Issue: Climate Justice

New Foreign Affairs Essay Offers Bold Blueprint for U.S. Foreign Policy Reform

In a provocative new essay published by Foreign Affairs, Nancy Okail, President and CEO of the Center for International Policy, and Matt Duss, the organization’s Executive Vice President, present a sweeping critique of the entrenched U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy and lay out a bold blueprint for reform. The essay, “America Is Cursed by a Foreign Policy of Nostalgia,” challenges decades of militarism and neoliberal economic policies that have prioritized corporate and elite interests over the well-being of most Americans and people worldwide.

With the 2024 election confirming the collapse of Washington’s traditional foreign policy consensus, Okail and Duss argue that neither “America First” unilateralism nor liberal internationalism can address the urgent needs of a world grappling with climate change, economic inequality, and political instability. Instead, they call for a transformative foreign policy rooted in shared global challenges, equitable economic reform, and principled international cooperation.

“The United States must choose between advancing a genuinely equitable global order or clinging to an undemocratic and unsustainable quest for global primacy,” said Okail. “Our current trajectory not only fails to meet the needs of working Americans but also alienates nations and peoples worldwide that are calling for a more just and inclusive international system.”

Key recommendations in the essay include:

  • Ending Failed Militarism: Shifting from prioritizing global military hegemony at any cost to a foreign policy that prioritizes human security, accountability, conflict prevention, and consistent application of international laws and norms.
  • Breaking from Neoliberal Economics: Ensuring prosperity is more widely shared among US communities, while reducing global inequality and economic precarity through equitable trade, labor, and investment rules, including by reforming global institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to support low- and middle-income countries, enabling sustainable development and debt relief.
  • Redefining Relations with China: Moving beyond Great Power Competition and zero-sum strategic thinking to focus on collaborative solutions for climate change, public health, technological innovation, and a more inclusive global economic and political system.

“Decades of militarized foreign policy and economic systems designed to benefit corporations and the wealthy have left working-class Americans—and communities around the world—paying the price,” added Duss. “The 2024 election put a decisive stamp on what has long been clear: the Washington foreign policy consensus is not only intellectually bankrupt but also increasingly alienating to the American people. It’s time for a new approach that breaks from the false choice between ‘America First’ unilateralism and ‘America is Back’ nostalgia, focusing instead on the needs of everyday people and a future built on common good, human rights, and shared prosperity.”

This essay is a call to action for policymakers, thought leaders, and citizens who recognize that the challenges of the 21st century require a fundamentally new approach to U.S. leadership.

The full essay is available in Foreign Affairs and can be read here.

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The Center for International Policy (CIP) is a woman-led, progressive, independent nonprofit center for research, education, and advocacy working to advance a more peaceful, just, and sustainable U.S. approach to foreign policy.

Environmental Impact of Explosive Weapons in Gaza

On June 5, World Environment Day, the Climate and Militarism Program at the Center for International Policy hosted a webinar about the severe and widespread environmental impacts of explosive weapons being used in the genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Explosive weapons supplied by the United States to Israel (and elsewhere around the world) cause both direct and indirect civilian deaths through environmental destruction and contamination that remain long after the bombs explode.

A recording of this panel is available on the event webpage or on the Center for International Policy’s YouTube channel.

An excerpt from the conversation about the long-term implications of explosive weapons on civilian health, human rights, and global security is below:

What’s happening right now is devastating. Not just the ecological damage – I genuinely worry about the generational effects and the profound health effects that this is going to have in the future, in children, and the cancer rates, and the chemicals that pregnant women are being exposed to… about the long term projections of cancer and pulmonary diseases. These typically have fairly long lag times. For cancer, it’s 20 to 40 years. Now, that could be accelerated by repeat exposures.

My immediate family members were affected by the war [in Iraq]. We had cancer rates spike in our family. You know, I think it’s just a matter of time that we’re going to see a lot of these diseases [in Gaza]. I can only speculate, because we don’t have the capacity to test contamination right now.

This is in large part because we don’t have any more universities in Gaza that are left standing. And so you have the scholasticide on top of the ecocide. And so you really can’t study what is happening.

Because of the ongoing bombing, we’re not able to actually sample the air and sample the soil and sample the water, but what I would imagine is there’s so much heavy metal contamination in the soil that it would probably be rather dangerous to grow anything. And the water situation, on top of dehydration and thirst, and on top of the famine that people are experiencing… With just the sheer amount of bombings, I also worry about the concrete material that is being pulverized over and over and over again.

