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Trump’s State Department Cuts Endanger Americans; Prioritize Militarism

July 11, 2025 – In response to the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the State Department’s workforce, Center for International Policy Executive Vice President Matt Duss issued the following statement:

“Today’s announcement betrays a fundamental disregard for, and ignorance of, the sources of our country’s safety and prosperity. Gutting the State Department hobbles our ability to advance fundamental security, economic and democratic interests in a time of growing threats to life and liberty for Americans and billions around the planet. It also shows a shameful disrespect for professional diplomats who have worked tirelessly, and whose families have endured considerable hardship, to make our country safer.

“This is Donald Trump’s latest assault on government functions critical to the well-being of everyday people in the United States and abroad. Just as staffing and program cuts have already contributed to the preventable deaths of dozens of Americans in flood-prone areas and the tens of thousands of lives lost overseas by shuttering US aid projects fighting disease, today’s action will inevitably incur an enormous human cost.

“The hollowing out of the State Department is also further evidence that Trump’s pledge to be a president who ends wars was false. Coupled with his administration’s dramatic increase in military spending, slashing diplomacy makes clear that Trump is prioritizing and compounding the foreign policy establishment’s addiction to militarism.

“Opponents of this move must not merely criticize or take symbolic steps to resist them – they should commit to a new, much bolder vision for a United States that advances diplomacy and cooperation over conflict. What comes next must not be an effort to merely rebuild the U.S. foreign policy apparatus that Trump is destroying, but to remake it with a new mindset that prioritizes human security for all Americans and people around the world.”

Netanyahu’s Dangerous Plans Advance Amid U.S. Visit

War crimes and crimes against humanity continue in Gaza without a workable ceasefire:

Dozens of civilians in Gaza continue to be killed by Israeli forces almost every day, both by ongoing bombings and near “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid distribution sites, around which mass deaths have become so routine, they have been dubbed “killing fields” for Palestinians seeking food amid starvation caused by months of near-total blockade on aid.
Netanyahu continues to reject proposals that would allow experienced humanitarian aid agencies to resume essential aid delivery or commit Israel to steps toward a permanent ceasefire, while he and Trump advance plans to relocate Palestinian civilians from Gaza that constitute the crime against humanity of forced displacement – i.e., ethnic cleansing.
Trump continues to arm and abet Israel’s war crimes with new shipments of U.S. weapons, in violation of both international humanitarian law and U.S. law.

Advancing Israeli war crimes in the West Bank threaten to further destabilize the Middle East:

Israeli settlers backed by U.S.-armed Israeli forces have increased violent attacks against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, with deadly incidents rightly being likened to “pogroms” against civilians who Israel is obligated by international law to protect.
Settler attacks are part of an accelerating campaign of forced displacement that also involves Israel bulldozing Palestinian communities and removing their residents from their land.
Ministers and senior lawmakers from Netanyahu’s own Likud party are pushing the Prime Minister to officially annex the West Bank, with the Trump administration saying it “stands with Israel and its decisions” when asked about possible annexation of the occupied territory.

Iran’s nuclear activities unleashed and unmonitored as hawks pivot to push for more war:

While Trump continues to say that last month’s U.S. attack on Iran “obliterated” its nuclear program, it is clear the strikes did not destroy the program, and have not only set it back by far less than the 2015 Iran Deal, but likely further incentivized Iran to seek nuclear weapons.
In a widely predicted move, the Israeli government and war hawks are already floating the idea that additional military action is needed to address Iran’s nuclear activities, raising the possibility of further U.S. involvement in hostilities that could become another major conflict.
Diplomacy toward a new agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear activities will only succeed if Trump avoids making maximalist demands – like insisting on zero uranium enrichment in Iran – based on the mistaken notion that he destroyed Iran’s program, rather than further incentivized a dash for nuclear weapons by the regime.

Building Humane Foreign Policy On Moral Outrage

Andrew Leber is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Middle East & North African Studies Program at Tulane University, and was a cofounder of Fellow Travelers Blog.

Since late 2010, U.S. policy towards the Middle East treated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as something that could be safely left on the back burner while dealing with more pressing concerns – chiefly the desire to contain Iran’s nuclear program. Now events have come full circle, with Israel’s expansive response to Hamas’ October 7 attacks finally pulling the United States into a direct military engagement with Iran.

In condemning President Trump’s decision to send B-2 bombers halfway around the globe (without congressional approval), critics have understandably raised the specter of a protracted military engagement in the Middle East, akin to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

War Powers Resolutions are a good start in avoiding U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran war, but won’t be enough to de-escalate and build peace.
To meaningfully constrain Israel and build peace, the United States should use the massive amount of arms sales and other forms of security assistance it provides annually as leverage.
Progressives have an advantage in adopting an “all-of-society” approach to forming and sustaining U.S. Middle East policy.
A sustainable policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will require shaping U.S. public opinion and cultivating a broader regard for the well-being of others.

Yet Trump’s actions also highlight the limits of a politics of restraint rooted in conserving American “blood and treasure” from foreign military adventures. While successive U.S. presidents have been constrained by the ultimate unpopularity of the Iraq War, the flip side of a historical memory overwhelmingly focused on U.S. (rather than Iraqi) casualties is a sense that almost any military action is permissible so long as it avoids committing ground forces.

“No ground forces were used in the strike,” Trump noted in his subsequent letter to Congress justifying the strikes. This rhetoric channels executive legal arguments across administrations and President Obama’s own emphasis on “no boots on the ground” in overseas military operations. Even during his first term, Trump embraced drone strikes and airpower as a way to project U.S. power abroad, in many ways a continuation — albeit with even less regard for civilian casualties — of Obama’s own “light-footprint” approach to military intervention.

Still, merely limiting the direct risks to U.S. forces is no recipe for peace or human well-being, as the Obama administration found in facilitating a Saudi-led military intervention. Even in the absence of broader military commitments, present U.S. support for Israel’s “might makes right” foreign policy poses enormous reputational and material risks to the United States.

