MQ Reaper drone on takeoff in Afghanistan. Photo: US Air Force.

In this run-up to the 2026 mid-term elections, progressive movements and candidates remain caught up in the challenges of rising authoritarianism and militarism both at home and around the world.

We are mobilizing against new U.S.-Israeli wars against Iran and across the Middle East/West Asia region, including Israel’s U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. We face explosive U.S. bombing raids and illegal military interventions in Latin America, Africa, and beyond, as well as threats to Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and elsewhere — with President Donald Trump at the center of all of it.

What’s different now compared to past crises is that many bold progressive leaders have won competitive primaries in this year’s midterms — often putting opposition to war and genocide at the center of their messaging.

While all of the self-defined democratic socialist and progressive candidates around the country have their own sets of priorities, the most common areas in their electoral platforms include opposition to ICE and military support for Israel, support for expanding health care, affordability, and housing, and anti-authoritarianism writ large.

What’s still needed, beyond the broad principles of progressive foreign policy (see also my 2018 article on the same question as the Squad was winning primaries) is a set of ideas for specific policy proposals to address at least some of the key priority foreign policy issues that will face a new Congress during two more years of the Trump administration and going forward into the elections of 2028.

What Should Progressive Foreign Policy Look Like?

Part 1 of this series identified key principles of a progressive foreign policy. Briefly, foreign policy should reject the goals of U.S. military and economic domination and instead be grounded in global cooperation, international law, human rights, and real diplomacy. It must also take responsibility to repair damage that U.S. military, economic, climate, and other policies have wrought.

This section looks at some of the key global issues that progressive members of Congress will face — and what initiatives may best respond to them.

Official “U.S. foreign policy” will never completely match the much broader internationalist goals of progressive and left movements. But there are examples of good (however limited) and bad foreign policies chosen by past governments.

The Obama administration chose some of each. Its foreign policy victories were all diplomatic: the Paris climate accord, moves towards normalization with Cuba, and especially relevant now as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran continues to rage, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Its greatest foreign policy failures occurred because Obama chose military action instead of diplomacy, including its escalations and new........

© CounterPunch