s painful past was dramatized by the arrest last week of Gerry Adams by the police for questioning regarding the brutal 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10. At the time, the Provisional Irish Republican Army believed she was an informer for British security forces, although a subsequent investigation found no evidence for this. In 1999, the IRA admitted the murder but McConville’s body was not found until 2003, when autopsy reports revealed she had been beaten and shot in the back of the head. Two former IRA leaders, Brendan Hughes and Dolores Price, stated in an oral history before they died that Gerry Adams had authorized the murder. Mr. Adams, now president of a Sinn Fein party that has reworked its image, denies this and states that the murder was wrong and a grievous injustice. Notably, he has also used his militant past to ensure IRA adherence to the peace process for the past 16 years. Mr. Adams was released without charge on Sunday after four days of questioning, leaving it to public prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges or not. However, the reality is that Mr. Adams would not have been arrested if there was a peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland that had reviewed such crimes as the murder of Jean McConville. More than 3,500 people died in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” and there have been a number of attempts to enable all those responsible for the deaths, including the IRA, Protestant paramilitary groups and British security forces, to give evidence in a truth commission-style forum. The latest initiative in 2013 was led by former American diplomat Richard Haass, who proposed to the Northern Ireland political parties a “Commission for Information Retrieval” which would give limited immunity (but not amnesty) to those who offer information about atrocities and related violence. But last December the inter-party talks broke up without agreement. One of the proposals was to remove responsibility for investigations into unsolved crimes from the police, which obviously would have included the McConville murder. This failure to agree on a policy dealing with past crimes from the Troubles was highlighted by a police action earlier this year to inform hundreds of former paramilitaries that they no longer faced arrest. Public opinion in Ireland is divided on the issue. On the one hand, people don’t want to jeopardize the popular peace process by stirring up communal hatreds and memories of atrocities. On the other, most people feel that all sides should admit what they did and not continue to deny their actions. It is hard to forgive those who did terrible things, but it is even harder to forgive them if they hypocritically persist in pretending they were never responsible for what happened. One can only hope that the political parties will now overcome extremist objections and bring closure to the victims of the violence by creating a comprehensive agreement on truth, reconciliation and immunity. Ted Smyth, a former Irish diplomat, is a trustee of the Ireland Funds. A longtime senior executive in Pittsburgh for the H.J. Heinz Co., he now is an executive vice president for McGraw-Hill Co. in New York. January 7, 2007 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mr. Ambassador February 10, 2009 By Ted Smyth Irish newspapers are reporting that Pittsburgh Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney appears to be President Barack Obama's top choice to become U.S. ambassador to Ireland. This is not as strange as it might seem to those who know Mr. Rooney only as a sports figure. Americans revere Mr. Rooney as the popular owner of America's favorite football team but people in Ireland also admire him as the co-founder of the American Ireland Fund, a key contributor to the successful Irish peace process. Back in 1976 when I was a diplomat in the Irish embassy in Washington we desperately needed allies in America to support a peaceful solution to the divisions in Northern Ireland. Sen. Ted Kennedy and House Speaker Tip O'Neill became two strong friends in Congress but we needed additional help in the heartland to convince Irish Americans not to support terrorism in the land of their birth. Two unique individuals decided to take on this relatively lonely and courageous task, Tony O'Reilly, then CEO of the H.J. Heinz Co., and Dan Rooney, then president of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Having formed a friendship forged by mutual love of sport, they founded the American Ireland Fund to support peace and charity in Ireland. At countless events over three decades, Dan and Tony used their diplomatic and persuasive skills to convince thousands of Irish Americans to help their homeland by eschewing violence, donating to peace projects and investing in job-creation programs. One of the earliest successes was the establishment of integrated schools in Belfast where, for the first time, Protestant and Catholic children could be educated together. Of course, there were many skeptics who believed the divisions could not be overcome, that the peace process was hopeless, but Dan and Tony (now Sir Anthony in recognition of his contribution to peace) continued to travel from city to city, from Boston to Chicago to San Francisco to Dallas, especially when St. Patrick's Day came around, preaching the positive message of reconciliation and equality between the two sides. Dan also traveled extensively to Ireland to ensure the peace and education programs he funded were legitimate and effective. He often would rent a small single-engine plane and fly it himself across the beautiful green countryside. By his earnest and sincere manner, Dan and his educator wife, Patricia, earned the trust and respect of young men and women in Belfast and Derry who were slowly persuaded that if they gave up the gun and bomb, America would lobby the British government to support their right to equality and justice. The peace process continued year after year, despite countless setbacks and atrocities. Irish politicians like John Hume and Seamus Mallon were constantly encouraged by Americans such as Dan to never give up. Like the Steelers, they had to keep fighting for respect, winning people over one by one. Since 1976, the American Ireland Fund has blossomed into a worldwide network called the Ireland Funds, representing not only the 40 million Americans of Irish descent, but 70 million people in the global Irish diaspora. Assisted by additional leaders such as Loretta Brennan Glucksman, the fund has raised more than $300 million for peace and education programs in Ireland, dedicated to reconciliation and regeneration. More recently, Dan and other leaders have focused on trade between the United States and Ireland, expanding business, educational and cultural links. Dan and Patricia have also established the Rooney Fellowship, which brings young people from his ancestral town of Newry to America for career development. Dan has used the