Only concerted efforts to build popular concern for the shared humanity of others, as happened in limiting U.S. support for military intervention in Yemen, will lay the groundwork for regional peace that is more than a pause between fighting. The alternative is a continuation of the Global War on Terror: carrying out (or otherwise facilitating) attacks on actors, organizations, or even states deemed threatening to the United States and its partners, with little in the way of popular or congressional oversight.

The Yemen-War Model

The progressive foreign policy movement already has experience addressing the moral hazard of U.S. security commitments in the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia’s protracted military intervention in Yemen. There, as with Israel, sources of leverage were clear: arms sales that sustained the Saudi war effort and diplomatic cover that justified the intervention in terms of Saudi national security concerns.

As with Israel’s war in Gaza (albeit on a much smaller scale), the United States was perceived as facilitating mass suffering by providing Saudi Arabia with material and moral support for sustained attacks on Houthi forces in Yemen. U.S. leverage was also understood as critical to restraining Saudi Arabia given the absolute monarchy’s suppression of any domestic dissent. While Israel is far more open to domestic dissent than the Kingdom neither criticism by prominent former officials nor protests by the families of Israeli hostages in Gaza has meaningfully restrained Prime Minister Netanyahu in Gaza. An overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis back the latest attack on Iran, even if some quibble with the timing. Additionally, free speech within Israel itself is under threat, with state raids on bookstores in East Jerusalem, sanctioning Israeli media critical of government actions in Gaza, and stifling of dissent within the Israeli armed forces itself.

Moral outrage over the war’s humanitarian toll and Saudi Arabia’s humanitarian abuses, not rational cost-benefit analysis, ultimately pushed members of Congress – including some Republicans – to pass successive War-Powers resolutions and take other legislative action aimed at curtailing U.S. security support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen and blocking U.S. arms sales to the kingdom. This moral outrage did not appear overnight, but was actively built by a broad coalition of activists, and turbo-charged by Saudi Arabia’s assassination of media figure Jamal Khashoggi.

While the Trump administration ultimately overrode Congress in direct terms, and maintained most arms sales to Saudi Arabia, senior officials nevertheless began to push Saudi and other Gulf leaders toward peace talks. Joe Biden in turn made ending support for the Saudi intervention part of his presidential campaign, and empowered a special envoy to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict in 2021. (The Biden administration continued security coordination with Saudi Arabia, however, leaving its Yemen policy open to charges of being both too hawkish and too dove-ish.) Restraint ultimately worked in Saudi Arabia’s favor as well, with a de facto truce by 2022 insulating the kingdom from the Houthi force’s efforts to pressure Israel amid the ongoing Gaza war.

Of course, any restraint of Saudi Arabia was (in retrospect) playing on “easy mode.” Saudi Arabia has little domestic constituency in the United States, at least outside of the Beltway, and to the extent that Americans have strong feelings about the kingdom they tend to be negative. Even then, any “restraint” of Saudi military activities by the United States has been partial at best and highly contingent on other U.S. policy priorities.

Israel, by contrast, is overwhelmingly supported by one half of the United States’ two-party political scene, and by a fiercely devoted constituency within the Democratic Party’s supporters as well. While negative U.S. views of Israel are on the rise, it is hard to imagine a presidential candidate for either party labelling the country a “pariah” on the campaign trail anytime soon.

What is to be done?

In the near term, War-Powers legislation – as recently attempted by Tim Kaine in the Senate, and proposed by various members in the House – is the clearest tool for weighing in on the Executive’s opaque decision-making. It is good for Congress to flex its oversight muscles, for individuals and advocacy organizations to support these efforts, and to remind the President and security partners overseas of the domestic fallout of military action abroad.

Yet even within the Democratic Party, leaders struggle to meaningfully criticize Israeli actions – while drawing distinctions regarding committing U.S. forces – while other members openly long for regime change in Iran. It will require a far more concerted effort to demilitarize U.S. policy towards the Middle East at the strategic level, and to ensure that future administrations do not simply shunt the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the back burner once more.

At the local and state level, this means building and maintaining spaces to talk about Israel, Palestine, and the U.S. role in this long-running conflict – something that can no longer be taken for granted, even on private university campuses. It in turn means supporting political candidates who oppose a “Palestine exception” to free speech, while recognizing practical limits on the type and tenor of critiques they make of Israel.

In terms of shaping mass attitudes, it means integrating demands for Palestinian liberation into broader advocacy of a rights-based internationalism – as many pro-Palestinian advocacy organizations across the United States have already done.

Progressives recognize the need to build popular buy-in to global norms long taken for granted in foreign policymaking, from respect for international humanitarian law to the belief that the United States is safer when it cares for the well-being of others. The best counter to charges that U.S. policy singles out Israel for criticism – beyond noting the fact that few countries receive the same level of U.S. diplomatic and military support – is to demand that the same standards apply to Emirati involvement in Sudan’s civil war, or to our own country’s treatment of resident non-citizens.

When it comes to Israel per se, this means continuing to convey the risks of underwriting a “might makes right” approach to regional security. In engaging persuadable U.S. supporters of Israel, it means taking seriously concerns about rising antisemitism while continuing the slow, steady work of insisting that the state of Israel be judged by its actions as a state.

And at the level of national policy, it means forcing elected and appointed officials to recognize that U.S. ties to any security partner cannot take the form of writing blank checks for states bent on exacerbating human suffering – whatever their justifications. For those willing to listen, this can take the form of advocacy; for those unwilling, this should take the form of primarying them or, for appointees, their patrons.

It also means accepting, as both the Biden and now the Trump administrations have found, that Israeli war crimes in Gaza, and the fundamental injustice towards Palestinians of Israel’s one-state reality, cannot be walled off from more “strategic” considerations of the U.S. national interest rooted in avoiding costly interstate conflict.

