Progressives say they can save US foreign policy from the blob

In a stirring 1967 address in New York City, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed the death of the welfare state at the hands of the warfare state. “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam,” King declared. “While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and required to be an instant success, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities.”Nearly six decades later, those who care about peace and dignity for the American people confront a similar dilemma. America’s post-Cold War pursuit of military dominance has generated resistance and destabilized nations abroad while enriching Pentagon contractors at the expense of the American public. It has led the United States into endless wars in the Middle East while pushing our politics in an ever more violent and paranoid direction.The Pentagon budget continues to grow to an eye-watering $1.5 trillion as Biden administration alumni flood the zone with self-exculpatory memoirs and a Republican president who campaigned on purging neoconservatives now finds himself fighting a disastrous war with Iran. Reacting to the sorry state of U.S. foreign policy, a critical mass of Americans have come to recognize that the country’s foreign policy does not serve their interests, as the midterm elections made clear. Congress responded to similar demands after the Vietnam War by initiating a bold (albeit insufficient) swath of reforms to rein in the imperial presidency and prevent U.S. arms from abetting human rights abuses. The question facing today’s progressives is whether they are up to the challenge of forging what Dr. King would call a “revolution of values” in American foreign policy.“A World for All,” edited by progressive foreign-policy maven Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy, seeks to answer this question in the affirmative. The volume of essays from progressive scholars and foreign-policy practitioners is divided into three thematic buckets: one on U.S. policy in several world regions, another on economics and migration, and a third devoted to Congress, the military-industrial complex, and technology. It is oriented, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) explains in the foreword, toward “articulat[ing] an affirmative vision” of a new foreign policy that “confronts global oligarchy, strengthens democratic institutions, and builds genuine partnerships.” Such a policy eschews delusions of global dominance while recognizing that “true security comes not from trillion-dollar arsenals but from addressing the root causes of instability: inequality, injustice, and environmental catastrophe.”At times, the volume does not live up to these grand ambitions. Even as the war in Iran raises important questions about the survivability and utility of U.S. military bases, few of the essays detailed how U.S. force posture might need to change to support such a vision. In fact, the Europe essay does not discuss the future of the 80,000 American troops on the continent. Similarly, the book’s discussion of the Ukraine War — the central friction point between the United States and Russia today — largely repackages the status quo in arguing that “the key diplomatic instrument will not be rhetoric or the art of persuasion but the cumulative leverage over Russia that Ukraine and its partners are able to amass.” It does not interrogate whether Ukraine’s leverage diminishes as the war of attrition drags on, likely harming Kyiv’s position at the negotiating table.This is a serious missed opportunity to chart an alternative course to the Cold War relic policy of many establishment Democrats and Republicans, which seeks worldwide U.S. military dominance without acknowledging the exorbitant costs this ambition incurs. These questions of prioritization should be front of mind for anyone trying to map the contours of a progressive foreign policy.As a whole, however, the book is a vital opening salvo in the Democratic foreign policy debate that will play out between now and the 2028 presidential primaries. The chapters on corruption and the defense budget feature bold, actionable recommendations for cracking down on pervasive corporate or foreign influence and ensuring American foreign policy represents the will of the American public. The volume’s contribution on Congress’s abdication of its constitutional responsibilities in war and peace likewise proposes important reforms to rein in the imperial presidency and build transpartisan coalitions to challenge unchecked presidential war-making. The book also rebuts some of the unhealthy ideological organizing principles of American primacy. Its prologue rightly pans “great power competition” with China and Russia for “prioritiz[ing] military solutions over diplomacy, undermin[ing] democracy and exacerbat[ing] inequality while exacerbating xenophobia and racism; and fuel[ing] jingoism…which heightens the risk of conflict. It also distracts from the problems with which the American people are most concerned.” In so doing, contributors Michael Brenes and Van Jackson make the provocative but essential argument that endless wars and interminable rivalries erode American democracy, in terms not dissimilar to King’s.The authors lament that the United States has become a driver of regional conflict in the Middle East through its blank-check support for an “expansionist” Israeli government and autocratic Gulf regimes. Similarly, the authors rightly argue the Iran War is the logical endpoint of the flawed bipartisan precept that overwhelming American military power can solve the political problems that bedevil the region.The authors are correct to observe that only sustained diplomacy with Iran can advance U.S. interests. Their conclusions that the United States should reduce or end its military presence in Iraq and the Gulf states and terminate U.S. assistance to Israel when it violates the laws of war or defies U.S. interests are compatible with a grand strategy of restraint.In several essays, contributors rebuke the Biden administration’s shortsighted focus on a global competition pitting democracies against autocracies as the organizing principle of international politics. The volume recognizes that China’s authoritarian government is not going away and that the United States should strive for a grand diplomatic bargain to reduce the risk of war and help manage vital issues of mutual concern, like climate change, AI, and nuclear arms control. Indeed, the sections on the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America criticize the bipartisan blank check that U.S. military aid and security assistance have provided to authoritarian regimes at great human cost in the name of counterterrorism or the War on Drugs.This represents a welcome break from post-Cold War Democratic foreign-policy orthodoxy. The 2024 Democratic Party platform, for example, characterized President Donald Trump as too soft on autocratic states like Iran and eschewed any mention of guardrails on competition with China. Democratic and progressive documents often suffer from critiquing the methods or decorum of U.S. policy rather than on the tangible outcomes of a faulty strategy of worldwide preeminence. The result has been old wine in a new bottle. To its credit, A World For All avoids this trap. It recognizes that the primary competition between democracy and autocracy is within states rather than between them. It rejects the premise that more defense spending and less bureaucracy will restore American military dominance and keep Americans safe. Its epilogue, written by Heather Hurlburt, notes that for too long, internationalists “have been prone to overpromise on what U.S. leadership can deliver and how ‘indispensable’ we are.”The Biden administration pursued a strategy that rejected the reality of a more multipolar world. If the next Democratic administration forges a new path and heeds the book’s call for humility, diplomacy, and discipline, it can break the cycle of endless war and give the American public its long-awaited peace dividend.