The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Emira Woods.  You can find the previous posts here.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz for making the cross-postings happen.

With a global economic slowdown and a deepening food crisis, the biggest foreign policy priority for the next President must be building a global economy that benefits poor and working families in the United States and around the world.

The World Bank estimates that 100 million people have been pushed into poverty this year by rising food and fuel prices.  In the U.S. 13.3 million children live below the poverty line.  Throughout the world, 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day.  The statistics, already staggering, will only worsen with the current economic crisis.  Wall Street executives and their surrogates have accumulated wealth in unregulated markets at the expense of the poor and middle class.  Bold action is needed to reinvigorate economies, invest in people, and build the infrastructure of the 21st century.

First, the new President must invest in global development that brings health care and education for all. The challenges of global poverty can be met by prioritizing human security.  Health care, education, housing, decent jobs: these are the core building blocks of healthy communities.  Investing in these pivotal areas anchors our global village in the interest of lower income people and builds a safer, more stable world.  A just and responsible foreign policy would cancel the external debts of the poorest countries and eliminate “odious” debts of middle income countries.  It would advance fair trade regimes so that the resources of countries around the world can be directed towards the needs of the people. Strengthened communities can unleash the human creativity needed to meet the demands of a changing global economy.

Second, the next President must commit to a global green investment agenda. The U.S. must end its addiction to oil.  An economy based on fossil fuels has led to unnecessary wars, economic crisis, and environmental catastrophe.  The new President can use political leverage for technology transfer as well as private-public partnerships to advance solar, wind, and other renewable energies.  Creating innovative green jobs can sustain the environment while allowing countries in Africa, Latin America and other regions of the global South to leapfrog their development in creative new ways.  Manufacturing renewable technology equipment like wind turbines or solar panels could reinvigorate economies from Detroit to Dakar.  Similarly, building and improving public transportation systems like high-speed trains can create new jobs while protecting the environment.  Survival of the planet hinges on bold and immediate action by the next President.

The third and perhaps most urgent foreign policy priority for the next President must be ending the cycle of continuous war.  The overall U.S. military budget currently stands at $965 billion, nearly half of the world’s military spending.   According to a recent report produced by Foreign Policy In Focus, the ratio of U.S. funding for military forces vs. non-military international engagement is 18:1.  This dramatic imbalance in the foreign policy toolkit allows military objectives to drive international engagement, leaving development and diplomacy poorly resourced.  The next President must end the war in Iraq with its escalating human and financial costs; halt the expansion of U.S. foreign bases; curb the global arms trade by stemming the flow of U.S. weapons around the world; and rebalance global engagement to advance principles of peace and justice.   U.S. leadership on these initiatives will not only create a safer, more stable world, but will also unleash resources that can sustain the global green economy the world needs in this 21st century.

Emira Woods is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) is a think tank for research, analysis, and action that brings together 600 scholars, advocates, and activists who strive to make the United States a more responsible global partner.  The Institute for Policy Studies is a multi-issue research center that has transformed ideas into action for peace, justice, and the environment for over four decades. Ms. Woods is an expert on U.S. foreign policy with a special emphasis on Africa and the developing world.  She has written on a range of issues from debt, trade and development to US military policy.

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The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Christopher Paine.  Posts in the series will appears every Thursday from now to the election.  You can find the previous posts here.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz for making the cross-postings happen.

If we are actually to overcome the security challenges facing the U.S. and the world in the coming decades – rather than merely tinkering with them – the next President will need to constitute a dramatically new paradigm for U.S. foreign policy. This new paradigm rests on four pillars:

(1) Restoration of the UN Charter and increasing adherence of the force of law – not the law of force – as the ultimate arbiter of behavior between and within nation states. This means an end to the era of badmouthing and underfunding the UN system, and the beginning of serious efforts to reform and strengthen it capabilities for preventing and terminating international and civil conflicts, especially those that jeopardize the lives of large numbers of civilians.