diplomatic skills he deployed in Ireland as a leader in the NFL, as well. He insists on high standards and has introduced important innovations like the "Rooney Rule," which significantly expanded the talent pool for coaches and general managers by requiring teams to interview minority candidates for these positions. Last year, Dan demonstrated prescient judgment by being one of the first to identify the unique qualities of Barack Obama to lead our nation and the world. He went out on the road to scores of meetings in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, an authentic folk hero lending his credibility to the young candidate. "Pioneers get scalped," Andrew Carnegie used to quip, but Dan has never feared to be a pioneer in the causes of peace, equality and improving society. There are many wonderful Americans who could represent the United States in Ireland but surely there are none who would receive the same resounding cheer on both sides of the Atlantic as Daniel M. Rooney. Ted Smyth , a former Irish diplomat, is a trustee of the Ireland Funds. A longtime senior executive for the H.J. Heinz Co., he is moving this month to the McGraw-Hill Co. in New York. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Forum: Toward a safer world America faces a choice between two contrasting policies to make the world safer in the age of terrorism. January 7, 2007 By Ted Smyth Ted Smyth is a global business executive based in Pittsburgh (T-Smyth@hotmail.com). A former Irish diplomat, he lives in Edgeworth and became a U.S. citizen in 2005. One of the reasons why the ideal of America, despite recent policies, still resonates around the world, and why I became an American citizen, is the universal vision of the Declaration of Independence. Over 200 years later these words continue to provide inspiration for people all over the world: "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Two recent books advocate American global leadership in support of this vision but they differ sharply on whether to continue a militant go-it-alone policy or to adopt a multilateral approach which rallies international support for the values of tolerance and liberty, values far more widely shared abroad than many Americans appreciate. The first, The Age of Fallibility by George Soros, the thinking person's capitalist and a legendary philanthropist and financier, is a convincing call for America to abandon its unilateralist foreign policy and instead practice collaborative leadership in the battle against nuclear proliferation, rogue states and the global energy crisis. A realist when it comes to the limitations of the United Nations, Mr. Soros suggests that a Community of Democracies operating within the United Nations might be able to deliver effective results in peacekeeping and mediation. But, most important, he believes that global security is dependent on effective American leadership: "If the United States fails to provide the right kind of leadership our civilization may destroy itself," he warns. The second book, Dangerous Nation by Robert Kagan, a prominent neoconservative, argues that the Bush administration's emphasis on global military supremacy is in keeping with a nation which has used force from the time of the Puritans to defeat Native Americans as well as the French, Spanish and British armies. After the defeat of the British, Mr. Kagan contends, America's "ravenous appetites" and lust for empire were unleashed, leading to 200 years of unparalleled commercial and political expansion. Mr. Kagan argues that the high-minded principles of the Declaration of Independence are for Americans, not some call for global sharing of wealth, but "the essence of their national identity" and a justification for the imposition by force of democracy on other nations. Neocons like Mr. Kagan see the world as ruled by force and advocate even more military action to make America safe. Despite the setbacks in Iraq, Mr. Kagan wrote recently in the Financial Times, "True realism would recognize America for what it is, an ambitious, ideological, revolutionary nation with a belief in its own world-transforming powers and a historical record of enough success to sustain that belief." As Mr. Soros explains, this Bush doctrine of American supremacy is of recent origin and was promulgated in the National Security Report of 2002, its two main tenets being absolute U.S. military superiority in every part of the world and the right to preemptive military action. The result was the invasion of Iraq. Ironically, as Richard Haas, a senior policy adviser to President Bush early in his administration, wrote recently, "The Iraq war has reduced U.S. leverage worldwide" by tying down a huge portion of the U.S. military. And, as most experts agree, Iraq also has demonstrated the limits of high tech military power and air superiority in a hostile and divided tribal society. (The Soviet Union learned the same lesson in Afghanistan.) In contrast with the neo-cons, Mr. Soros, who has spent more than $4 billion promoting democracy in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, argues that democracy cannot be introduced by force of arms. He says, "Military power is only one of many ingredients that a country needs to exercise influence over others" and reminds us of President Truman's use of the generous Marshall Plan to defeat communism in Europe. Mr. Truman was a founder of the United Nations, the only all-inclusive global organization dedicated to peace, development and human rights. The principal finding of the bipartisan Gingrich-Mitchell task force in 2005 was "the firm belief that an effective United Nations is in America's interests." The overwhelming reality is that the world is global and American business is increasingly dependent on international partnerships and a stable world order. Given that no single power can conquer this world, we need an organization to help developing countries strengthen institutions, improve capabilities and promote greater equality between rich and poor. The new U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has committed himself to U.N. reform and stronger management to help work towards a new world order based on legitimacy and the rule of law. What, then, is the best course for Americans faced with the growing global challenges of nuclear proliferation, global warming, terrorism, the Middle East, African wars and the increasing competition for resources with Russia and China? On the evidence to date it would seem that we would be more secure spending our hard-earned dollars on cooperation with the rest of the world, whether in the United Nations or NATO, than on a quixotic quest to police every dangerous corner of the world. America and other nations still will have to use force as a last resort to protect national security, but the greater prize is for America to leverage its power to develop a vision for management of global issues that will attract widespread support and legitimacy from other nations.
home