The Perils of a Victory over Iran

Nicholas Noe is the director of the Beirut Exchange Foundation and co-founder of Mideastwire.com.

Even if Israel and its allies achieve a decisive military defeat of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the coming period—crushing its armed forces, scattering its leadership, and dismantling its nuclear program—the long-term consequences of such a triumph will be deeply corrosive and dangerous. Of course, the short-term gains of such a campaign against the last significant regional opposition to U.S.-Israeli power will be delicious for many in Washington and Tel Aviv who have spent 35 years agitating for war against the Islamic Republic. It will be hailed as definitive proof that brute strength and technological superiority are indeed adequate tools for reshaping global politics.

But this is exactly where the chief danger lies: this kind of victory, rather than securing lasting peace or stability, will usher in a far more dangerous world order defined overwhelmingly by “might makes right” and the wholesale abandonment of international norms.

Might Makes Right: From Exception to Rule

A successful campaign against Iran would be taken as final vindication by the interventionist camp in the United States and Israel. Their long-standing argument—that problems in the Middle East can and should be solved through overwhelming military force (with or without nation-building)—would gain tremendous credibility. Any blowback, if it did not materialize quickly or dramatically, would be dismissed as irrelevant. Predictions about the dangers of failed states would be parried by calls to just wall off or “Golden Dome” oneself and allies, with further brutality exercised at the gates as needed.

The lesson would be clear: force works, and those with unmatched capabilities should not hesitate to use them.

This shift is not likely to remain limited to the Middle East. A perceived success in Iran would become a century-defining precedent, eliminating what little remains of the post-WWII consensus that outlawed wars of aggression and emphasized collective security. International norms would be seen as entirely optional—quaint relics rather than guardrails essential for preventing suffering and chaos.

The U.S., already prone to bypassing multilateral mechanisms when convenient well before Donald Trump, would feel even less bound by diplomatic process or the logic of compromise. Israel, too, would be further empowered in its belief that its security lies not in negotiation or compromise, but only in permanent technological superiority and deterrence through mass or targeted destruction.

Blowback Deferred, Restraint Discredited

One of the central claims of those who advocate for greater restraint in foreign policy—a camp I have long belonged to—is that wars of choice tend to carry hidden, long-term costs that ultimately outweigh the short-term gains. These include insurgency, regional destabilization, terrorism, and the erosion of democratic institutions at home. The Iraq War was, and remains, the centerpiece of our argument. Initially declared a success following “Shock and Awe,” it led to multiple dimensions of disaster over time. Yet interventionists continue to claim that the war was lost not because it was illegitimate or ill-conceived, but because the U.S. lacked the will to see it through – especially “all the way” to Tehran. A similar narrative will likely develop post-Iran, should “Mission Accomplished” be declared: overwhelming force finally proved its utility, and past failures were merely a matter of poor execution and lack of will.

This narrative would empower a new era of interventionism. With restraint seemingly discredited and its often vague warnings relegated to the long term, the threshold for uses of force would drop even further. The appetite for war would grow until the interventionist machine finally encounters an adversary, or a combination of adversaries, capable of catastrophic retaliation. This capacity for catastrophe would most likely come in the form of a nuclear arsenal, which in every country that maintains such weapons would be paired with hard limits beyond which conventional war risks thermonuclear devastation.

Accelerating a Global Arms Race

Perhaps the most predictable consequence of an Iran defeat is the acceleration of a global arms race, particularly around nuclear weapons. Iran, a relatively large and sophisticated regional actor, has attempted to deter attack by developing nuclear capabilities, apparently below the threshold of actual weapons for now. If that deterrent fails and Iran’s nuclear program is dismantled, the signal to other regimes will be unmistakable: the only way to ensure your sovereignty in a U.S.-Israeli-dominated world is through acquiring nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

This logic has already played out, but to a far lesser extent. Libya gave up its WMD programs in 2003 only to see its regime violently overthrown. North Korea took the opposite path, developing a credible nuclear deterrent, and as a result has remained largely immune from foreign intervention. After Iran, more states will very likely pursue this path, viewing international treaties and inspections as traps rather than protections.

The risk is not just nuclear proliferation, but the normalization of preventive military action against non-nuclear states. The incentive structure becomes perverse: develop nuclear weapons quickly or risk regime change. The end result is a world more dangerous, more armed, and more unstable.

Authoritarianism at Home

The idea that success abroad through overwhelming force won’t impact the home front is a dangerous illusion. When a nation continually uses brute power to achieve its aims internationally, that logic inevitably seeps into domestic politics. The militarization of policing, the expansion of executive power, the erosion of civil liberties—all of these have already been seen in the U.S. after almost two and a half decades of the Global War on Terror we launched following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The past few months in the U.S. have only underscored the point with greater clarity.

A deconstruction of Iran’s ability and desire to exercise violence outside the framework of international law would further erode democratic norms. Presidents who view themselves as uniquely empowered to act without accountability abroad often bring that mindset home. We see this in the growing embrace of authoritarian rhetoric, the normalization of surveillance, and the dismissal of dissent as weakness or treason, both at home and abroad.

In Israel, the same dynamic could accelerate ongoing efforts to limit judicial oversight, marginalize minority voices, entrench ethnonationalism and, at the same time, move more decisively forward with plans to forcibly displace millions of Palestinians. The culture of military supremacy abroad will only embolden illiberal, illegal and immoral tendencies within.

Unresolved Grievances, New Enemies

The Iranian government’s behavior, however malign one views it, is largely anchored on a long history of regional dynamics, injustice and security concerns. Crushing the Iranian regime will not eliminate some of the key reasons why it acted aggressively in the first place. On the contrary, it will embitter many and make reconciliation far more difficult than the path of mutual compromise, addressing underlying grievances and diplomacy. It will also very likely create new, more determined and capable enemies in the process.

We’ve seen this before. As close as Israel or the U.S. believes it is to vanquishing enemies, new ones are created over time as long as the main factors driving opposition and anger remain.

