Weekly Top 10 List: Top 10 Topics That Belong on Progressives' Homework Assignment Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Most of us seem to agree that progressives need a clear set of ideas that can attract wide support in order to fuel a foreign policy platform that gains traction (there’s some ferment over whether such ideas should be thought of as an ends or a means – to me the answer is both).

We should take the next year or so to formulate ideas in each of these areas, and then work to syndicate them across the constituencies that matter - the military, the unions, the left, interested ethnic groups, business, moderate and independent voters, etc. We won’t get broad agreement in all areas, but if we can forge some new ground in 5-6 (including #10) we’ll be well ahead of where we are now.

This isn't a list of all issues that matter. In some areas – like the war on terror, the Mideast peace process and intelligence reform – change is so fast that platforms agreed now risk irrelevancy by the time the public debate refocuses on foreign policy (sometime in 2007, is my guess). As Derek has touched on here, I think progressives have an idea how they’d approach Europe.

There are areas – I would count armed intervention as one – that we must continue to talk about, but where I don’t think fixed policies necessarily have a whole lot of influence over how specific situations get handled. There are other questions, like the treatment of veterans, where we can do a whole lot better than conservatives without having to forge brand new policy ground.

Here are some ideas where some more homework could make a big difference. I invite commentators to add their own to the list.

1. Non-Proliferation. Too often, progressives seem reduced to arguing over the size shape of the negotiation table on these issues, rather than laying out a clear alternative to policies that are flagging. (see this exchange on North Korea from the first 2004 Presidential debate) This Carnegie Commission Report offers some useful new thinking to get the ball rolling.

2. Trade. We’ve begun to discuss here and here, and we all seem to agree that policy is stalled. Tom Friedman’s new book describes what we are up against, essentially tens of thousands of Indian programmers and call center entrepreneurs who are a lot hungrier than we are. The new issue of Foreign Affairs reports that we’ve slipped to 13^th in the global ranking for Internet Development, an area that helped us survive the last big economic dislocation a decade ago. The direction needed (new engines for job growth, much broader and better supported retraining and restructuring initiatives, realistic labor and environmetnal standards, etc.) is obvious though the details will be devilish.  Unions will need to get involved or their fears of irrelevancy will become reality. I read this short piece by Gene Sperling on the topic a while ago and still like it.

3. China. While the Bush Administration has antagonized traditional allies and racked up record trade deficits, the Chinese economy is growing at a record pace (though some think its in for a fall, there’s also a sneaking suspicion the Chinese may be able to sustain it) , and the government is shoring up relations with smaller allies and trading partners throughout Asia, isolating Japan. Meanwhile its hard to escape the conclusion that U.S. influence in the region is gradually waning, which may be precisely what the Chinese were hoping to accomplish. Progressives need a clear strategy for how we will play in Asia.

4. Democratization. We’ve talked about this already here and here. The latest Security and Peace Institute poll reveals that Democrats are less likely to view the promotion of democracy as a foreign policy goal than either Republicans or Independents. That’s understandable given the tainting of the concept in recent years, but we need an agenda for recapturing this issue and reuniting our own supporters behind it.

5. Military Readiness. The question of how we ensure that our military manpower needs are met in future is a tough one, but if progressives are hoping to forge a closer bond to the military (see discussions on Democracy Arsenal here and here) we are going to need to answer it. This provocative piece in the Washington Monthly is interesting less for its argument on behalf of a draft than for its analysis of why each of the alternatives now on the table is so problematic.  We'd better start generating some more options.

6. Latin America. Bush talked a good game, but has failed to deliver. At the same time as our influence is diminishing in Asia, it waning in our own backyard. Relations with Mexico are uneasy. Brazil is stepping out as a leader within the region, and of poor countries the world over.  Meanwhile China is also stepping into the breach, upping its trade and political influence in the region.  Cuba, and the attendant politics, also need to be part of the puzzle.  While none of this may hurt us much for now, this shifts will matter in the long-term. My instinct is that with China shoring up power in its backyard and Europe unified, solidifying relations in our own backyard ought to be a top priority. Bush nodded in this direction at a recent meeting with the Mexican and Canadian heads of government, but odds are he won’t follow through.  Progressives need to explain how we will.