Ted Smyth

Ted Smyth: Bring back Heinz to Pittsburgh!

Ted Smyth

Special to the Post-Gazette, September 30, 2025

The plans to split Kraft Heinz into two publicly traded companies suggests that it’s time to attract a renewed Heinz company back to its roots in the city of Pittsburgh.

Kraft Heinz plans to separate the faster growing $15 billion sauces and mac and cheese products from the slower growth products. As the former chief administrative officer for HJ Heinz, I believe it would be a very positive development both for Heinz and for Southwestern Pennsylvania to bring the faster-growing $15 billion Sauces company to Pittsburgh, where Heinz Kraft still has research and management facilities.

One reason: Heinz’s historic reputation as the “pure food company” in a society, and market, in which so many seek to live healthier lives.

Pittsburgh’s future growth

The key to future growth in this region is to renew the old and invent the new. Heinz is a perfect company to do both.

A trusted brand, building on its past as a food company that cared about the quality and safety of the food it sold, Heinz could supplement its collection of favorite sauces with highly nutritional and fresher foods, availing itself of Pittsburgh’s innovative technologies in food and materials science, and the latest thinking in nutritional health. This would be a commercially winning recipe, combining superior taste and safety with affordability and convenience.

Many people today, bewildered by rapid change, find something comforting in a brand like Heinz with its rich heritage of being “the Pure Food Company.” This dates from the 1890s when Henry Heinz built a successful business by using clear glass to contain his tomato products so that people could see that his sauces were made without fillers, whereas those of his competitors were in dark glass to hide their adulterated contents, such as saw dust.

Teddy vs. Trump

Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” describes what food production was like at the turn of the last century. In making sausage, for example, “There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage. .... There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billlons of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it.”

Unlike many business leaders, Mr. Heinz welcomed regulations that enforced higher standards so that he could compete on a level playing field with other food companies who did not have his company’s sense of responsibility for the quality of the food they sold.

In fact, the creation of the Federal Food and Drug Administration dates to 1905, when Henry Heinz's partner and brother-in-law Sebastian Mueller joined Dr. Harvey Wiley in lobbying President Teddy Roosevelt to enforce food standards.

The group made little progress in the Oval Office until Wiley produced a bottle of whiskey and showed how contaminated it was. Whereupon President Roosevelt said, “If a man can’t get a good drink of whiskey in the evening when he comes home from work, there ought to be a law to see that he does."