In 2000, Israel missed a historic opportunity to strike a deal with Syria that would have returned the Golan Heights in exchange for peace and the disarmament of Hezbollah. After negotiations collapsed when Israel refused to return the Golan in its entirety, Hezbollah claimed victory for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. In doing so, Israel strengthened the logic of armed resistance and perpetuated conflict. Twenty-four years later, Israel applied massive force to momentarily cow Hezbollah, which had grown to become the most powerful non-state actor in the world. Here, too, restrainers seem to have lost the argument in the short term. But the organization is, by most accounts, rebuilding. It won recent local elections and has only increased its motivating grievances vis-à-vis Israel. It is learning from its military and security mistakes and lies in wait for an opportune moment to exacerbate U.S. and Israeli moments of weakness, whenever or however they come to pass.

Perhaps most importantly, Israel vanquished the PLO only to give rise to Hamas. Throughout, it has rejected the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers full normalization in exchange for a just resolution to the Palestinian issue. Rather than accept compromise and concede occupied territory for a Palestinian state, Israeli leaders have bet on massive force and technological superiority. But as long as core grievances remain unaddressed—the occupation of Palestinian territories, the displacement of refugees, the lack of political rights—no amount of bombing campaigns will bring lasting peace. New, more capable enemies in Palestine, as in Lebanon and the wider Middle East, are very likely being created every day in the rubble of what many observers now consider to be outright genocide.

The Challenge to Restraint

But all of this lies in the longer term and is difficult to prove right now. If Iran falls with minimal immediate blowback, the interventionist camp will have immediate proof of concept that the real problem with past wars was that they were too limited, too cautious, too concerned about failed states or too respectful of international law.

This will not just be a tactical shift. It will represent a fundamental change nearly impossible to put back in the proverbial bottle. Adherence to international law will be cast as outdated, ineffective, even dangerous. The pro-diplomacy worldview—that peace and stability come from mutual respect, compromise, and adherence to rules—will be sidelined by a new consensus that sees raw power as its own justification.

But history teaches that such a worldview cannot endure. Sooner or later, even the most powerful actors face adversaries they cannot crush. The more one relies on force alone, the more brittle one’s position becomes. A temporary triumph over Iran may feel like vindication for hawks, but it is likely to be the beginning of a far more dangerous period.

It is not too late to choose another path. Instead of war, the U.S. and Israel could return to diplomacy. Instead of domination, they could pursue mutual concessions that address root grievances. This includes accepting a viable Palestinian state, negotiating regional security arrangements, and ending the reliance on force as the first resort.

The lesson of the last two decades is not that force doesn’t matter—but that it is insufficient. Real security comes not from domination, but from legitimacy. And legitimacy cannot be won on the battlefield alone.

State Needs Reorganization, Rubio’s Plan Isn’t It

Cole Donovan is an associate director at the Federation of American Scientists. He previously had international S&T roles in the Biden White House, State Department, and Office of Space Commerce.

On May 29, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a Congressional Notification to Congress outlining his proposed changes to the U.S. Department of State as part of President Trump’s chaotic redesign of the U.S. government. This planned reorganization of state alienates foreign diplomats, further undermines foreign assistance, and leaves the State less capable.

There are major issues with the Secretary’s proposal. To foreign partners, the redesign looks like a manifestation of the United States’ worst instincts, focused primarily on telling others how to run their countries while emphasizing our supreme military and economic power. Humanitarians are justifiably shocked at the wholesale demolition of foreign assistance mechanisms, whose remnants are being shifted to regional offices with neither the manpower nor contracting experience to responsibly manage those funds. Anyone familiar with the work necessary to effectively manage the myriad issues State has to tackle is likely to notice the demolition of coordinating mechanisms throughout the Department, which served bureau leadership by sorting through the multitude of disparate and disconnected issues that they might encounter in a single meeting with a foreign principal.

To match the service terms of other foreign ministries, State can slow the tempo and increase the depth of Foreign Service deployments.
State’s humanitarian functions are best supported by reinstating USAID, which had in-house technical and development skill that’s harder to develop within State.
While Rubio’s reorganization is likely aimed at producing splashy headlines for Trump, a thoughtful reorganization would take diplomacy seriously – as well as the actual value that State can bring to the table.

While many of these changes are set to diminish how State functions, there is positive potential in a reorganization designed with the long-term prospects of US diplomacy, rather than the short-term whims of an administration, in mind. The status quo, as well as the general operating model of the Department for the last several decades, is not ideal. The desire for improvement is such that some of Rubio’s changes may well be welcomed, including by officers serving in offices whose responsibilities are being merged or consolidated.

Over time, the Government has added numerous offices and functions to State with the intent to signal that specific issues are important to the sitting government. Consider State’s technical offices. In addition to an Office of Science and Technology Cooperation (which dates back to the Cold War), you also had an Office of the Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State (established in the early 2000s), a Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology, and a Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (established under Secretary Blinken).

Which of these offices manages the International Science and Technology Center? That would be the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation (created in 2005 out of the merger of two other offices). If I were to ask a foreign service officer from one of those four organizations about the Center, I’d likely receive a blank stare (inevitably followed by a flurry of activity as that officer attempts to make sure they are as involved in the Center as they can possibly be). They wouldn’t need to worry for long, though. Soon that officer will rotate to their next assignment and the cycle can begin anew.

Retooling diplomacy for the long haul

That rotational churn creates other issues for American diplomacy. Foreign Service Officers rotate through two-year assignments, making frequent moves and retraining a constant part of their careers. A foreign service officer spends their first six months of a rotation learning how to do their new job and an additional four to five months trying to do the best job that they can. The next five are devoted to finding their next assignment, and the next few are spent trying to maximize their performance reviews before they begin preparations for their next job. One of my deputy directors on the EU desk once told me that he didn’t realize when he joined the government that he would spend the rest of his life searching for a job. This incentivizes managers to wait for foreign service rotations to avoid challenging performance management conversations, creating the risk that poor performers or toxic managers may be able to survive the next promotion cycle.