7. Global health. Progressives care a lot about this issue. In the SPI poll, Democrats rated the spread of AIDS as their second highest national security priority (next to bringing the troops home from Iraq). The Marburg virus loose in Angola is tragic and terrifying, and it’s a matter of time before something like that affects us here. But we haven’t seen a lot of new ideas on what to do differently. Maybe we ought to be training tens of thousands of African doctors (and bribing them to go back to Africa), opening a health clinic for every 5,000 residents in Sub-Sahara.  A good place to start would be science writer Laurie Garrett's ideas.

8. Development. Here again, progressives are high on concern (again, see SPI poll), but low on ideas. We should not be intimidated by the Bush track record - the Millennium Challenge Account sounded like a smart idea, but from what I can tell has yet to disburse a dime.  Maybe the answer is broad debt relief, and/or a more aggressive challenge program that has something to offer countries that have the will but not the resources or skill to clean up their acts and institute accountability and governance procedures.

9. Post-Conflict Reconstruction. This is a problem that won’t go away, and an area where current policies have failed. I like the idea of creating a dedicated post-conflict stabilization corps because I think inter-agency coordinators and ad-hoc personnel rosters will never be up to the job. But whether that's the answer or not, we need to come up with something.

10. An Umbrella Philosophy. Most importantly, we need an umbrella that makes all of the and more sound coherent and compelling. I am still toying with the idea of Democratic Consolidation; essentially a policy aimed at shoring up democracy around the world, and soldering together a network of democracies and supporting institutions with the U.S. at the center. A lot -- including policies toward Asia, South America, and Africa -- would fit under that rubric.

Whether you like these ideas or not, I'd be interested in hearing yours.

Comments

[Ben]

That's a pretty good list. I do think, though, that we can do a better job drawing distinctions between our foreign policy philosophies and those of Republicans. It seems like often progressives end up arguing "we want what they want, only done right"; when we're feeling more courageous, we say "Republicans are ignoring important issue y. In either case, they respond, "Of course we care about y, and we're making progress." Tie goes to the party with greater national security credibility.

So if we're going to make political progress, we need to articulate good positions that Republicans will disagree with. In that line, some thoughts on Democratization. First, we (and by 'we' I mean we the United States, now) ought to de-emphasize elections and put more weight on the broader development of civil rights. Various oppressive dictators who would never consent to hold elections and abdicate might well make steady incremental progress past such benchmarks as trial by jury, an independent judiciary, freedom of expression and of the press, the abolition of cruel and unusual punishment, and so on, given sufficient sticks and carrots. And when elections do eventually take place, the resulting democracy is much more likely to be successful given a preexisting commitment to human rights and the rule of law.

Second, I think progress in democratization ought to be systematized; the label of democracy shouldn't be a gold star handed out at the President's whim. International institutions with specific standards for membership could do a lot of good, just as the European Union has helped encourage democracy among would-be members.

Well, you did ask for comments! Thanks for all the work you do.

-Ben

[Andy McLennan]

Best wishes for this site! It could become a great thing for progressives, and for the world in a much larger sense.

Two comments about the list. First, genocide prevention should be on it. Repeatedly the world wakes up too late, unable to mount a timely response. Who knows how much can really be done to create systems that will be in place when they're needed, but the time to be thinking about this question is now.

Second, new issues and ideas may be desirable, but we should also be more aggressive about challenging the other side where they're vulnerable. Why do the Republicans get a free pass on missile defense when, as everyone who reads this site knows, dysfunctional weapons systems aren't just money wasters, but seriously weaken our defenses by introducing fictitious assumptions into military planning? Basically, I think, because there are a lot of Democratic politicians who would be happy to follow along behind someone else on this issue, but who think that a leadership stance would have a lot of downside risk and little upside. This site can take the lead! Here's an idea: each week challenge a specific conservative opinion maker to defend missile defense on its technical merits. If s/he doesn't respond, announce this loudly. If s/he does, then it really gets fun...