(2) Sustainable human development, not “global economic growth,” must become the fundamental objective that the United States shares, and promotes in its relations with other nations and international institutions. That means that the actual conditions of life on the ground for human beings, and for the natural ecosystems they inhabit and will pass on to their children, must become the essential benchmarks of “progress” in our foreign policy.

(3) Renewable energy development and energy efficiency at home and abroad should be made the foremost priority of any new sustainable human development strategy. In fact, the multiple beneficial roles that renewable energy and efficiency technologies can play—in averting climate change, fostering sustainable economic development overseas, minimizing future proliferation risks, and creating good domestic jobs—illustrate the way that the traditionally sharp but often artificial distinctions between “domestic” and “foreign” policy are eroding, and none too soon.

(4) At a minimum, the next President will have to dismantle the Bush legacy in National Security Policy, but real progress against 21st century threats will require him to go further, and dismantle the longstanding political-industrial-bureaucratic nexus that observers of our politics have long dubbed the “U.S. National Security State.” For decades the United States has been locked into a pattern of dysfunctional defense spending that has impoverished virtually every public space, park, transit system, library, school, and health clinic in America. Successive administrations have pursued such costly technological idiocies as missile defenses, airborne lasers, and killer satellites, while maintaining huge nuclear forces to no discernible purpose, and developing a vast and unaffordable array of new conventional weapons to defeat the massed formations of an enemy that has faded into history.  A major rethinking of U.S. military defense requirements is urgently needed that would free resources for achieving the indispensable sustainable development objectives outlined above.

Christopher E. Paine directs the Nuclear Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC, which he joined in June 1991 after five years with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he assisted successful efforts to end US production of plutonium for weapons and underground nuclear test explosions. From 1985-1987, Paine was a consultant to Princeton University’s Project on Nuclear Policy Alternatives, a Research Fellow-in-residence at the Federation of American Scientists, Washington, D.C.  and a staff consultant for nuclear nonproliferation policy with the Subcommittee on Energy, Conservation & Power, U.S. House of Representatives.  He is the author or co-author of numerous NRDC reports, as well as some 70 articles on proliferation, energy, and national security policy in such publications as Scientific American, Nature, Arms Control Today, Science, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  He is a 1974 graduate of Harvard University.

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The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Lora Lumpe.  The series will then resume next week and appear weekly from now to the convention.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz over at the Connect U.S. Fund for making the cross-postings happen.

One of the most urgent foreign policy priorities for the next administration is to take on the MIPC.

That’s not a new South American Maoist group. Nor is it a fast spreading virus from Asia.  It’s President/General Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial-Complex, 50 years later and fully integrated into the political life of the nation.

Why would the next President want to touch that, you ask?!  Well, because there is near unanimity among America’s foreign policy thinkers of both parties that we have got to build up the atrophied non-military components of U.S. foreign policy-namely diplomacy and development.  The U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (which includes not only the development and humanitarian biggies, but also Boeing and LockMar), Secretary Gates, Chairman Mullen, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden and Ranking Republican Dick Lugar all agree.

I work for a Quaker lobby group, and we are definitely down with that!  We are all about preventing deadly conflict, and in fact we have had two full time lobbyists wandering the halls of Capitol Hill for the past 5 years trying to sell the idea that it’s cheaper-and better policy-to have adequate numbers of superbly trained diplomats and a cadre of technically skilled development specialists than it is to have wars.

Nevertheless, according to the State Department’s own recent estimate, there are still more than 1,500 diplomatic positions currently unfilled, and a vacancy rate of more than 13% in our embassies around the world.  At the same time, the DOD has issued directives and is moving forward with plans to enable it to carry out even more development functions, as a hedge against the (quite likely) inability of State Department to garner adequate resources from Congress to do the development jobs that need doing.*

But, as long as politics are in play, Members of Congress-9 times out of 10-are going to respond to pressures to give the Pentagon pretty much whatever it wants, in order to maintain bases, manufacturing jobs, etc. in state or in district.  They face zero negative political impact if they vote against funding State Department “bureaucrats” or “wasteful and inefficient” development programs.