Increasing the assignment term to five years (so that American diplomats can demonstrate a similar level of competence in a particular job as their counterparts in other foreign ministries and focus on delivering longer-term results) would be a good place to start. This is particularly important for officers working on issues that have inherently long lead times, like managing U.S. interests related to the EU or China’s seven- and five-year legislative program cycles, respectively. At the very least, it would help the Department spend its language training and relocation dollars more effectively.

Politicizing the workforce, as this Administration is doing, through actions like Schedule Policy/Career and its free response questions as part of the hiring process, inherently cuts against this capability. If this administration fires its experienced workforce, particularly those performing newly-relocated statutory responsibilities, the Administration will deprive consolidated offices of the experience and expertise necessary to maximize their productivity. The real value lost through consolidating isn’t the name of the office, but pushing out the people who deeply understand the history, context, and nuance of diplomatic interactions. These are not skills that can be easily or responsibly replicated by AI tools. As interesting as a large language model might be, it is less likely to proactively identify key points that might be missing from a foreign partner’s remarks or isolate bloviating on behalf of one’s own government from that person’s in-private, in-person ability to get things done.

Long Timelines Versus Short Headlines

The biggest problem that any reorganization of State needs to address is the fundamental misalignment between what the Department is good at doing with the jobs that it is assigned by its political leadership. As the government’s foreign ministry, State works best when assisting other agencies in accomplishing their objectives overseas or advocating on behalf of U.S. interests in particular domains, like intellectual property or agricultural regulations. Some bureaucratic tension between offices with similar missions is even helpful, allowing the Department to predict tension between promoting and protecting American interests.

Not all offices are as successful, like the recently-formed Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology. The intent of this office was to address the increasing relevance of emerging technology issues in global competition. Among the many activities that the office proposed included the creation of an alliance of like-minded countries on quantum science and technology. There was just one problem: another office at the State Department already organized such a partnership with the White House National Quantum Coordination Office. That group held their first meeting almost a year before the Special Envoy had even been named, leading to an extended back and forth between the White House and competing offices at State on how to manage a new political demand signal that had just been answered

Such follies are a likely predictor of what will happen with Secretary Rubio’s new Bureau of Emerging Threats. It’s not clear exactly what value-add this bureau will provide the U.S. government, especially given the numerous offices throughout the government dealing with dangerous critical and emerging technologies, especially within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community (let alone those that already exist within the Department). This can cause problems.

In 2011, Secretary Clinton created the Bureau of Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) given a broad recognition of energy policy’s relevance to international stability and achieving the United State’s broader international objectives. A 2016 OIG Inspection found that the Bureau had great relationships with the rest of the Government–just not the Department of Energy (DOE) with which it most needed to work. The OIG reported numerous problems in ENR reported by foreign service officers in Embassies as well as their DOE colleagues, including competing missions, inadequate communication and coordination, and difficulty promulgating a single U.S. energy message to foreign governments. Similar dynamics are captured in the 2015 documentary “The Diplomat”, which described the struggles between the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan with other parts of the U.S. government, each of which thought itself primarily responsible for Afghan and Pakistan Policy.

Invariably, if new offices struggle to identify opportunities in their defined mission space, they begin to move into areas long-occupied by others (or they discover that other offices have already been working in their assumed domains all along and may even have statutory responsibilities in that space), including in other government agencies. Knowing the lay of the land should be essential before starting any reorganization of State aimed at the long-term viability of the diplomatic apparatus of the United States.

Any future attempt to reorganize the Department should ask itself the following questions before creating any new body, including the appointment of a new special representative:

Does another government agency or office have the legislative mandate and capability to do this work?
Is this work distributed across many agencies who are in tension with one another, where the Department could negotiate a consolidated U.S. position on the subject (and perhaps in doing so help expedite the resolution of domestic policy disputes)?
Is it better if a foreign policy expert speaks to this subject, or should the face that the United States presents to the world be a recognized expert speaking from a position of authority elsewhere in the government? ie; should negotiations on nuclear enrichment be carried out primarily through State or the Department of Energy?
Is there another coordinating body on the subject in the U.S. government?
What are people in this bureau or office going to do when they show up on the job? Who are they likely to clash with?
Can this body follow through with any promises that it might make to foreign governments?
Are the people who State expects to share their resources willing to provide them to this new body, and for what purposes?
What will the organization’s primary leverage be in achieving whatever goals it sets out to accomplish on behalf of a given administration?

When a new body forms and doesn’t have a clear mission, the answer is usually to schedule as many meetings with foreign governments as possible and try to bend the arms of other government agencies to come forward with major commitments. It drains time and resources available to other government agencies, making it harder for them to accomplish their domestic missions. U.S. efforts are placed in stark relief against those of our allies and competitors, alike.

Well-resourced offices that create value, like PEPFAR, have clearly made substantial progress in their respective domains and moved the needle on important global issues. This makes the loss of bureaus like Education and Cultural Affairs, which ran the Fulbright program and numerous visitor programs that exposed foreign audiences to the best elements of America’s people and culture, all the more tragic. When a bureau lacks resources, it is often forced to try to trip up international competitors in order to accomplish a goal, or coax foreign partners to use resources that the U.S. government does not have. Such efforts are usually transparent to foreign partners, who do not always appreciate being caught between the United States and one of its many foreign policy objectives. They may question why the richest and most powerful country in the world isn’t willing to put its own resources behind the effort.

I cannot predict what the State Department will actually look like in 10 months given the current chaos, let alone at the end of this government’s term. Other government bodies–particularly the NSC and other White House Policy Councils–would also do well to embrace these recommendations. What I can say is that future governments will need to do a much better job aligning the resources of the Department with its ability to execute its lofty goals–all of which are critical for ensuring the future of American security.