One other little thing...I wish I could preview this comment. ;)

[Claiborne Booker]

Another important topic is global energy. Progressives need to talk about how energy efficiency - better use of existing resources (Amory Lovins's "nega-watts") - and developing new sources of energy can assist in creating better living conditions throughout the world.

[J Thomas]

Nonproliferation is dead, except as a campaign issue. And as a campaign issue it can backfire, whoever campaigns for nonproliferation is likely to get blamed for each nonproliferation failure on their watch.

What might work better toward nonproliferation is to reduce our own nuclear stockpile, with the public announcement that nukes aren't actually worth having and we're gradually phasing them out. Other nations would pay some attention to our example, while they aren't as susceptible to our coercion these days.

[J Thomas]

To the extent we avoid tariff wars, we have to expect wages to equilibrate across the world. Except for things that must be done locally. You can't outsource plumbers, even if you make modular parts to snap in somebody has to snap them in. You can't outsource real estate agents. You can't outsource prostitutes or masseurs.

But if wages equilibrate between the USA and china, US standards of living must fall. Other things equal, when 1.3 billion chinese rise to equal 300 million americans, american standard or living can be expected to drop about 75%.

We can set up tariff barriers to discourage, and to the extent our own resources are adequate we can do OK. Likely better than we'd do with free trade. To the extent that there aren't enough resources to go around, we do worse trading our valuable resources for overabundant chinese labor. Free trade is potentially better for world production -- there's more to go around, more for the various poor foreign people, but less for us than we'd have otherwise.

I can't imagine a campaign that advocates US standard of living dropping. The various increased-foreign-trade legislation came with people who believed that we wouldn't be damaged by it, or people who believed that they could trick us into it.

On the other hand, cutting foreign trade would be unpopular too, our reduced standard of living would get blamed on it.

Maybe it's better to take no position until after we have an obvious crisis. Then anybody who can argue that the crisis isn't his fault can suggest solutions.

[J Thomas]

China --

A long time ago I was concerned about japan being #1 and damaging the US economy. They had a mostly-closed economy themselves and they took a lot of advantage from our trade. They'd dump electronics etc here while charging high prices at home to pay for it, and they destroyed various of our industries that way. I discussed this with an academic political scientist, and he said not to worry about it. Japan had no oil and not much other resources. Blockade them and in a few months they'd collapse. And it turned out it didn't take a blockade, we were able to use their own natural tendencies against them and trap them in a long grinding recession.

China is harder. They have a giant population to use, a large defensive army, they can import resources from siberia etc and we can't stop them without bombing, etc. Maybe they'll collapse for some internal reason. We can hardly avoid letting them become a major regional power. There's some question what they'll consider their region. Afghanistan? How far across the southern XSSR? They want a pipeline from iran....

It doesn't make sense to campaign on a stop-china platform, because if you win you'll have to negotiate with china. Say you want to build up the military to intimidate china, why should china loan you the money? Say you want to outbid china for imported oil, why should china loan you the money? We need to get our economy working first, before we can think about restraining china.

Unless china actually needs us for something. But what? Say they took the stuff they export to us for depreciating dollars, and they just built it and piled it up in the gobi desert instead. Would they be worse off? Say they sold it to the workers who make it, would they be worse off than they are now? Suppose the US dollar gets devaluated another 30%. Then the last 25% or so of their exports to use were freebies. They'd have been better off not to ship those to us -- except for the political advantages they get from being obviously strong while we're obviously weak.

I don't see that they need us nearly as much as we need them. Except -- do we need them? We've been talking like they aren't actually doing us any favors.

We can't make a sensible china policy until we get a sensible economics policy. Better put this one off for a few days.

[praktike]

China's economic growth should be viewed as an opportunity, and US policy should discourage the creation of rival trading blocs. Another go at the WTO would be good. Domestically, we need to boost trade adjustment assistance and get single-payer health care done once and for all. A more sensible approach to energy, in cooperation w/ the G7, would be wise. The worst thing would be some kind of stupid trade war w/ China and its allies on the one side, and the US and Japan on the other. Everyone would end up poorer and stupider.

