For many years, progressive movements and activists have longed for the moment when we could imagine a real foreign policy rooted in true internationalism and solidarity.

But in our efforts to influence actual policy decisions, we’ve settled for important but smaller asks—ending specific wars, blocking the transfer of certain weapons to Israel, reducing military aid, cutting the military budget. That made sense—our movements’ view of the world was rarely fully reflected in Congress, the State Department, or the White House.

Now some of those limitations are fading. There are new possibilities rising as we see new candidates with incredibly progressive politics win their campaigns—and even more importantly, we see in recent years the extraordinary shift in public discourse about the US role in the world, especially (though not only) throughout the almost three years of US -enabled genocide in Gaza.

The escalation of global crises—especially those caused, exacerbated, and sponsored by the United States—means we need to do more as movements, and to demand more from our elected representatives. Israel has lost the battle of legitimacy. US credibility and influence around the world are crumbling, not only as a result of President Trump and his MAGA movement extremism but also because of the foreign policy failures of discredited establishment Democrats like President Biden.

The US, long the wealthiest, militarily strongest country in the history of humanity, is certainly still powerful, but is increasingly losing its ability to impose its will.

The flailing White House and its hollowed-out State Department are stumbling through the huge failures of Trump’s insatiably wealth- and ego-driven foreign policy. They face an unending war with Iran that has spread across the region and is threatening the entire global economy, Ebola exploding across parts of Africa, poverty and unprecedented inequality shattering lives around the world, and a genocide in Gaza visible globally in real time. The US, long the wealthiest, militarily strongest country in the history of humanity, is certainly still powerful, but is increasingly losing its ability to impose its will.

The new cohort of progressive candidates and the movements supporting them face a huge challenge of not only defeating the current foreign policy but also creating the beginnings of an entirely new approach. And for candidates, electeds, and campaigns who have focused overwhelmingly on progressive domestic issues, nothing about that challenge will be easy.

Starting from First Principles

Many countries around the world—from Spain to the Philippines, South Africa to Greece, and Brazil to Uruguay and beyond—have a legacy of powerful left movements morphing into more formal organizations, and from there transforming into political parties. Eventually the parties choose candidates to run for political office, in more or less democratic multi-party systems, and ultimately some of those candidates even reach, at least for a while, the highest levels of government.

That path provides not only a clear arc from organizing to power, but also a set of consistent political principles and policies on which left candidates can ground their campaigns for office. But the left and even the broad progressive movements here in the United States have not been able to claim that particular arc of history for a very long time. As a result, we are operating, in this unusually electorally focused year, without a clear set of unifying principles.

Those principles are not completely missing. Policy initiatives once sidelined as positions only of the left have instead unified broad movements and become part of mainstream discourse. The most prominent probably include Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, the Fight for Fifteen, and the Dream Act/DACA. A generation of young people came of political age mobilizing on those issues alongside the crucial struggles against racist police violence, and many turned towards various strands of socialism to support and build those campaigns.

The central mobilizing issues of today’s Trump era—including ending ICE, rejecting AI/data center construction, housing for all, and challenging authoritarianism and the billionaires—emerged on the scene alongside those earlier priorities. Today’s arguably most influential democratic socialist leader, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, cut his political teeth on those issues.

What we still don’t have is a clear set of foreign policy principles, let alone specific policies responding to particular global crises, around which progressive movements will unite. The one exception, paid for with Palestinian blood, is Gaza. The most massive mobilizations in the country responding to Israel’s live-streamed genocide in Gaza took place during the Biden years. Those mobilizations and the movement behind them animated politics, and shaped big new majorities for ending Washington’s military support of Tel Aviv. Following decades of elite adulation and broad public support, Israel is now widely reviled as a pariah state.

Trump’s re-election changed much of the political picture, but the centrality of Gaza as the moral core of our movements—especially, though not only, among the young—represents a vitally important crack in that pro-Israel consensus. It has profoundly reshaped longstanding political assumptions, normalizing unflinching criticism of Israel and rejecting AIPAC funding as requirements for progressive candidates. As a result, Israel and the legitimacy of Palestinian rights are central issues in many races. Even in places where the assumed campaign focus would be domestic, candidates are inescapably being compelled to talk about it.

What principles should undergird a progressive official US foreign policy?

And yet Gaza is not enough. Certainly, ending the US-Israeli war on Iran emerged quickly as another specific demand within the broad anti-authoritarianism/anti-fascist movement, and there are other foreign policy positions on which most progressives would agree. The easy ones (to agree on—not necessarily to achieve!) would probably start with cutting the military budget, abolishing nuclear weapons, opposing US wars and military interventions, and working cooperatively with other countries on international crises including climate and global health.

But there is no clearly articulated set of principles, or of specific policy goals based on those principles, which represents a consensus position claimed by candidates and electeds, and upheld by the diverse progressive, left, and socialist activist constituencies across this country. We need to step up that process now, both in anticipation of the coming elections of this year and 2028, and to define what US foreign policy could or should look like in the future.

Understanding that official US positions will never completely match all that our movements fight for, what principles should undergird a progressive official US foreign policy? What follows here is an attempt to identify some of those principles, with a few examples of what they might look like in practice.

Foreign policy should be based on diplomacy, not the use or threat of military force.

That means strengthening real diplomacy rooted in a serious commitment to international law and multilateral treaties, diplomacy that aims to prevent and/or solve conflicts through genuine, good-faith negotiations. It means rejecting the use of “soft power” diplomacy designed merely to strengthen US domination and supremacy.

What might that look like in practice?

End the Iran war, accepting that serious negotiations, not more force or more sanctions, will be required.

Relatedly, prohibit any use of force against any country, including Iran, with whom the US is negotiating a ceasefire or peace treaty.

Recognize and engage with China as an economic and diplomatic rival, and a potential partner in solving global crises, not a military threat.

Recognize that while Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal, past US provocations, including NATO expansion, had raised tensions with Russia and made Ukraine a target for Moscow’s retaliation. Today the conflict must be approached with a far greater commitment to international diplomacy than we’ve seen so far.

Begin rebuilding the foreign service with staff educated in and committed to using diplomacy and international law as real alternatives to war, not as “force multipliers” to achieve military goals. We must not see a return to earlier years of secretaries of state cheerleading for military force instead of diplomacy.

Foreign policy should end the US war-based economy that has shifted resources away from social needs—especially damaging the lives of poor and low-wealth people across this country—and has destroyed people, societies, and the environment around the world.

That means massive reductions in the military budget and redirecting hundreds of billions of dollars saved to jobs, health care, environmental justice, education, child and elder care, and other social needs across the US , and to increased humanitarian and development needs around the world, especially in countries devastated by past and curren US wars.

Challenge congressional assumptions that more and bigger weapons and “the most lethal military” will somehow keep people in the US safe—they will not.

Acknowledge that between the $1 trillion 2026 and proposed $1.6 trillion 2027 military budgets, the increase alone (about $600 billion) is more than twice the total military budget of China, ostensibly Washington’s biggest challenger.

Move to cut the proposed 2027 military budget by at least half,........

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