Liberty and Justice for All

Foreign and Defense Policy

Arms Trade and Treaties(ideas suggested by Stephen Schlesinger, director, World Policy Institute):

We are the leading arms exporter in the world, and that unfortunate label should be discarded. We should decrease our arms export abroad. The arms trade does not lend itself to creating peaceful conditions where you have ethnic rivalries and budding dictators. By limiting weapons sales, we could lower the temperature for global conflict around the world. Additionally, the U.S. must sign the Land Mines Treaty, the International Criminal Court Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. There is a dearth of international commitment on the part of Congress.

Military Intervention (ideas suggested by Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and author of Just and Unjust Wars):

When the U.S. is confronted with mass murder or ethnic cleansing in another nation, we must be clear not only about what form of intervention is best but about who best should do the intervening. The most successful such interventions have been done by neighboring states — Vietnam in Cambodia, the Indians in East Pakistan, Tanzania in Uganda. The responsibility falls on the state or regional association that is closest to the problem, not on the U.S. Given America’s global capacities, it is possible that we might have to assume logistical or financial responsibilities for the action. Where the U.S. is implicated by its own past actions in such situations, as in Haiti, then U.S. military intervention can be appropriate. Generally, however, the American role should be more distanced, though there may be instances in which a more active role may be required where the neighboring states don’t have the capacity to intervene.

National Missile Defense System (ideas suggested by Ted Postol, MIT physicist):

The overwhelmingly expensive missile-defense system does not work and should be abandoned. It has two fundamental flaws: First, it cannot tell warheads from decoys. Second, it could never reliably hit warheads even if it could identify them correctly. This program is a leftover from the Strategic Defense Initiative days, from a time when each hairy-chested Democrat stood against each hairy-chested Republican insisting each was more committed to defending the country than the other. The end result is a mish-mosh of a program that does nothing.