At a time when President Trump and his HHS Secretary are undermining federal health and safety standards, there is great need for companies like Heinz to assert high standards of health. A renewed Heinz in the vibrant city of Pittsburgh would create delicious and healthy foods for people hungry for new tastes from a trusted brand.

Come back, Heinz

Companies who wish to grow in this tough economic environment can benefit from an unparalleled work ethic in Southwestern Pennsylvania, a skilled workforce, world class universities, and brilliant innovation in robotics, AI, healthcare, and life sciences. Pittsburghers have a long history of creating and growing great companies. The region remains a major headquarters center with expertise in law, marketing and finance.

Gov. Josh Shapiro recently announced a major achievement in attracting Amazon’s $20 billion investment to Pennsylvania. Ideally, the governor would lead a group of state and local leaders to create a public/private partnership to secure the future of Heinz here in its hometown, serving as a template for future investment.

Attracting a bigger and faster growing Heinz sauces company to Pittsburgh would be a major addition to the region, serving both its industrial development and providing new and well-paying jobs. Heinz should come home.

Ted Smyth was Chief Administrative Officer at HJ Heinz until 2009, when he joined McGraw Hill/Standard & Poor’s. His previous article was “The politics of Irish Americans.”

First Published: September 30, 2025

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reconciliation still needed in Northern Ireland
The Adams case is the result of unfinished business

May 6, 2014

By Ted Smyth

I have frequently argued that the peace process in Northern Ireland is a model for conflict resolution elsewhere in the world. The 1998 Good Friday agreement had built on earlier breakthroughs like the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement to enable pro-British Protestants and pro-Irish Catholics to join in a power-sharing government that ended decades of murder and violence.

The peace has since held, despite efforts by hardliners to rekindle the old hatreds. But in one crucial area the Irish peace process has failed compared to that in post-apartheid South Africa, which is how to come to terms with unsolved murders and how to offer amnesty for past crimes.

South Africa tackled this issue with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which had the power to grant amnesty as long as crimes were politically motivated, proportionate and there was full disclosure by the person seeking amnesty.

The failure to deal with Northern Ireland’s painful past was dramatized by the arrest last week of Gerry Adams by the police for questioning regarding the brutal 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10.

At the time, the Provisional Irish Republican Army believed she was an informer for British security forces, although a subsequent investigation found no evidence for this. In 1999, the IRA admitted the murder but McConville’s body was not found until 2003, when autopsy reports revealed she had been beaten and shot in the back of the head.

Two former IRA leaders, Brendan Hughes and Dolores Price, stated in an oral history before they died that Gerry Adams had authorized the murder. Mr. Adams, now president of a Sinn Fein party that has reworked its image, denies this and states that the murder was wrong and a grievous injustice. Notably, he has also used his militant past to ensure IRA adherence to the peace process for the past 16 years.

Mr. Adams was released without charge on Sunday after four days of questioning, leaving it to public prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges or not. However, the reality is that Mr. Adams would not have been arrested if there was a peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland that had reviewed such crimes as the murder of Jean McConville.

More than 3,500 people died in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” and there have been a number of attempts to enable all those responsible for the deaths, including the IRA, Protestant paramilitary groups and British security forces, to give evidence in a truth commission-style forum. The latest initiative in 2013 was led by former American diplomat Richard Haass, who proposed to the Northern Ireland political parties a “Commission for Information Retrieval” which would give limited immunity (but not amnesty) to those who offer information about atrocities and related violence.

But last December the inter-party talks broke up without agreement. One of the proposals was to remove responsibility for investigations into unsolved crimes from the police, which obviously would have included the McConville murder. This failure to agree on a policy dealing with past crimes from the Troubles was highlighted by a police action earlier this year to inform hundreds of former paramilitaries that they no longer faced arrest.

Public opinion in Ireland is divided on the issue. On the one hand, people don’t want to jeopardize the popular peace process by stirring up communal hatreds and memories of atrocities. On the other, most people feel that all sides should admit what they did and not continue to deny their actions.

It is hard to forgive those who did terrible things, but it is even harder to forgive them if they hypocritically persist in pretending they were never responsible for what happened. One can only hope that the political parties will now overcome extremist objections and bring closure to the victims of the violence by creating a comprehensive agreement on truth, reconciliation and immunity.

