A PROGRESSIVE INTERNATIONAL AGENDA

By Paul Beckett for The Madison Institute

I.  Our Commitments in the International Arena

We must return to America’s strongest and proudest diplomatic traditions.  We must support democracy around the world, even when the governments chosen by the people are not our choice; we must work to strengthen and support the rule of international law; we must work within and support the United Nations and other multilateral institutions; we must make our country once again stand for truth and fairness in international relations; and we must work to reverse the deepening gulf of inequality between the rich and the poor regions of the world.  We are convinced that in returning to these principles and traditions we will make the U.S. safer, as well as strengthen our domestic democracy and economy.

II.                Why Do We Perceive an Urgent Need for Change?

Six years of imperial unilateralism have weakened – not strengthened – America in the world.  Here is a summary:

• The multilateral organizations, led by the United Nations -- which are the shining achievement of American post-World War II diplomacy -- have been deliberately undercut.  The U.S. has positioned itself as an opponent of the development of international law and international cooperation.

• Our ability to lead in the world has been undermined as our allies have increasingly come to see our leadership as bullying and as they have been made to doubt both the honesty and wisdom of our leadership.

• Inequality in the world has worsened rapidly as the U.S. has seemed to be a champion of corporate expansion and profit at any cost.  Meanwhile one-half of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty; the combined wealth of the world’s three richest individuals equals the combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations.  Not nearly enough is done to control the diseases that ravage the poorest nations.

• A misdirected “war on terror” has been exploited politically at home and abroad, but has failed to achieve its stated objectives.  Meanwhile, it has exacerbated the conditions that feed terrorism, and is increasingly seen in half the world as a war on Islam.  It has markedly increased, rather than decreased, the dangers that our country faces.

• The U.S. is the world’s largest weapons arms dealer, and we sell mainly to Third World countries; our military expenditures represent nearly half of the military expenditures of the whole world, and are larger than the next 20 biggest spenders combined.

• Increasingly, the design and conduct of American foreign policy is outside the control of our elected government.  Assertions of unilateral presidential power and unnecessary blankets of secrecy have undermined the legislative roles of oversight, advice and consent.  Overseas, a proliferation of military bases, and the predominance of “special forces” and private security enterprises controlled directly from the Pentagon, threaten to make our diplomatic representatives abroad subordinate, and to remove our foreign policy from democratic control.

III.  What Do We Propose?

We propose to rebuild American leadership and make the country more secure with adherence to the following traditional values of our country:

• Lay aside imperial thinking and foreswear unilateral, preemptive military actions.

• Demonstrate our renewed commitment to honesty, human rights and international law; restore America’s traditional image as standing for freedom and development.

• Commit genuinely to support of governments elected in free elections.

• Renew our commitment to the United Nations and to solving international problems through diplomacy and partnership in multilateral engagements and organizations.

• Recognize that a world that is half rich and half in direst poverty cannot be tolerated and is, in the long run, more dangerous for us; work with other powerful nations to design rules of trade, and programs of assistance, that will significantly reduce the poverty of the poorer nations.

• Restore democratic control of our foreign policy; reduce secrecy and bring the military back under civilian, democratic control.

We advocate the following specific policy commitments:

• To negotiate immediately with the elected government of Iraq the timing and modalities of U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq; to commit immediately to a withdrawal of all U.S. military bases from Iraq.

• To recognize the successes so far achieved through the Kyoto Protocol; and to providing leadership to strengthen international steps to counter global warming and reduce environmental pollution.

• In our international trade policy, to give the highest priority to efforts to alter the worldwide descent into radical and dangerous economic inequality between nations and regions.

• To worldwide reduction in nuclear armaments through reduction and universal inspection of existing stockpiles, including our own; and to applying principles of nuclear non-proliferation fairly and equally among all nations.

• That the U.S. will not carry out a nuclear first strike.

• Not to introduce U.S. offensive weapons in outer space, and to work within the U.N. to develop a treaty on preventing an arms race in outer space.

• To increase support of international health and population planning programs, especially as they serve the least developed regions of the world.