‘Just Security’: US as Global Partner, Not Global Boss
WASHINGTON - Insisting that U.S. foreign policy of the past six years has clearly failed, a left-leaning Washington think tank is calling for the adoption of a comprehensive new approach to international relations called “Just Security” in which the U.S. would act “as a global partner, not a global boss.”
Among other features, “Just Security” calls for reducing U.S. military spending by a third, or some 213 billion dollars; carrying out a “rapid” withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq; and seeking sharp cuts in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals as a first step toward realising the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s goal of banning nuclear weapons.
The new approach, laid out in a 69-page report released here Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Studies’ Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) programme, also calls for sustained and generous U.S. engagement in multilateral institutions, particularly those aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and enhance the abilities of poor countries to curb the spread of deadly diseases.
“This new foreign policy approach is more in line with public opinion than the U.S. Congress, which recently backed additional money for the Iraq War,” said John Feffer, who led a team of 14 contributors affiliated with programme.
“Leading presidential candidates and the foreign policy establishment are being overly cautious. There’s virtually no debate about freezing, let alone reducing, military spending, which has soared to unprecedented levels,” he said, pointing to recent opinion polls by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that suggest strong public support for sharply cutting defence budgets and increasing foreign assistance.
Indeed, since George W. Bush became president in 2001, U.S. military spending has increased to over 600 billion dollars, an amount that is roughly equivalent to the combined military budgets of the rest of the world’s countries. At the same time, Washington has used its “global war on terror” to increase its military presence around the world and its sales of arms to other countries.
Yet, according to the report, “Just Security: An Alternative Foreign Policy Framework”, these measures have actually undermined, rather than enhanced, global security.
“U.S. military interventions, directly or through proxies, have thrown entire regions into a downward spiral of conflict,” the report asserts. “In the Middle East and Africa, in particular, the U.S. emphasis on military rather than diplomatic solutions has prevented regional peacemaking from moving forward.”
“With its emphasis on fighting wars, the Bush administration has insisted on focusing just on security,” according to the report. “We must focus instead on a just security, because there can be no real security without justice.”
To that end, the report calls for Washington to move “from a unipolar system presided over by the United States to a secure, multipolar system that is held in place by a latticework of international institutions and laws.”
In that respect, it calls for Washington to pay far more respect to international law by abiding by the Geneva Conventions and other human rights treaties, upholding the core labour standards of the International Labour Organisation, and supporting new international institutions, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Kyoto Protocol that have been rejected by the Bush administration.
“We are entering a new ‘multipolar moment’. The most aggressive unilateralist phase in U.S. policy is receding, and new centres of power are emerging,” according to the report which notes that Washington must come to terms with China’s ascendancy, Russia’s “petropolitik”, India’s economic heft, a “new generation of Latin American leadership,” and international civil society, or “the other superpower”.
The report examines five critical challenges faced by the U.S. and the rest of the world — climate change, global poverty, nuclear weapons, terrorism and military conflict — that it says can only be addressed through multilateral cooperation and that are subject to misconceptions, often shared by both Democrats and Republicans, that get in the way of rational policy responses.
Free trade and free market policies are widely believed to help the poor, according to the report. But as implemented over the past two decades, neo-liberal policies have actually contributed to poverty and the growing divide between rich and poor both among and within countries, it asserts.
Similarly, the notion that Washington needs to spend more than 600 billion dollars a year to keep the peace — an idea endorsed by all of the leading Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls — is also faulty, according to the report.
“The United States has taken on the role of the world’s policeman, but the world is not calling 911 for our services,” it notes, adding that Washington “is currently spending more now on an annual basis than at any time since World War II” despite the absence of a credible rival.
The report, which is clearly aimed at influencing the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, in particular, calls for a return by the party and the country to the “principled internationalism” of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as opposed to his more-hawkish successor, Harry Truman, who presided over the birth of the Cold War and the doctrine of “containment” of Soviet and later Chinese influence.
A “new and improved” containment to be deployed against transnational terrorism, threatening regimes and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as promoted by “liberal hawks” who identify themselves with Truman’s legacy — while an improvement “on the schoolyard bully stance of the Bush administration” — fails to recognise new global realities, according to the report, particularly the necessity to build multilateral mechanisms needed to confront critical global problems.
“This rehabilitation of Henry Truman’s foreign policy record is an attempt to pump up the Democratic Party with steroids lest it appear weak on the military on the military or terrorism,” according to the report. “It is close to the same Bush foreign policy, minus the more flagrant human rights violations.”
