What should Democratic foreign policy be?

[eallen]

How should Democrats address foreign policy? What issues should we make most important? Nuclear poliferation? Terrorism? Illiteracy and lack of education for girls in the mideast? Islamic fundamentalism?

What foreign policy principles should we advocate?

(Here's a hint: "withdraw from Iraq" is not a foreign policy. This is not a question about Iraq. It is a larger and more fundamental question, one that we would need to answer if Bush never had invaded Iraq, and that one that needs an answer even if Iraq is miraculously resolved prior to 2008.)

[savemefromdumbya]

1. one thing to improve is diplomatic relations

The US should not be seen as a carnivor trying to 'police' the world and withdraw from its dirty corporate dealings and global 'rent a dictator strategies' and violation of human rights. It should be seen as working together with other countries for the good of the planet, strengthening the UN whilst remaining tough on home security.

[Sparkly]

2. Engaged Diplomacy

to deal with both humanitarian needs (Darfur for example) and to work effectively against threats (loose Soviet nukes, for example).

[sui generis]

3. trade, economics, and our future on the global stage

Without a doubt we are in for a rude awakening on the following fronts:

Transportation costs on cheap goods
Nonrenewable fuel sources
Outsourcing our own employment market
Reduced consumerism of American goods
Unchecked trade deficits

It's not just "one" thing. We have to stand up for human rights everywhere, not just in countries that have oil.

We have to participate in the United Nations in a meaningful way. We have to encourage positive dialogue using positive inducements. We have to take a leadership role in disease and hunger management before they visit our doorstep and beyond.

Education is important. Birth control and healthcare are important. Conservation of natural resources is important. Cultivation of renewable resources is important.

We have to ask ourselves some hard questions:

1. what if energy were cheap and limitless, how would we live?
2. what if every human could live to be 100, how would we live?
3. what if there was no disease we couldn't cure, how would we live?

Because none of those things are even remotely true or possible right now, and we still don't have a plan.

[Mr.Green93]

4. Open Peace Talks with Islam

This must be done sooner or later.

[eallen]

5. Who speaks for Islam? How do you open peace talks with a religion?

Islamic leaders no more agree among themselves than do Christian leaders. If you're at war with the Vatican, you can talk peace with the church. If fundamentalist Christianity is a problem, there are thousands of leaders who claim to speak for it, but not one who has the authority to answer for it.

[win_in_06]

7. Do you mean open peace talks with Al-Queida?

Because that is a loosing proposition.

[Nimrod2005]

6. We will invest in education in more countries

Had we taken all our billions we wasted doing war and built schools to educate the chirldren of the ME, we would not have been here - Of course, we would bring our own books, computers, messages...etc.

[KansDem]

8. I don't know, but "Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas" doesn't seem to work

Beyond that, anything else is open to debate and will be, in all likelihood, more constructive.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. In one sentence: Don't try to run the world

Recognize that other countries have legitimate interests that may be at odds with American business interests.

They should be allowed to determine their own political and economic systems as long as they do so peacefully and relatively humanely.

U.S. troops should intervene in a country only when the international community has determined that genocide is taking place, and even then, if a situation can be handled by countries in the region (as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait should have been), those countries should handle it.

Otherwise, U.S. troops should be strictly defensive.

[freestyle]

10. End poverty, promote maximum self sufficiency.

There was an article in the NYT on spending on bottled water. What is spent in one year could provide water treatment plants everywhere they are needed. Tens of thousands of children die daily from easily prevented and treated diseases. It is entirely possible to end the grinding poverty most of the world lives in. Our foreign policy needs to be based on sharing and helping people help themselves, not on domination and enriching national and international elites.

[welshTerrier2]

11. we must abandon our greedy dreams of empire ...

for more than 100 years, the US has had an imperialistic foreign policy ... our government, through the use of the military and the CIA, has pursued a foreign policy designed to benefit key corporations and their largest shareholders ... sadly, speeches about spreading democracy, standing up to tyranny abroad and bettering the lives of those in very poor third world countries is little more than advertising and propaganda ... even in cases where there may have been some overt efforts made towards these noble goals, the underlying motivation has always been raw greed ...

so, what should American (Democratic?) foreign policy be? our foreign policy should reflect American values ...

we value our freedoms and should ensure that we have a strong defense capability to protect them ... but defending our nation from "imminent threat" does not include protecting corporations on foreign soil ... it does not include the procurement of oil nor the protection of foreign oil pipelines ...

controversial though it might be, i might be willing to condone (given proper Congressional oversight) spying on other nations to ensure our protection ... HOWEVER, the results of these spying operations should never be used to provide a commercial advantage to profit-seeking organizations ...

our foreign policy should be designed to benefit not just our own citizens but the greater global community ... it should promote cooperation over competition ... it should seek to strengthen the UN and the community of nations rather than seeking to control them ... while our foreign policy should definitely have an element of nationalism and the protection of American jobs and American markets, it should also be a willing partner, even to our own detriment, in efforts to reduce pollution, hunger, international crime and corruption, and the global abuses of corporations (e.g. the dumping of 'defective' pharaceuticals on third world countries) ...

finally, American foreign policy needs to recognize that good global citizenship makes us a stronger nation ... i'm afraid too many believe that building bigger and better weapons is the only way to make our country safer ... and too many believe that international problems can be effectively solved solely with the use of our military ... diplomacy, layered on top of genuine respect for the sovereignty of other nations, is the only path to a better foreign policy ... diplomacy will lead to better trading relationships, better security, better understanding and shared values and better global cooperation to address the many problems we face ...