[The Indigent Blogger]

Unfortunately, John Kerry's comments about North Korea in that presidential debate wildly inaccurate and quite unhelpful. A good progressive North Korea policy would be an articulation of a "trust-but-veryify" approach to multilateral talks with all incentives and disincentives on the table. A simple explanation to the American people that we are ready to reward an international confirmation of North Korea's compliance to the 1994 Agreed Framework would go a long way (IMHO).

Unfortunately, a number of our European allies have presented progressives with two great opportunities. I think strong language about discouraging European arm sales to China would dispel the "get permission from Europe" perception of progressives and make a statement that China is not considered a perfect world neighbor.

Finally, there is a wonderful opportunity of good ol' political idea filching. Bush's Millenium Challenge Account (aka Bush Doctrine) is the most progressive foreign policy shift since the Marshal Plan, but he's never really spoken of it despite its successes. Steal It! Take the idea, rename it, increase funding, and present it to the American people as the "Democracy Fund"; rewarding openness and human rights and eliminating welfare for dictators. I think that would have tremendous appeal to middle America and allow some of the progressives that have been pushed into reactionary foreign policy stances (to oppose Bush) to get back onboard with a sound liberal approach.

[J Thomas]

Praktike, in a rational world I would agree with you.

But realisticly, every barrel of oil china burns is a barrel we can't buy. Every sheet of US plywood we sell to china, is a sheet of plywood not available to us. China tends to buy resources. (And companies that own IP.)

On the other side, we want to have skilled jobs in the USA, too.

China is treating the USA the way we treated argentina etc. Buy their raw materials, give them loans while manipulating things so they can't compete on anything but raw materials, and then -- call the loans due?

We can't afford to let it go on that way, but the chines aren't agreeing to do otherwise. They're getting 9% growh while we get 0% growth. And it's their trade policies that are doing it.

If we do something to resolve that without china's cooperation it will be bad. But we'll end up poor and stupid either way....

[J Thomas]

Indigent, what incentives and disincentives do we have for north korea compared to what china can offer?

Try the flip side of the same story. Suppose that china and europe agreed together that they wanted israel to get rid of the israeli nukes. They could talk about discouraging european arms sales to israel. They could even talk about discouraging european arms sales to the USA> They could talk about multilateral talks. They could talk about the various incentives and disincentives that china could offer to israel. In ten years or so china might even hint at some sort of military action against israel, they might have troops in some neighboring countries etc.

But at least over the next few years it makes no difference what europe and china want. If the USA is OK with israel's nukes then israel can ignore them. Same for north korea, if china doesn't mind them having nukes then they'll have nukes.

But the US public isn't ready to hear that. When it becomes obvious then it's OK to say it if you're saying who to blame it on. But today it sounds defeatist, it would sound like you have a bad attitude and it wouldn't get votes.

So it's a bad topic. Tell the truth and you look bad. But come up with some bullshit argument like the other guys but different, and if you win you'll look real bad when it fails.

The best approach progressives can take about korean nukes is to keep quiet about the whole thing now, but be ready to blame Bush and Co entirely for the debacle if the first korean nuke gets tested while Bush is still in office. This is entirely Bush's fault. Bush said he'd stop it and he didn't. Bush did essentially nothing to stop it. He didn't ask for more troops or more funding for the navy, he didn't do effective diplomacy, he did nothing but talk about how he was going to take care of it. This is entirely due to unprogressive stands by american politicians. If republicans try to pass it off onto Clinton, you can say that Clinton was no progressive and he was wrongly following advice from the same people who ultimately failed.

Trying to stop korean nukes is a mug's game. You can't win. You can't even win if you say you won't play. The only way to win is if the other guy loses before you get a chance to play.

[praktike]

"Bush's Millenium Challenge Account (aka Bush Doctrine) is the most progressive foreign policy shift since the Marshal Plan, but he's never really spoken of it despite its successes."

What are you talking about? What successes? There has been exactly ONE grant announced -- to Madagascar. Last week. It's a reasonable program modeled on a 1998 World Bank report, but (a) it hasn't actually done anything yet, and (b) it is not the Bush Doctrine.