“As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt realised more than 60 years ago, the future of the United States depends on our becoming a more responsible member of the global neighbourhood…We will not feel secure until we all feel secure.”
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service.
Right on. The USA is not currently threatened by any other state, hasn’t been invaded since 1812, and doesn’t even need an army except for losing escapades in other countries. So I wouldn’t label this group “left-leaning”, I’d call them sensible. Unfortunately peace is not the quick money-maker that war is.
And yet, I’ve seen posting on mainstream news websites, where americans say: “screw the rest of the world, we don’t need you to like us”. That’s how narrow-minded and simplistic people in this country are. Can’t wait to get the heck out of here.
Even though my idiot Prime Minister Bushpoodle2 takes his orders from Washington, I don’t get to vote in Indecision 2008, so I can’t tell Americans what to do. Yet I hope y’all get behind this FPIF proposal. It would require a long and painful struggle to dismantle your military-industrial complex — and we in Canada would hafta start a campaign against our techno-industry’s stealth program which provides the Pentagon with a state-of-the-art generation of military satellites, and disinvest our Canada Pension Plan from the American arms industry. But we could do that — we North Americans could change the world if we joined forces in a “coalition of the hopeful and determined.”
Actually, the U.S. needs the rest of the world’s resources to go on living anything like the way people in the U.S. have in the past century. And given how the U.S. has used its military and a string of mercenaries and terrorists to maintain control over the flow of those resources, often through propping up dictators, the U.S. has made a lot of bitter enemies in the parts of the world where it gets its 25% share of the world’s resources. So, let’s not kid ourselves about this kinder, gentler cop that is being promoted. It’s still about controlling other people’s lives, countries, and stuff for our own sense of entitlement. It’s still about empire.
If the people of the U.S. want something else, they will have to choose to live with fewer, more expensive resources from abroad. That, and only that, will defund their evil empire and the hunger that has led to hundreds of military bases around the world and coercive deals enjoined by the U.S. controlled World Bank and its IMF partner to keep other people’s governments and countries in financial and military chains.
. . . You’d better wipe off that smile, boys
Better wipe off that smile
We’ll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck
And we’ll find you a leader that you can elect
Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck
‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys
We’re the Cops of the World
And clean the johns with a rag, boys
Clean the johns with a rag
If you like you can use your flag, boys
If you like you can use your flag
We’ve got too much money we’re looking for toys
And guns will be guns and boys will be boys
But we’ll gladly pay for all we destroy
‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys
We’re the Cops of the World
Please stay off of the grass, boys
Please stay off of the grass
Here’s a kick in the ass, boys
Here’s a kick in the ass
We’ll smash down your doors, we don’t bother to knock
We’ve done it before, so why all the shock
We’re the biggest and the toughest kids on the block
And we’re the Cops of the World, boys
We’re the Cops of the World
And when we butchered your sons, boys
When we butchered your sons
Have a stick of our gum, boys
Have a stick of our bubble gum
We own half the world, oh say can you see
And the name for our profits is democracy
So, like it or not, you will have to be free
‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys
We’re the Cops of the World
From “Cops Of The World” by Phil Ochs
My, how little has changed in 40 years!
At last a voice of sanity
thanks for that “Cops of the World “poem - that’s powerful!
I wish we could take the points of the Just Security group and get all the Dem. presidential candidates to resond to it. I would vote for whoever would pledge to implement these ideas. I wonder if Hillary would agree? Somehow I don’t think so, and she continues to worry me.
We should all definitely support the Institute for Policy Studies’ Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) program and Kucinich’s bill (with quite a few co-sponsors) to create a Dept. of Peace on an equal basis with the Dept. of Defense. Congress needs to hear from us on these issues.
As an excuse for empire in the Middle East and for building new nuclear energy facilities and “clean coal” factories, the US government (both parties) and the main stream media claim that we need to become free from depending on foreign oil, but the majority of the oil we import comes from Alberta, Canada, and another good percentage from Venezuela and Africa. Very little, about 15%, I think, comes from the Middle East. Nevertheless, the fear of losing “our way of life” keeps some people supporting US Empire.
To those commenters who post frequently, please add this information to your posts.
There is enough knowledge and resources to let the world become a paradise. We’re only missing the will. http://www.gp.org/
zoya, I think you are giving your Canadian PM a little too much credit. He is BushPoodle3, not BushPoodle2. Both Tony Blair and John Howard must certainly be ahead of him.