Ted Smyth, a former Irish diplomat, is a trustee of the Ireland Funds. A longtime senior executive in Pittsburgh for the H.J. Heinz Co., he now is an executive vice president for McGraw-Hill Co. in New York. January 7, 2007

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mr. Ambassador

February 10, 2009

By Ted Smyth

Irish newspapers are reporting that Pittsburgh Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney appears to be President Barack Obama's top choice to become U.S. ambassador to Ireland. This is not as strange as it might seem to those who know Mr. Rooney only as a sports figure.

Americans revere Mr. Rooney as the popular owner of America's favorite football team but people in Ireland also admire him as the co-founder of the American Ireland Fund, a key contributor to the successful Irish peace process.

Back in 1976 when I was a diplomat in the Irish embassy in Washington we desperately needed allies in America to support a peaceful solution to the divisions in Northern Ireland. Sen. Ted Kennedy and House Speaker Tip O'Neill became two strong friends in Congress but we needed additional help in the heartland to convince Irish Americans not to support terrorism in the land of their birth.

Two unique individuals decided to take on this relatively lonely and courageous task, Tony O'Reilly, then CEO of the H.J. Heinz Co., and Dan Rooney, then president of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Having formed a friendship forged by mutual love of sport, they founded the American Ireland Fund to support peace and charity in Ireland.

At countless events over three decades, Dan and Tony used their diplomatic and persuasive skills to convince thousands of Irish Americans to help their homeland by eschewing violence, donating to peace projects and investing in job-creation programs. One of the earliest successes was the establishment of integrated schools in Belfast where, for the first time, Protestant and Catholic children could be educated together.

Of course, there were many skeptics who believed the divisions could not be overcome, that the peace process was hopeless, but Dan and Tony (now Sir Anthony in recognition of his contribution to peace) continued to travel from city to city, from Boston to Chicago to San Francisco to Dallas, especially when St. Patrick's Day came around, preaching the positive message of reconciliation and equality between the two sides. Dan also traveled extensively to Ireland to ensure the peace and education programs he funded were legitimate and effective. He often would rent a small single-engine plane and fly it himself across the beautiful green countryside.

By his earnest and sincere manner, Dan and his educator wife, Patricia, earned the trust and respect of young men and women in Belfast and Derry who were slowly persuaded that if they gave up the gun and bomb, America would lobby the British government to support their right to equality and justice.

The peace process continued year after year, despite countless setbacks and atrocities. Irish politicians like John Hume and Seamus Mallon were constantly encouraged by Americans such as Dan to never give up. Like the Steelers, they had to keep fighting for respect, winning people over one by one.

Since 1976, the American Ireland Fund has blossomed into a worldwide network called the Ireland Funds, representing not only the 40 million Americans of Irish descent, but 70 million people in the global Irish diaspora. Assisted by additional leaders such as Loretta Brennan Glucksman, the fund has raised more than $300 million for peace and education programs in Ireland, dedicated to reconciliation and regeneration.

More recently, Dan and other leaders have focused on trade between the United States and Ireland, expanding business, educational and cultural links. Dan and Patricia have also established the Rooney Fellowship, which brings young people from his ancestral town of Newry to America for career development.

Dan has used the diplomatic skills he deployed in Ireland as a leader in the NFL, as well. He insists on high standards and has introduced important innovations like the "Rooney Rule," which significantly expanded the talent pool for coaches and general managers by requiring teams to interview minority candidates for these positions.

Last year, Dan demonstrated prescient judgment by being one of the first to identify the unique qualities of Barack Obama to lead our nation and the world. He went out on the road to scores of meetings in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, an authentic folk hero lending his credibility to the young candidate.

"Pioneers get scalped," Andrew Carnegie used to quip, but Dan has never feared to be a pioneer in the causes of peace, equality and improving society.

There are many wonderful Americans who could represent the United States in Ireland but surely there are none who would receive the same resounding cheer on both sides of the Atlantic as Daniel M. Rooney.

Ted Smyth , a former Irish diplomat, is a trustee of the Ireland Funds. A longtime senior executive for the H.J. Heinz Co., he is moving this month to the McGraw-Hill Co. in New York.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Forum: Toward a safer world

America faces a choice between two contrasting policies to make the world safer in the age of terrorism.