Until the development and diplomatic community disperse across the country and can create political pressure (ie, jobs) in 435 Congressional districts-or at least in a dozen or so states-they will always be at a disadvantage when it comes time for Congress to vote on
the annual appropriations bills.

Relatedly, when I lobby on the Hill, I very often meet with military legislative aides who are “Fellows” on loan from one of the military services.  One such, an Air Force Fellow, told me that the USAF alone had 41 Fellows on the Hill this year, so there are probably nearly 200 in all.  These folks will return to the Pentagon and work “Leg. Affairs”-and do so with great savvy and with loads of personal connections. The result-of both the Fellows’ training and the dispersed jobs and military bases is that the DOD is the most effective lobby in town, bar none.

In the State Department, by comparison, Legislative Affairs is viewed as somewhere near the seventh circle, middle ring of the Inferno.  While there are a few offices and individuals who are quite effective at using the media and/or Hill contacts, in general State Department is woeful at advocating and advancing its legislative goals.

The next President needs to direct the State Department to study the Pentagon’s skillful approach, but he is also going to have to expend a good deal of political capital to persuade folks on Capitol Hill that they should ignore pork barrel prerogatives in favor of the good of the nation and the world and fully fund the diplomatic and development corps that everyone agrees we have let go to seed.

The second imperative for the next administration, in order for the republic to have a healthy-or healthier-foreign policy, is for the admin to encourage Congress to take back more power.  While it may seem paradoxical-even unlikely-that the admin should or would urge the Congress to exercise its prerogatives more fully, it is imperative that Congress get back into the practice of oversight.

During the past decade, you can count on half of one hand the Committees of  Congress-House or Senate-that engaged in oversight of U.S. foreign policy.  Instead, the body has largely become a rubberstamp-especially for the military aspects of foreign policy-which, as outlined below, encompass many previously civilian-led functions, like development, democracy-building, etc.

The breakdown in oversight is related to the extreme partisan politics that has befallen the Capitol, but also to the infatuation that the U.S. public and policy world have with all things military.  The “can do” attitude of the military is mythologized, while billions in waste, fraud, and abuse are overlooked and the Pentagon is given more and more authorities with little or no examination of costs, benefits, or counterproductive repercussions.

Most Congressional committees gutted their investigations staffs in the late 1990s, as inquiries like Iran-Contra, BICC and others were considered pesky and partisan.  Oversight became, if not a dirty word at least a forgotten art, and external groups, like the Project on Government Oversight, now hold seminars for congressional staff who are
interested in learning how to do oversight….

While difficult to enact these changes, it will be impossible to revitalize America’s foreign policy tool kit without taking on these deeply rooted institutional and political problems.

————————-
*DOD Directive 3000.05 of 28 November 2005 states that some of the DOD’s core tasks, as part of its new “stability operations” mandate” include:
4.3.1.  Rebuild indigenous institutions including various types of security forces, correctional facilities, and judicial systems necessary to secure and stabilize the environment;
4.3.2.  Revive or rebuild the private sector, including encouraging citizen-driven, bottom-up economic activity and constructing necessary infrastructure; and
4.3.3.  Develop representative governmental institutions.”

As FCNL’s Legislative Representative for Conventional Weapons, Lora Lumpe lobbies and campaigns for more responsible U.S. arms export policies—including a ban on U.S. use and export of cluster bombs and anti-personnel landmines. She coordinates the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines on behalf of FCNL and represents FCNL on the steering committee of the global campaign to achieve a universal Arms Trade Treaty.
Before joining FCNL’s staff in September 2007, Lora served for six years as a consultant for Amnesty International USA. She also worked as a consultant in recent years for the Open Society Institute, Small Arms Survey, the United Nations, AFSC, Swiss Government, and numerous other organizations.

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The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Yesterday we heard from Connect U.S. Fund executive director Eric Schwartz.  Today, it’s Brian Atwood’s turn.

Transitions are a time of great expectations in Washington. I had the great honor of leading the State Department transition team prior to the Clinton-Gore administration. I worked with an excellent team that included Connect U.S. Fund executive director Eric Schwartz.