[praktike]

But realisticly, every barrel of oil china burns is a barrel we can't buy. Every sheet of US plywood we sell to china, is a sheet of plywood not available to us. China tends to buy resources. (And companies that own IP.)

On the other side, we want to have skilled jobs in the USA, too.

China is treating the USA the way we treated argentina etc. Buy their raw materials, give them loans while manipulating things so they can't compete on anything but raw materials, and then -- call the loans due?

We can't afford to let it go on that way, but the chines aren't agreeing to do otherwise. They're getting 9% growh while we get 0% growth. And it's their trade policies that are doing it.
---------------
You're right about oil, but beyond that, you're wrong. Chinese growth is helping us in a number of ways (and, no, we're not growing at 0%). Ironically, China is lending us money for the Iraq War.

[The Indigent Blogger]

"What are you talking about? What successes? There has been exactly ONE grant announced -- to Madagascar. Last week. It's a reasonable program modeled on a 1998 World Bank report, but (a) it hasn't actually done anything yet, and (b) it is not the Bush Doctrine."

a) It has done a great deal in many places like Armenia, Georgia, the Middle East, a number of African nations and other areas that have committed plans for reforms or have already begun implementing those reforms. Measuring "progress" by the number of dollars (or grants) doled out is exactly the problem that this policy is trying to fix.

b) It is the not the entire Bush Doctrine, but it was part of the Bush Doctrine. Notwithstanding the clueless journalists and pundits that thinks it refers to the policy of "pre-emption", the "Bush Doctrine" is the euphamism for the National Security Strategy (primarily written by Dr. Condoleeza Rice).

[Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg]

One thing that I think is missing from this list, which I guess comes closest to number 10 on your list, is a definition of what national security is, and then how we achieve that security. I think that most security scholars and analysts agree that we face a host of new threats in the post-cold war world, either using non-traditional means (i.e. asymmetric threats) or coming from non-traditional (i.e. non-state) actors. These new threats require us to rethink defense, and I believe that coming out in front of this conversation/debate is a great way for progressives to push our “umbrella philosophy”.

Is protecting ourselves from biological attacks and epidemics a national security issue? I believe it is, as does the Department of Homeland. But if we include this in our national security debate, than your fifth item, “Military Readiness,” needs to be expanded. The military very well may play a large role if a pandemic occurred or if a weaponized agent was released, but what role? Wouldn’t it be better in this case to look at “hospital readiness” or “medical practitioner readiness” or something similar? In essence, I think that it’s important to broaden the term “military readiness” into something like “defense readiness,” since the second can better include the first responders that will be at the fore of our defense in many cases.

We also must contemplate what responses that we could and should have to these non-traditional threats. If China shut down the internet in the U.S., or if they attacked our critical infrastructures via the internet, how would we respond? Would we nuke them for turning off our lights? Would we attack their infrastructures? We would even have to ask whether we could positively id attackers in a non-traditional attack. These types of questions must be answered (and made public) if we want to avoid unnecessary escalation of tensions when one of these attacks occurs and if we are to provide our leaders with the guidance that they will need to deal with these threats when they occur.

J Thomas- “To the extent we avoid tariff wars, we have to expect wages to equilibrate across the world”

No, we shouldn’t.

Just because the free-market ideologues say that this should be the case, and despite the fact that they probably have lots of nice charts and theories to back up this claim, doesn’t make it true. If we expect to mobilize working class Americans than we’re going to have to avoid the Free-market BS which has provided nothing but excuses as American real wages have declined since the 70s and start to look at the economic realities of actual Americans, which is what you’re getting at in the second part of your comments.

It’s fine for people to believe the free-market fairy tale, but if they expect this to be party of a liberal/progressive foreign policy than they’re not proposing a real solution, instead they are adding to the problems that Dems have communicating with the large swaths of American society. Free-market idealism is on the wane, and for those who want to hold on to that sinking ship, feel free, but don’t expect the rest of the progressive community to go down with you.