January 7, 2007

By Ted Smyth

Ted Smyth is a global business executive based in Pittsburgh (T-Smyth@hotmail.com). A former Irish diplomat, he lives in Edgeworth and became a U.S. citizen in 2005.

One of the reasons why the ideal of America, despite recent policies, still resonates around the world, and why I became an American citizen, is the universal vision of the Declaration of Independence. Over 200 years later these words continue to provide inspiration for people all over the world: "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Two recent books advocate American global leadership in support of this vision but they differ sharply on whether to continue a militant go-it-alone policy or to adopt a multilateral approach which rallies international support for the values of tolerance and liberty, values far more widely shared abroad than many Americans appreciate.

The first, The Age of Fallibility by George Soros, the thinking person's capitalist and a legendary philanthropist and financier, is a convincing call for America to abandon its unilateralist foreign policy and instead practice collaborative leadership in the battle against nuclear proliferation, rogue states and the global energy crisis.

A realist when it comes to the limitations of the United Nations, Mr. Soros suggests that a Community of Democracies operating within the United Nations might be able to deliver effective results in peacekeeping and mediation. But, most important, he believes that global security is dependent on effective American leadership: "If the United States fails to provide the right kind of leadership our civilization may destroy itself," he warns.

The second book, Dangerous Nation by Robert Kagan, a prominent neoconservative, argues that the Bush administration's emphasis on global military supremacy is in keeping with a nation which has used force from the time of the Puritans to defeat Native Americans as well as the French, Spanish and British armies.

After the defeat of the British, Mr. Kagan contends, America's "ravenous appetites" and lust for empire were unleashed, leading to 200 years of unparalleled commercial and political expansion. Mr. Kagan argues that the high-minded principles of the Declaration of Independence are for Americans, not some call for global sharing of wealth, but "the essence of their national identity" and a justification for the imposition by force of democracy on other nations.

Neocons like Mr. Kagan see the world as ruled by force and advocate even more military action to make America safe. Despite the setbacks in Iraq, Mr. Kagan wrote recently in the Financial Times, "True realism would recognize America for what it is, an ambitious, ideological, revolutionary nation with a belief in its own world-transforming powers and a historical record of enough success to sustain that belief."

As Mr. Soros explains, this Bush doctrine of American supremacy is of recent origin and was promulgated in the National Security Report of 2002, its two main tenets being absolute U.S. military superiority in every part of the world and the right to preemptive military action. The result was the invasion of Iraq.

Ironically, as Richard Haas, a senior policy adviser to President Bush early in his administration, wrote recently, "The Iraq war has reduced U.S. leverage worldwide" by tying down a huge portion of the U.S. military. And, as most experts agree, Iraq also has demonstrated the limits of high tech military power and air superiority in a hostile and divided tribal society. (The Soviet Union learned the same lesson in Afghanistan.)

In contrast with the neo-cons, Mr. Soros, who has spent more than $4 billion promoting democracy in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, argues that democracy cannot be introduced by force of arms. He says, "Military power is only one of many ingredients that a country needs to exercise influence over others" and reminds us of President Truman's use of the generous Marshall Plan to defeat communism in Europe.

Mr. Truman was a founder of the United Nations, the only all-inclusive global organization dedicated to peace, development and human rights. The principal finding of the bipartisan Gingrich-Mitchell task force in 2005 was "the firm belief that an effective United Nations is in America's interests."

The overwhelming reality is that the world is global and American business is increasingly dependent on international partnerships and a stable world order. Given that no single power can conquer this world, we need an organization to help developing countries strengthen institutions, improve capabilities and promote greater equality between rich and poor. The new U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has committed himself to U.N. reform and stronger management to help work towards a new world order based on legitimacy and the rule of law.

What, then, is the best course for Americans faced with the growing global challenges of nuclear proliferation, global warming, terrorism, the Middle East, African wars and the increasing competition for resources with Russia and China?

On the evidence to date it would seem that we would be more secure spending our hard-earned dollars on cooperation with the rest of the world, whether in the United Nations or NATO, than on a quixotic quest to police every dangerous corner of the world. America and other nations still will have to use force as a last resort to protect national security, but the greater prize is for America to leverage its power to develop a vision for management of global issues that will attract widespread support and legitimacy from other nations.

home