The world should remember that the US is more divided right now than any time in history. Some of the people here support the US military occupation of the world. They feel that all Americans are entitled to the gluttonous lifestyles that became glorified somehow by our legacy of owning slaves and plantations and colonizing foreign lands militarily, diplomatically, and economically.
But a large and growing number of people here feel neglected and betrayed by a government that spends our tax money to govern other nations while even our newly elected Congress pretends to be powerless to solve problems both foreign and domestic. American citizens are hostages in our own country.
The US government claimed to invade Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. Who needs to be liberated more than the American people?
The US prefers to be the Global Bully rather than a partner. (Incidentally it has trained and armed Israel to play the same role of the Bully for the middle east)
The US will never give up the role of the World’s Bully, unless it is forced to. The coming economic collapse in the US will do just that.
Even this article ignores the closest thing we have to a governing document for the world: the UN Charter, product of WWII. In 2002 I was horrified when Bush justified our upcoming aggression not only with the irrelevant point that Iraq might develop nuclear weapons someday but also with a new doctrine that the U.S. was entitled to take “preemptive action”. This implicitly repudiated the Charter and endorsed the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the 1939 attack on Poland. I’d be happy to have the U.S. act like the world’s policeman or at least a member of the police force, since a policeman’s job is to UPHOLD THE LAW, with force if necessary. Instead the U.S. has often acted like the world’s gangster boss, ordering “hits” on unwanted leaders and regimes and selling junk that hurts people.
The FPIF program might have some chance if we had some semblance of a democracy. That of course left us long ago. And the corporate oligarchs are not about to displease the members of their fraternity who supply the Department of Offense with so much kill power or the other members of their fraternity who depend on the Department of Offense striding the globe and terrorizing all who might oppose the plunder of their resources or their enslavement and murder.
“the majority of the oil we import comes from Alberta, Canada, and another good percentage from Venezuela and Africa. Very little, about 15%, I think, comes from the Middle East. Nevertheless, the fear of losing “our way of life” keeps some people supporting US Empire.”
US Oil imports from the Middle East total 27% of all imports of oil in the us according to the Energy Information Adminstration of the DOE.
Top 5 countries we import from in order of total are: CANADA, MEXICO, SAUDI ARABIA, NIGERIA, VENEZUELA
Canada was 20% of all imported oil to the US in the first 6 months of 2007.
Yeah–Right. The politicians are going to go for this.
Anything with “security” in the title makes me nervous! Even if its supposed to be a “progressive” think tank about global security. Security as a word has been used as a cover for aggressive action against foriegn nations or for the purpose of implementing regressive laws time and again in the past several years by the gov’t and by a myriad of groups in DC. I don’t trust this word anymore as I don’t trust the following buzz words when used by politicans, the newsmedia or groups: “freedom”, “democracy”, “progressive”, “conservative” etc. Too many people have twisted these words and they’ve lost their original meaning.
My other question is so who is funding the latest think tank in Washington?
The bullet points are sound policy; as stated, they’re a prog’s wet dream. Good idea to find out who’s doing the main funding, tho.
As dcbeltway points out, we all have a response to certain buzz words, and knowing who is using them is a great way to figure out what they mean by them.
“Judge a tree by its fruits.”
But the article makes a huge point when it ties these policy goals with the majority of the electorate. A candidate who fearlessly pursues these goals SHOULD win the presidency, but the media would never get its cut of the election take that way.
So we can’t hear about Kucinich, except as a flaky futility. And we can’t hear about this report, unless it’s pre-emptively dismissed as ‘left-wing’.
Peach McD in Durham NC
Q: If Bush went to war with Iraq for the oil, where is it?
A: The first thing they did after they invaded was build a pipeline to Kuwait. (It’s what Halliburton does best.) That’s what 100,000 U.S. soldiers are guarding in Iraq. That’s why they needed the surge to control Baghdad — because 80% of the soldiers are guarding Bush’s precious pipeline to Kuwait.
Q: Does he have super secret Bush Family Evil Empire oil refineries? Is there a magic BFEE oil warehouse hidden somewhere in the sands of Texas?
A: No magic is involved. Kuwait owes their very existence to the Bush Crime Family. Remember the last fake war started by Bush the Smarter? Kuwait turned off their pumps — they’re selling Iraq’s oil for Bush.
Bush said “mistakes” have been made in the attack and occupation of Iraq. Bush’s “mistake” is making the Bush Family Evil Empire thugs hundreds of millions of dollars of profit per day. When a Bush “mistake” makes that kind of money, expect those “mistakes” to keep happening again and again and again.