[Rick Herrick]

In addition to the "Military Readiness" and "Post-Conflict Reconstruction" planks, I think we need to add a couple of other facets of military preparedness to our list. To some extent, this would allow Democrats or progressives to co-opt one of the stronger GOP issues, specifically national defense, by providing a more comprehensive vision of what's required. Roughly, the area that needs to be addressed is somewhere in the fluxing middle between conflict readiness and post-conflict reconstruction. This area is (these areas are?) intervention and peacekeeping.

Being ready to fight a major war on very short notice is an important and unique ability. Witness our reaction to 9/11 in Afghanistan. This ability to bring overwhelming force to bear may not solve all problems. For example it obviously does little or nothing to prevent or curtail insurgencies. But it does prevent or at least help check many direct conflagrations, such as on the Korean Peninsula.

Where we're lacking is a ready-to-go force to intervene in situations like Darfur, Rwanda, and the like, low-intensity high-savagery conflicts involving irregulars, small units, and little organized fighting. When action is taken to interrupt these conflicts, lots of lives can be saved at a very low cost. Some might argue that this should be a function of the U.N.; that could be, but troops in U.N. forces can only do what they've been trained to do by their national armies. The situations into which these units might be placed could range from somewhat warm, where tempers are rising but open hostilities haven't broken out, to extremely hot, where they have. In any of these cases, interrupting the burgeoning chain reaction of violence can quickly bring the situation back to a tense but non-violent state.

In any of these cases (and those involving larger conflicts, as Afghanistan and Iraq have shown) the next stage of intervention is peacekeeping. This includes security against military or insurrectionist violence, and also includes civil security such as home security, controlling looting, enforcing traffic laws, and the gamut of basic rules governing civil society. There's infrastructure security, which keeps (or makes) ports and airports open, roads and highways functioning, electricity generation and telecommunications on-line, hospitals and clinics open and supplied, and so on. We run into these issues again and again in our international involvement: Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Liberia, etc., and obviously Iraq. Again and again we're caught flat-footed: I didn't realize we'd have to do all this boring domesticated stuff! We need to simply institutionalize these types of operational units and include them in our overall plans for any operation.

This give us a story on defense and security that (to fall into the Lakoff-ian meme for a second) co-opts the GOP's existing frame for the issue: we're not doing enough, and we need to prepare our defenses for the conflicts of today and tomorrow. It enables us to portray the current administration (correctly, I believe) as backward-thinking and unsuccessful, stuck fighting a war that no longer exists. It provides us military options outside of shock and awe and overwhelming force. It provides us the ability to act exclusively or in concert with others, through multilateral institutions or on our own iniative (although the Bush Administration has made unilateral action a naughty term, there have been successful and advisable unilateral actions in the past, e.g. Kosovo). And it really addresses an important need that now is dealt with in an ad hoc and generally inadequate manner nowadays, when it's dealt with at all.

[J Thomas]

Alex, I'm a little unclear about your position on free trade. My take on it is that if everything goes according to theory, here's the USA and there's china with 4 times our population. If wages equilibrate between china and the USA, we can expect to get by with about 1/5 of the resources we've been using, and to the extent that one or more of those resources are limiting, we'll wind up with something like 1/5 of our previous standard of living.

The result would be a big leg up for china and a big leg down for us. But we don't have free trade because china isn't doing free trade. They are artificially keeping their exchange rate low and preventing equilibration. Future military economists might class their behavior as economic warfare. (And by the same token our actions against the third world might be considered economic warfare.)

Free traders won't accept that this experience invalidates free trade because in any bilateral free trade arrangement both governments have to play their part, and china isn't. But ignoring them, the question is how to talk about it in ways that americans like to hear (china is the enemy, blame our problems on china, that could be popular) and still leave us with some adequate way to co-exist with china after our guy gets elected.

[Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg]

J- my position of free trade ideology, esp. the idea that market's head towards some equilibrium, is pie-in-the-sky fantasy. For example, you said that we should expect wages to both head towards equilibrium, but we could also see wages in both countries fall or rise, regardless of tariffs or other impediments for trade.