The Anti-China Consensus is a Matter of World War III

Van Jackson is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. This essay was originally published at Un-Diplomatic, Jackson’s newsletter, and is republished here with permission.

Team Biden might have left office believing that it kept America out of World War III, but it made so many decisions with a militarist bent that it’s far too early to declare even that much.

Zero-sum biases plague US foreign policy, especially toward China. And Trump has inherited a China-obsessed war machine that’s even more lethal than the one he presided over during his first term. So if the end of everything were to happen in the coming years, Biden’s choices to heighten rather than ameliorate rivalry with China—the world’s other greatest power—will almost certainly have been among its conditions of possibility.

For our planet to survive this era, the United States needs to adapt to China (and the world) in a more relational and less predatory way. But not only is that a tall order; the US national security state itself actively impedes it. A breakthrough toward a more just and stable world will require resorting to politics, not simply the bureaucratic production of policy. And while violence is intrinsic to how Trump operates, he is, ironically, making himself essential to keeping us out of World War III even as he makes it more likely over the long run.

The “Competition” Consensus

Substantial evidence now exists that, whatever disagreements about China may reside within the US foreign policy community, they are minor, tactical, relative to the larger shared consensus in favor of viewing China as a threat and a competitor that ought to be America’s foreign policy priority.

While power hoarding and military superiority have been a means and end of US foreign policy since at least the 1980s, it is newly incompatible with the world as it actually exists. We are no longer in the “unipolar moment.” A foreign policy that tries to claim a lopsided share of global power in a multipolar world pushes the US to be more aggressive, revisionist, as it flails against the tide, unable to secure the position of domination it long took for granted.

Because US goals are so extreme and mismatched to reality, the result is what we have seen over the past four years: heightened ethnonationalisms, the securitization of everything, a breakdown of economic interdependence in favor of a shift toward economic decoupling, and a fixation on preparations for major-power war unseen since the Cold War.

In Washington, these ingredients for Armageddon find expression in the simple shorthand “great-power competition”—a phrase that Trump has scarcely uttered but that all of his foreign policy appointments have repeatedly stressed. Marco Rubio, for example, declared great-power competition the priority of an “America-First foreign policy” in his first cable instruction to the State Department.

The anti-China consensus that Trump presided over in his first term—but that in fact started under Obama—not only endures but is a profound obstacle for those wishing to avoid World War III. A shift to something more peaceful and enlightened than geopolitical rivalry is unlikely to come from within the US national security state, which has fully retooled for conflict with China.

The hawkish groupthink that pervades how Washington relates to China is hard to break when the US national security state has banked the legitimacy of its institutional existence on indefinitely chasing China’s shadow around the world while optimizing for a war that no sane person should want. The solution to Sino-US rivalry lay in adopting a different approach that rejects primacy in word and deed, but the ability to do that can only come from political forces outside the national security state.

What Is to Be Done

The most enlightened policy wonks in Washington advocate for “competitive coexistence” or “congagement” (competition and engagement in parallel). This is more or less what Biden attempted. But pursuing the brutality of great-power rivalry with guardrails never made much sense, and neither did his China policy. Sure, a new Cold War in which adversaries talk to each other is preferable to a Cold War without direct communications; nobody should want to live in a state of perpetual Cuban Missile Crisis.

But zero-sum statecraft is a dead end. Any policy agenda premised on a net-antagonistic relationship between the great powers facilitates a process of hawkish outbidding within domestic politics, and as we have seen the past decade, that divides America rather than unites it.

A more stabilizing, war-averting existence would accommodate power realities rather than resist them at the point of a gun. The reason why it is so hard to take America off the path to World War III is precisely that the things that need to be done to better the world situation do not lend themselves to simple policy interventions.

Suspending military competition, especially in nuclear modernization, is essential but literally the opposite of what a foreign policy of great-power competition demands. Keeping China interdependent with the world—rather than trying to sever it from the US and world economy—encourages Chinese restraint in foreign policy, but is contrary to the economic nationalism that has become en vogue. Increasing domestic consumption in China would help alleviate the need for Xi Jinping to rely on ethnonationalist appeals to sustain his political legitimacy, but only the CCP can take that decision. And US financing of Chinese green tech for export in exchange for China extending sovereign debt relief to the global South would catalyze a virtuous cycle: Making good on a global green new deal—>resolving China’s overproduction of electric vehicles and solar panels—>and growing consumer markets in the global South to provide a new source of global growth. But coordinating a grand green bargain of this ambition presumes habits of cooperation and mutual good will that do not exist.

None of these ideas amounts to pulling a lever or pushing a button—that’s the wrong way to think about changing the world. Rather, they are worldmaking projects that cannot happen within a strategy of primacy, whether described as an “America-First foreign policy” or a “foreign policy for the middle class.” Such slogans mask the assumption that security is a scarce resource that must be hoarded at others’ expense. And that is just not true.

A Politics of Peace

Overcoming Washington’s hawkish groupthink requires agents of change capable of contesting, overriding, or redirecting the national security state’s anti-China fetish. The tragedy and the silver lining in this regard are the same: Trump.

American militarism cannot be tamed by those who are its purest embodiment. As General Charles Horner once quipped, “…don’t count on the Pentagon to change the Pentagon…it has to come from outside…The executive branch has to provide leadership.” Where, then, to turn?

Popular sentiment against war and China-bashing is worth cultivating. Organized labor has been mostly aligned with anti-militarism and peace activists in recent years—the transformative potential of labor and peace is immense. But the reality is that Trump is showing every sign of weakening labor activism and criminalizing peace protests. The alternative, materialist prospects for overcoming the China hawks, then, lay with two other forces: the imperial presidency and the capitalists most dependent on a globalization-style world.

To take the latter first, the capitalist class is disunified and consists of sections that either benefit or are harmed by the ethnonationalist world of rivalry that is emerging. American exporters (especially in agriculture) as well as firms who rely on foreign markets to survive (like Hollywood) thrived in the old world of neoliberal globalization. Crucially, they still need an interconnected world for their business models to work. That makes them a well-resourced power bloc on behalf of, if not peace, then at least keeping war at bay and limiting the encroachment of “national security” into every aspect of the economy.