Why do you think we’re in Year Five of a failed quagmire? Why do you think — after four years — there are no meters on Iraq’s oil pumps?
‘Just Security’: US as Global Partner, Not Global Boss
***************
“Partner” with whom? With other nations? Multinational corporations? (which ones and why?)
“Just security” for whom or what? “The American way of life?” The “resource base of multinational corporations be it raw materials or ultra-cheap foreign sweatshop or slave workers?
Resurrect the Truman policy of “containment”?
Does this mean our nation will be on command economy status for another 45 year “cold war” against “terror”?
There are enough loopholes in this proposal for Frank Lunz to borrow all of it and give it to the Republican party for its 08 new and improved “neocon lite” foreign policy. No thanks we’ve been there, done that and got the IOU’s to prove it!
If you read between the lines of this article, you can come up with but one conclusion: The U.S. is the number one rouge and terrorist nation in the world now, constantly engaging in wars and agitprop. The current U.S. emphasis on military denotes emphasis on brute force = the law of jungle, with Bush as the epitome of the chicken hawk AWAL paper tiger, with Cheney not far behind.
The article calls for the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq. Why just Iraq? What about the 700-1000 military bases scattered around the globe? Why cut only one-third of the military budget? Why not cut nine-tenth of it? If a superpower is so scared as to need so many bases to protect itself, then the logic follows that weaker nations would require many times more. Can you think of any other nation that has even 3 military bases around the world? Those bases are propped up to allow and continue the theft of other peoples’ resources by the U.S. corporation, euphemized as U.S. interests.
The tiny Cuba sends thousand of doctors and healthcare professional around the world to help the poor and the sick; the self-proclaimed superpower sends killers. People all over the world notice that and no longer buy empty rhetoric and propaganda, but the corporate owners of the U.S. must have their heads in the sand. The America people must wipe out the system that gives rise to such shameless regimes.
A change in the U.S. foreign policy necessitates some real changes in the domestic one. The industries that help improve the living standard of the people should replace military industries in all the fifty states. The outmoded two-party system, which has practically morphed into one party with two right wings, belongs to the trashcan, as do almost all members of the U.S. Congress. The American people need statesmen not politicians that are funded and chosen by special interest and corporations. The list can go on.
The U.S. needs a very long shower to clean itself before it can regain its lost dignity and respect. Thieves have guilty conscience and always feel insecure.
Global bossand local bus
Once up on a time a bit more than 60 years the USA fought against a ghost called URSS, now the same USA is leading another huge war against another devil called terrorism meanwhile trying to lead a compaign for the democratization of friendly systems.
The USA is a global boss driving a local bus but this time the bus is goin to the hell,well!
In fact, it is supposed that the USA treats people in good manner, and this cannot be achieved, unless the boss becomes a simple worker, helping his workers and trusting them.
the USA should ommit the idea of a new world order since this idea won’t be achieved, so go back to human being’s values equality, justice, real democracy and dignity and then the world wil live peacefully.
Don’t know who funds this think group and I was waiting to read some of the names associated with the discussion. Saw Henry Kissinger, Zbignew Breszinski, and Brent Snowcroft together on Charlie Rose using the same language contained in the piece here. I’m guessing their appearance was prompted by their work on the FPIF report.
Just mentioning those names can unleash a torrent of bitterness and scorn, but at least not everyone of stature and experience is parroting the new world order (Bush) line. Of those three, Kissinger is the most likely to shade his remarks for his perceived audience; the other two are at least consistent though not always agreeable. And of course they mean to influence the debate (non) by all the frontrunners.
It’s time to totally shut down the military. It’s a source of trouble and grief for the people and a horribly huge pork barrel for the richest 1%!
“fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983
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Iraq: Permanent Iraq: Permanent US Colony
by Dahr Jamail
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Iraq_Permanent_US_Colony.html
==================
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com
Guns and Butter Wednesday,
Bonnie Faulkner
KPFA in Berkeley
Archives > Guns and Butter > Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Play mp3 Stream
About this program:
“What Didn’t Hit the Pentagon”
with Dave von Kleist, April Gallop and Barbara Honegger. Dave von Kleist examines mainstream media coverage
of the attack on the Pentagon; Pentagon survivor April Gallop describes her experiences on September 11th, 2001, her first day back at work as an administrative specialist with the U.S. Army at the Pentagon, after maternity leave; and Barbara Honegger, Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Post-Graduate School, discusses her article, “The Pentagon Attack Papers”.