The ‘92 transition was a move from a reasonably pragmatic administration of the center-right to a pragmatic administration of the center-left. This year’s transition will see the country moving away from an administration that broke a mold that had roughly accommodated the previous foreign policy spectrum, the “realists” and the “progressive internationalists.”  While there has been some effort in the second Bush term to move away from radical, neo-conservative policies, the residuum continues to influence the attitudes and behavior of much of the world towards the United States.

The first test of a new administration must be to demonstrate by action that our nation can listen and cooperate. Rhetoric to this effect will be well received, but active diplomacy on several fronts will be essential. These include: the Israeli-Palestinian issue; climate change; nuclear proliferation with an emphasis on Iran and North Korea, ratifying the NPT and negotiating with Russia to reduce and eliminate stockpiles; completing the DOHA round; engaging NATO and neighboring countries on our withdrawal from Iraq and our efforts to bolster the Afghan government; working with Pakistan on our common effort to contain Al Qaeda.; creating mature political and economic relations with India and China; and reestablishing American leadership in the effort to mitigate the poverty challenge in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

These objectives are on the top of most people’s list. I would add two more general goals that are often difficult for administrations pre-occupied with crises: (1) we need to spend some political capital on reforming the United Nations; and (2) we need to create a “culture of prevention” within the U.S. government.

The United Nations has been a whipping boy of the right because of its institutional weakness and because, periodically, the Security Council doesn’t support the U.S. position. Often even pro-UN Democratic administrations prefer to avoid the need to reform while regretting the lack of capacity to intervene for peace. The UN can be a useful tool as we pursue a new climate change treaty, the control of nuclear weapons, international cooperation against the terrorist threat and peaceful post-conflict transitions. It is past time that we invest the resources and influence in helping the Secretary General create a stronger organization.

I served on the Brahimi UN Peace Operations Panel. I was impressed by the potential of the UN and quite depressed that our own country, in lieu of supporting the needed reforms, expended its political capital by seeking to reduce our UN contributions. We helped pass many Security Council Resolutions that could not be implemented fully because of a lack of resources. U.S. leadership is capable of changing this vital organization for the better. Now is the time to exercise it.

Creating a culture of prevention within the U.S. government means an intelligence community that can anticipate future crises by better understanding the fault lines of impending disaster. It means having a diplomatic presence in more places. It means creating a new Department for International Development Cooperation capable of coordinating development assistance within the USG and possessing a strong voice on trade and finance decisions that effect development. It means working with the U.N. voluntary agencies, the international financial institutions and regional banks, and the bilateral donor community to help nations develop and avoid crises. It means using our understanding of development conditions, inter-ethnic or religious tensions, international criminal activity and the impact of all of the above on weak governance systems. If we mobilize U.S. government and international partners, we can prevent many of the crises that cause such pain and exhaust our resources today.

The next administration has much to overcome if it is to recover the reputation of a nation that once stood on a “shining hill.” Our foreign policy in the past seven years has been influenced more by fear than by the grandest aspirations of our past. We need to restore our image by stopping torture, closing Guantanamo and standing tall for the principles of human rights and democracy. Those who argue that we cannot be both tough in the battle with terrorists and be true to our most important principles have been proven wrong. It may not have been their intention, but they strengthened our avowed enemies and turned allies into skeptics and opponents. It is time to get back on the right track.

J. Brian Atwood is the dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Atwood served for six years as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Administration of President William Clinton. Atwood also led the 1992 transition team at the State Department and was Under Secretary of State for Management prior to his appointment as head of USAID. In 2001, Atwood served on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Panel on Peace Operations. He joined the Foreign Service in 1966 and served in the American Embassies in Cote d’Ivoire and Spain. He served as legislative advisor for foreign and defense policy to Senator Thomas F. Eagleton (D-MO) from 1972 to 1977. During the Carter Administration, Atwood served as Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations. He was Dean of Professional Studies and Academic Affairs at the Foreign Service Institute in 1981-82. Atwood was the first President of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) from 1986 to 1993. Atwood received the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award in 1999.

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