A different section of capital directly benefits from great-power rivalry and the preparations for World War III it entails. The defense technology industry, cryptocurrency speculation, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and semiconductor production are among the few promising growth sectors for Silicon Valley venture capital (VC). In a peaceful world, these investments have little promise but a world of nationalist conflict puts them in the black.

What all this means is that, as a political force, some capitalists, in lobbying for restraint on the Trump administration out of their own interests—as Elon Musk has appeared to do on behalf of Tesla’s business in China—will be doing work that rubs against the great-power competition enthusiasts who run Washington.

The decisive force in the balance between war hawks and everybody else is Trump himself. Trump’s key political appointments on China—Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Elbridge Colby, Mike Waltz, and a slew of lower-level staff— have so far all been extreme hawks favoring great-power rivalry. And yet, Trump talks as if he is a conditional dove on China.

Trump had a friendly call with Xi Jinping upon inauguration. The opening tariffs he imposed on China (10%) were lower than what he had previously foreshadowed (and lower than what he announced for Mexico and Canada). In his inauguration speech, Trump laid down a desirable rhetorical marker: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end. And, perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be. A peacemaker and a unifier.”

Marco Rubio, taking his cue from Trump, had a call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on January 24 where he reportedly said that: “The United States does not support ‘Taiwan independence’ and hopes that the Taiwan issue will be peacefully resolved in a way accepted by both sides of the Taiwan Strait.” This is jarringly restrained and defies popular expectations. China, so far, is even responding to the Trump administration more favorably than it ever did to Team Biden.

Donald Trump is no dove. He did much to propel the anti-China hysteria that today plagues Washington during his first term. And the national security state, now led by Trump’s China hawks, is poised to continue pursuing great-power rivalry, which is tantamount to playing Russian roulette with the world’s fate.

How ironic, then, that we are all somewhat trapped, relying on Trump to be a much-needed voice of restraint in Sino-US relations because the national security state and the Democratic Party have refused the job. It is an unhappy situation, but such are the dire straits that US policymakers have foisted upon us.

US Sanctions on ICC Undermine Rule of Law Everywhere

(Washington, D.C.) – In response to President Trump’s imposition of U.S. sanctions on International Criminal Court officials and their families – and potentially foreign nationals who assist them – the Center for International Policy’s Vice President of Government Affairs Dylan Williams issued the following statement:

“Donald Trump’s reimposition of sanctions on ICC officials continues his march to make America a pariah state. In penalizing and hampering the court’s work, Trump is openly undermining its ability to prosecute and deter war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sanctioning court officials, their family members and potentially even the officials of friendly countries provides succor to brutal dictators, aggressors and other human rights abusers around the world whom he admires.

“It is not a coincidence that Trump’s move against the ICC comes just hours after he proposed that the United States carry out a crime against humanity in Gaza, while standing next to a man wanted by the court to answer for war crimes in that territory. The objective of attacking the court is to ensure absolute impunity for those, like both of them, who seek to act unrestrained by any law.

“This latest assault by Trump on the rule of law should be resisted by seeking more, not less, accountability for those who incite, enable or commit atrocities. States that are party to the Rome Statute should reaffirm and carry out their obligations with respect to the court, including the consistent enforcement of its duly issued warrants and orders.

“American lawmakers should treat this attack on a judicial body and its officers as they do Trump’s efforts to destroy domestic institutions of justice, independent of the fact that they may disagree with certain rulings or actions of such bodies. Defending the legitimacy of the ICC is an inseparable part of the fight to protect the rule of law in the United States and around the world from the forces of autocracy and oligarchy. Those who fail to firmly oppose Trump’s attack on the court – or worse, support it – are proving themselves to be only fair-weather friends to democracy and human rights at best, or complicit in their destruction outright.”

In the Face of Trump’s New Term: A Stronger, Honest, and Progressive Europe

Pere Aragonès i Garcia is a former President of Catalonia, having served from 2021 to 2024.

There is no doubt about the crucial importance the coming years will have for history and how Donald Trump’s renewed presidency, which is just beginning, will unfold—not only for U.S. citizens but also for other regions of the world, especially Europe. It is an uncontested victory that we must understand well. In a context of accelerated global changes—geopolitical, economic, demographic, climatic, and technological—the difficulties this may generate for the rest of the planet, and for Europe in particular, are clear. We must remain vigilant and react decisively and swiftly.

One of the main concerns from this side of the Atlantic is the impact on democratic institutions and the rule of law during these rapidly changing times. Trump’s traditional disregard for the separation of powers and shared rules, as evidenced by his role in the January 2021 Capitol assault, poses a problem not only for the U.S. but for the world as a whole. Europe is all too familiar with the implications. The European far-right and right-wing populism see Trump as a reference point, both for the substance of his policies—financial deregulation, protectionist nationalism, and opposition to civil rights—and for his style. His disdain for democratic institutions, attacks on the media and press freedom, and use of falsehoods as political tools are now being emulated by many representatives of the reactionary movement in Europe.

This is why now, more than ever, we must reaffirm a firm defense of democracy, respect for the system of checks and balances, and the preservation of rigorous, ethical political debate, free from lies. This is more necessary than ever.

At the same time, in a world that is increasingly globalized yet more multipolar, with the rise of new global powers such as China and India, a U.S. commitment to defending multilateralism and a rules-based world order is more critical than ever. This includes the need for a democratic Syria that respects its internal diversity. Moreover, we urgently need to work tirelessly and without excuses toward a definitive peace in both Gaza and Lebanon, with all parties assuming their clear responsibility. We cannot look the other way, nor can we afford the indiscriminate killing of civilians. It is intolerable. History will judge our generation if we fail to do everything possible to end these atrocities, whether in this conflict or wherever our capabilities can reach.