Check it out.
You can bet the Military-Industrial-Media-Complex, as the late Colonel David Hackworth called it, will squeal like a stuck pig if such policy gets a serious look. Some successes have occurred, but as Robert Borosage put it last weekend at the Take Back America conference, we must “gird ourselves for far more fierce battles to come.”
P.S. You know, of course, that just because you don’t have your name and address attached to your post that that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that you are anonymous to this government’s police agencies.
Thanks to IPS and Jim Lobe again! IPS is the best news service out there. It is professional, has integrity and covers the big news that the corporate owned media disregard.
Thirst for power leads to empire, at home and abroad; it slowly strangles democracy and makes international peace impossible.
A question for US citizens:
- If the road to democracy involved breaking the US up into, say, seven or eight economically successful, peaceful american nations, none of them with enough power to be the most significant player in the international arena, would you be amenable to that solution?
If your answer to the above question is NO, you are a republican, no matter how you vote and what your poses are.
Eduardo Villagrán
It’d be great to see the US broken up into several peaceful little nations. That or anything that the people can agree on, that leads to peace and the elimination of poverty would be an improvement.
By inventing a so called “war on terror”, Cheney & Bush have made a huge dream come true for corporate America. Permanent, massive profits. Destroy and build, over and over again.
I would think that a nation of apes would have the sense to demand more intelligent/decent leadership than we have.
“If your answer to the above question is NO, you are a republican, no matter how you vote and what your poses are. ”
Eduardo. Are you a US Citizen?
I’m with zoya…..support progressives and peaceful initiatives in the upcoming election south of the border…
spread the message of disinvestment everywhere…….
Thanks Rune for posting Phil Och’s song We’re The Cops Of The World.
Phil loved also to update his Prophetic tunes like” Here’s to The State of Mississippi” to “Here’s
To the State of Richard Nixon” and since he left us in 76 we can now sing “Heres to the State of Bush and Cheney” without changing any verses.
I knew Phil real well and if he was around today he might change Cops to “We’re the Thugs of the World”.
Phil and I were working to get to the bottom of the JFK case even before it happened and you can learn more about how he met RfK at least twice and thought that the truth could come out only if Robert got elected.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10194
I am from Guatemala, a country that has experienced and continues to experience some of the features of US imperial policies; a banana republic, if you will. Yet I have many american friends, both from college days as well as professional associates, who have for the longest time convinced me of the intrinsically democratic nature of the US; ivory tower types, I suspect. I have defended their position here and everywhere, but in the last few years this position has become untenable, as I watch democrats speaking and acting like republicans.
I have, therefore, come back to the commonplace that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. A country that insists on being a superpower will gear its society and economy to this end, witness Bush and his coterie, and in the process it will increasingly repress and corrupt the democratic liberties of its own citizens; the vast majority, those who are not part of the imperial warmongering coterie. Democrats speak and act like republicans, with nuances and window dressings of course, because they have not given up their imperial urges.
Empire and democracy are not compatible and in a big, powerful country the temptation to boss, grab and interfere in other countries is just too great, witness again Bush and his coterie. Balkanization drives home this inherent incompatibility and its painful choices, though perhaps it is too late. Yankee ingenuity, freedom of action and a “can do” attitude, aided by an undercurrent of imperialism, have perhaps already created too large a gulf between the “have’s” and the “have-not’s”.
Yet life is full of surprises; it is itself a surprise and only the stupid can afford the luxury of being pessimistic and negative. Britain dismantled its empire before it was too late. I, for one, would like to have seven or eight friendly, respected, successful, peaceful, democratic neighbors to the north, especially if, as in Europe, my multiple-entry visa were good in all of them. The alternative is to watch the US continue to run our governments as puppets, prop up our neocolonial societies and economies, and watch my countrymen and women migrate to the US to do the tasks Americans least want to do, in the process eroding the Americans’ proverbial self reliance; or else continue to create enemies, such as some South American countries.
For our part, we have to learn to live with a lot less, dismantle our neocolonial structures, redesign our institutions to match our mestizo nature, share more equitably and preempt corruption, all of that, and more, without losing our joie de vivre. But the discussion was on “the US as global partner, not global boss,” a role that Guatemala does not have to worry about.
Eduardo
Dear Eduardo,
Milton here from your Cornell Trumbulls Corners days. The six or seven peaceful states sounds OK to me but am not sure the six or seven part would automatically insure the peaceful part. Even so it would look a lot better from my South American perspective than the current mess. Milton W.