 Voters are too often told that candidates for the U.S. Congress lack any foreign
policy platform because they don’t know enough about the topic and don’t plan
to focus on it. We've created a 2024 Foreign Policy Primer meant to quickly remedy that situation.
Presidents and congressional leaders maintain that U.S. foreign policy is aimed
at furthering peace, stability, human rights and democracy. Furthering such
goals would be widely popular with the U.S. public. But, as this primer shows,
U.S. foreign policy typically undermines those noble goals and diverts billions (over half the discretionary budget that Congress funds each year) from pressing human and environmental needs — while promoting war, weapons proliferation, and corporate interests.
It's very rare for a candidate for Congress to have any position at all on the makeup of the federal discretionary budget, military spending, treaties, international law, diplomacy, foreign bases, weapons sales, or various wars. One reason this is odd is that a tiny fraction of military spending, if redirected, would dramatically transform any of the policy areas on which candidates do have positions. Our primer, which you can read online or download as a PDF, concisely presents the basic facts about U.S. foreign policy, including why it is inseparable from other U.S. policies. Please read it, give us feedback, share it with electoral candidates, and let us know their feedback. |
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