But my overall position is that progressives should not be talking abotu free trade, but fair trade. I don't give two sh-ts about what Milton Friedman thinks about the world, and I don't trust the vision of the world that almost any of the free-marketeers holds. We should be talking about how to reverse the losses of the American workers, not about widgets, equilibrium, or any other aspect of this junk-science that gets sold as the holy gospel of Capitalism.

I'm not saying I have all the answers to the ways that we could talk about capitalism, but if we take a look at "The Worldy Philosophers" I'm sure we can find quite a fwe economic theories that aren't as harmful to working Americans and to progressive causes as the Chicago School crap. We could start by looking once again to Keynes...

[J Thomas]

Alex, I think we're basicly in agreement. I'm saying that if the freetraders are right in their analysis, but there is one or more limiting resources, then labor equilibration means US labor equilibrates sharply and permanently downward. Get that understood and free trade should be very very unpopular among US voters.

On the other hand, protecting US labor is a rotten thing to do to everybody but labor. It's a form of protectionism, resulting in less production and more expensive products across the world -- for the people who can afford to buy. And divide-and-conquer strategies apply here, "labor" is a diverse bunch and it would be possible to protect some but not others, to split the movement.

It might work to blame the problem on unfair chinese practices. They're a credible enemy. People could believe it. But where does that leave us? War with china? Cold war? If we blame them for the problem, how do we deliver a solution?

I don't see a good campaign plank in there.

[Terra Incognito]

This is an interesting list, and quite a contrast with what the Republicans are asserting as priorities. However, talking about the issues is so much "rearranging the Titanic deck chairs" without formulating an underlying geopolitical weltanchauung that ties them all together and gives them strategic coherence.

Say what you want about the Right, but they do have a coherent geopolitical world view which, although it is articulated slightly differently by different pundits and advocates, boils down to the simple: "maintaining American global dominance in the 21st Century." On the campaign trail, this translates to: "keep America strong." The Left has yet to articulate a geopolitical worldview, much less articulate it succinctly enough for it to reverberate with the electorate. Before moving on to define the foreign policy laundry list, the Left must define its first principles.

So what should a progressive geopolitical strategy be based upon? Unfortunately, the Republicans have hijacked the legacy of Wilson and FDR of "keeping the world safe for democracy." Quite frankly, I don't think the Democrats have had a geopolitcal strategy since Kennedy and LBJ ran aground in Vietnam. The modern heirs of the Democratic Cold War geopolicy are the Neo-cons.

So in all reality, progressives are at Square One in this process. What kind of world do progressives envision 10, 20, 50 and 100 years down the line? A world where American economic and military power reigns supreme? What are the alternatives? What should the short, medium, and long-term goals be? How should we leverage American power to bring this vision to reality?

Once progressives have answers to these questions, the policy solutions will fall into place, as will a way to sell them to the American people.

[rjw]

I'm afraid there is some very dubious economics here - there is no reason why free trade should mean that US wages have to fall to 'rest of world' levels. Americans have higher productivity per hour worked than the 'rest of the world' due to all the infrastructure, and human and physical capital stock that you posess - so wages per hour can be higher.

[J Thomas]

Rjw, american infrastructure is still decaying, as is our pool of highly-educated workers. If we get higher productivity per hour, we *can* choose to put the profits from that higher productivity into higher wages. But why should we? If we did that, why not pay for more hours of lower-productivity workers elsewhere instead?

For awhile there skilled indian labor cost 10% of the equivalent in the USA. That's an awful lot for infrastructure etc to make up for. But now indian wages are going up even while ours go down. It isn't true that our wages have to go down to 'rest of the world' levels. To some extent the rest of the world will rise to meet us. If all that evens out it's possible our wages would still be 30% what they were in 1990, or even 40%.

And of course wages per hour isn't the whole story.

And immigration turns into a bigger issue the more the jobs get crunched. The number of jobs isn't growing nearly as fast as the population, and immigration makes that worse.

And then, the trade isn't free just because we let it be free. The other governments involved have to let it be free too. Ideally we would have ways to persuade them not to use sneaky methods to game the system.

It isn't as easy as it looks. We'll learn from this experience and I'm sure someday we'll be ready for bona fide free trade. But what we have now isn't it and isn't something we can afford.

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