Lester Brown has travelled the world for nearly 50 years, talking about the environment, population, food, water, climate change, and energy. On October 27, he wrote about his recent experience at an international conference in France, where he spoke before delegates from 81 countries. Invariably, in the Q&A sessions following his talks, and in individual conversations, the subject turned to U.S. foreign policy.

Lester found that elected representatives from other countries "are not only bewildered by a U.S. foreign policy that they cannot fathom, but increasingly they are angered by it. The America they now see is not the America they once knew."

Moreover, Lester found that "the rejection of American foreign policy is translating into a rejection of products with U.S. brand names. Europeans are in effect holding an economic referendum on U.S. foreign policy, voting with their pocketbooks. The effect of this can be seen in the third quarter earnings reports now coming out for several leading U.S. corporations."

McDonald's sales are flat across Europe. Gap has pulled out of Germany entirely. The Disney theme park outside Paris lost so much money it had to be rescued by its parent company. Wal-Mart is facing heavy losses in Germany. And GM and Ford are also suffering large losses in Europe, with GM laying off 12,000 workers in Germany. Even Microsoft, Nike and Yahoo are suffering from declining consumer approval.

Left: Protesters demonstrate outside a McDonald's outlet in Switzerland.

John Quelch, professor at the Harvard Business School, who Lester quotes in his article, has studied the indirect effects of the Iraq war on the U.S. economy and notes that "the cost to the American economy could be far greater than the cost of the war."

To conclude, Lester adds "This downturn in sales of U.S. products abroad will likely touch all Americans in one way or another. Within the United States, it will affect job creation and the stock market. It will affect the holdings of some 90 million individual investors, the market value of both mutual funds and pension funds, and the retirement income they generate. It will likely reduce the cash flow of the endowments that foundations rely on to provide grants and that universities rely on to help cover operating costs."

U.S. foreign policy, at least as it applied to the Iraq invasion, was a triumph of nationalistic competitiveness over international cooperation. The U.S. is shouldering the majority of the costs of the war and the reconstruction, the majority of the troop deaths and injuries amongst the military coalition ... and now ... further unforeseen costs to its economy and international credibility.

Could genuine international cooperation have achieved a better outcome? Undoubtedly.

In his book "We Don’t Agree, but ... How to Live in an Age of Terrorism", Paul Siegel argues strongly that competition in the United States has become a "secular religion". Paul paints a picture of a society so obsessed with "winning" that it makes its three-year olds compete for entrance to a pre-school, and teaches its future commercial leaders that "business resembles nothing so much as war itself".

But this is not a book about the excesses of the competitive instinct, even though Paul talks about many of these excesses. It is, instead, a profound and deeply philosophical rationale for the opposite of competition; "cooperation".

By applying a cooperative attitude to every aspect of our lives -- within ourselves, our family, our career, our communities and even the world -- we take the first steps on the path to a more fulfilling and rewarding life, and help reduce the threat of terrorism.

Paul's book is just over 370 pages long, extremely well written, logically structured, informative and persuasive. It is scattered with interesting anecdotes on a variety of famous and infamous people, including Bill Gates, Carl Sagan, Rodney King, Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh, Ayn Rand, Cecil Rhodes, Andrew Carnegie, Mike Tyson, Rosa Parks, George C. Scott, Linus Torvalds, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Albert Einstein and many others.

Section 1 investigates the link between competition and aggression, and delves into the effect of religious competition on society, the effect of competition on the social divide between the rich and the poor, and the resentment that is produced by a system that employs a philosophy of "winners and losers".

Section 2 discusses cooperation, harmony and it's application in producing "win-win" situations for all participants. Spanning religion, business, science, society and more, it showcases a variety of positive examples of cooperation and provides examples of the far-sighted individuals who have employed this philosophy successfully.

Section 3 is a life tutorial, offering a step-by-step guide to applying a cooperative approach to your life, and in doing so, improving the life of all those around you. It also addresses the root causes of terrorism, and offers a sane, practical and accessible manner of dealing with it.

I recommend Paul Siegel's book "We Don’t Agree, but ... How to Live in an Age of Terrorism" heartily. It is a great read, and will give you some wonderful ideas on how to improve your life and the lives of those around you. If everyone in the world genuinely employed cooperation instead of competition, there would be no place (and no reason) for terrorism or war.