Regarding Europe, it is essential that the historic transatlantic defense alliance maintains a strategic partnership rooted in democratic values, the defense of a just international order that upholds human rights, and the ability to preserve peace and democracy. The destabilization of this alliance, as could be anticipated during Trump’s presidency, is exactly what Vladimir Putin desires to accelerate his plans for Ukraine and possibly beyond, including in Moldova, the Baltic states, or the Balkans. At the same time, this would weaken the European Union’s position, forcing it into strategic dependence on Russia—something that must be avoided not only for geopolitical reasons but also to preserve democratic values on the continent. This would be harmful to Europe, its allies, and, consequently, the United States. Similarly, seeking internal advantages at the expense of other democratic states, as recently seen in the Greenland issue, is equally damaging. All territories have the right to be respected and to freely determine their future without external interference.

Europe and the U.S. must strengthen their strategic economic alliances for mutual benefit. We are witnessing a global economy undergoing a profound disruption of value chains, with an increasing risk of strategic dependency on non-democratic states for raw materials and intermediate products. Technological development, decarbonization, combating climate change, and the production of goods and services must be well-governed. At the same time, a political and economic relationship with the Global South must be based on mutual respect, inclusive development, human rights, and democracy. This is, and must remain, a demand of the citizenry.

We cannot afford delays, especially in implementing progressive economic policies that guarantee quality jobs for everyone. However, the coming years are likely to head in the opposite direction. Prioritizing internal interests and opting for isolationism and unilateralism would be a grave mistake. Should this occur, we must remain calm and return to the path of collaboration as soon as possible, standing firm democratically and convincing citizens through bold, transformative progressivism—not just ideology.

During President Biden’s term, significant strides were made, such as adopting climate policies that placed decarbonization as a cornerstone of economic and international policy. The U.S. and Europe must act together, aiming for much more ambitious measures to mitigate climate change. A U.S. president who denies scientific evidence, as Trump does, is paving the way for the acceleration of irreversible global warming. This affects all of us and especially our future generations. There is no time to waste.

Above all, defending human rights must remain a shared value between Europe and the U.S. In a demographic context where migration flows toward Europe and the U.S. will persist—albeit at varying intensities—any migration policy must incorporate a humanitarian perspective. Europe, where the struggle between border closures at the expense of human rights (championed by the right and far-right) and a pragmatic, humane migration policy is ongoing, needs a U.S. where individuals’ rights to forge a future in freedom and security are not only promoted but fully guaranteed. Progressives must be coherent and responsible, addressing this complex issue without succumbing to pressure from ultra-populism.

The American people have spoken clearly. Donald Trump is the new president, and if he fulfills his commitments, the coming years will be challenging for rights, freedoms, and relations with Europe. We must stand firm and build global democratic alternatives.

From Catalonia, where we work to defend rights, freedoms, and a fairer world, and where we continuously strive to improve the welfare state and equal opportunities, we recognize the importance of maintaining and strengthening the understanding and solidarity with progressive and Atlanticist United States. We will be here, ready to steer in the right direction, now and when the time comes. From Europe, we echo Eleanor Roosevelt’s words: “True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and goodwill, and a constant striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.”

Trump’s Executive Actions on Middle East Undermine US Interests and His Own Promises

(Washington, D.C.) – In response to President Donald Trump’s executive actions on Tuesday to deny U.S. funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); again withdraw the United States from the UN Human Rights Council; and reinstate “maximum pressure” policies on Iran, the Center for International Policy’s Vice President for Government Affairs Dylan Williams issued the following statement:

“While overshadowed by his appalling comments proposing that the United States undertake ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the cruel and destabilizing actions on Middle East policy taken yesterday by President Trump also risk reigniting large-scale conflict in the region and hamstringing his chances of achieving the major diplomatic deals he has spoken about seeking. While these steps to deny Palestinian civilians critical humanitarian aid, undermine human rights and impoverish the Iranian people may be intended as a gift basket to visiting Israeli Prime Minister and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, they are in fact a series of self-defeating moves that undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and around the world.

“Trump’s move to extend the U.S. defunding of UNRWA without offering any plan or resources for replacing its critical functions is as harmful to Middle East stability as it is inhumane. It is unconscionable to deny civilians who have suffered the horrors of months of siege, displacement and bombardment in Gaza and ongoing violence and deprivation in the West Bank basic supplies and services. Governments throughout the region, including those that are key U.S. and Israeli security partners, will further struggle to meet the needs of Palestinian refugees in their territory, opening the door to rising tensions and unrest.

“Relatedly, once again withdrawing the United States from the UN Human Rights Council sends a clear signal of unaccountability for violations of international law to every dictator, warlord and rights abuser in the world. At a moment when protecting civilian rights and respect for the rule of law are rightly being touted as red lines in places like Lebanon and Syria, the United States is acting to delegitimize the work of those tasked by the international community to uphold those rules. It advances the assault by far-right autocrats against multilateral institutions and norms, further undermining an international system that the Global South already regards as profoundly inconsistent and unsustainable.

“Likewise, Trump’s return to the failed ‘maximum pressure’ policy with Iran – apparently against his own reservations – embraces the foolhardy anti-diplomacy, pro-war positions of former advisors like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, whose approach blew up any chance Trump had of getting a new anti-nuclear deal with Iran. Thanks to U.S. sanctions and belligerent moves after Trump’s breach of the Iran deal in his first term, as well as the Biden Administration’s decision to add to those sanctions and not take advantage of an early diplomatic window for restoring the agreement, Iran is now closer to being able to obtain nuclear weapons than ever before. Trump seemed to understand that he was given bad advice in his first administration, but is now making the same mistake again, despite promising his supporters he prioritizes avoiding wars of choice. Unfortunately, millions in the region – including thousands of American soldiers and other personnel – may end up paying the price for that mistake.”

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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.

Issue: Diplomacy & International Law -- Strengthening diplomacy and adherence to international law