What we saw immediately in the aftermath of 911 was the increased exposure to a number of not just heavy metals, but you also have asbestos from the buildings, you have building materials, you have pulverized glass, steel, and all these other things… Just from that single event, we saw the ensuing effects over decades. Now Gazans are eight months into this madness and are being exposed to things that I honestly don’t understand, I don’t know…

However, we know that particulate matter doesn’t respect boundaries. It doesn’t respect borders… And so even from just a plain human level, I don’t know who is being exposed to this. I would imagine Israelis, I would imagine people in the surrounding region… The heavy metals are carcinogenic. These things aren’t just going to go away, you have to have efforts in terms of soil remediation. This takes a lot of money, a lot of funding, and a lot of technologies to try and clean it. You know, even in the United States we see Superfund sites, these places become very, very difficult, if not impossible, to really clean.

With military aggression, be it by the United States or by Israel, we tend to see that the environmental effects on civilians aren’t even considered, and this is why these things are so under-studied. I want to make that clear. In Iraq, there were these massive burn pits, just ongoing pits of fire, and the [U.S. military] would just throw everything in there. And that caused so much damage to the atmosphere and the environment. And actually, the only way we know about their health effects is through American soldiers who came home. We do not care – there’s very limited data – on the effects of burn pits on Iraqi civilians. And I think this is very telling of where we are – not only in regard to the overall lack of science regarding lasting military contamination – but that it’s very intentional. 

It’s part of the dehumanization where civilian lives are sort of relegated as less-than, as Iraqis and Palestinians. A lot of people of color are just relegated as such. Sort of, ‘you’re just in the way of the bomb.’ And I think that this is the mentality that intense militarism really is centered around.

– Dr. Meena Aladdin, PhD, Molecular Toxicology [comments have been summarized and edited for brevity]

 

Watch the recording here. The full list of webinar panelists includes:

 

Image description and credit: An Israeli army tank deploys near a sunflower field in Israel’s southern border with the Gaza Strip. © Menahem Kahana, AFP

Leading Environmental and Allied Organizations Champion New Climate Guidelines for Federal Purchases

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last week, environmental and allied organizations announced public support for the finalization of two proposed federal contracting rules: the Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule and the Sustainable Products Procurement Rule.

The Supplier Climate Risk and Resilience Proposal would mandate contractors with $50 million or more in annual contract obligations to disclose comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories and emissions reduction targets, while the Sustainable Products Procurement Proposal would require federal agencies to prioritize sustainable products unless justified otherwise in writing. These amendments signal a commitment to transparency, sustainability, and environmental stewardship within federal procurement practices.

Following the delivery of the letter, the White House announced that updates to the Federal Sustainable Products Procurement rule have been finalized. This is a welcome and positive development that enables sensible policies that leverage public purchasing power to address climate change. It represents a vehicle without which the government cannot fulfill its commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship in its fullest. Building on this development, we continue to urge the administration to finalize the proposed Federal Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule to improve and standardize greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for federal contractors.

Organizations issued the following statements:

“With greenhouse gas emissions not falling fast enough to meet U.S. commitments under the Paris Agreement, public policy will be essential to accelerating the decarbonization of our economy. There are many creative and ambitious policies being studied by both federal and state-level agencies – but all require better data to implement. The new proposed rules with the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council offer a way of gathering that data,” said Yong Kwon, Senior Policy Advisor at the Sierra Club.

“Contractors who seek profitable deals with government agencies should advance our climate goals and national security – not undermine them. We join in urging the DoD, GSA, and NASA administrators to finalize their proposed procurement rules and move us towards a more secure and resilient future,” said Hanna Homestead, Director of the Climate and Militarism Program at the Center for International Policy.

“Federal procurement policy must urgently address the climate crisis. The Sustainable Products Procurement Rule marks an important step, but it is vital the Biden administration finalizes the Supplier Climate Risks and Resilience Rule as well. Disclosure is essential for the federal government and taxpayers to fully understand federal climate-related risks and opportunities. Pressure to abandon this rule must not prevail— the profits of large contractors and the fossil fuel industry cannot be prioritized over science-based climate policy,” said Elyse Schupak, climate and financial regulation policy advocate with Public Citizen’s Climate Program.

“The federal government has tremendous purchasing power, and thus a tremendous ability to shape the adoption of cleaner materials. These rules will help solidify emissions data transparency and Buy Clean principles for much of the government’s purchasing. The government cannot ignore this critical tool to align markets toward climate mitigation and help set the curve on the innovation and opportunities that will come from setting up cleaner markets and industries,” said Christina Theodoridi, Policy Director for Industry at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

READ THE LETTER:

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