The Progressive Solution

Progressives champion an America that leads collective efforts rather than going it alone. We are a global power with global interests. We have the strongest military in the world. But we have depleted our treasury, undermined our values and wasted the lives of thousands of young men and women trying to police the world ourselves. We need to return to the fundamental belief that military force is a last, not a first resort. We will defend ourselves when attack is imminent, but our security is best served by using the full range of U.S. influence proactively. We need to return to building alliances and investing in international law and institutions. We need to change course. First steps include the following.

• End the occupation and let the new government take authority in Iraq. We have been in Iraq for longer than we fought World War II. Caught in a violent civil war, the Bush administration has no plan for victory. The president vows to keep troops there throughout his term in office. His only hope is that Iraqi forces will take over eventually, but those forces are torn into factions and are becoming drawn into the sectarian violence ripping the country apart.
  
  

  Ironically, the vast majority of Iraqis, American soldiers and the American people all agree that the United States should begin to withdraw its forces and turn over authority to the Iraqis. We have rid them of a brutal dictator. Now Iraqis must decide what kind of country they will build.

• Revive the coalition against al Qaeda. We must aggressively face the threat posed by stateless terrorists, but to do that we have to revive the broad international consensus against terrorism. This is more a war of legitimacy and ideas than of battalions and regiments. We need to isolate terrorists and separate them from the disaffected millions in the Muslim world. We should re-engage Muslim leadership in condemning the fanatics. The hunt for bin Laden should be stepped up. Our focus must be on stateless networks and cells—as likely to be located among the embittered in Spain, Germany or Britain as in Muslim countries. This requires intelligence cooperation and police work much more than military force. We need an aggressive alliance aimed at isolating terrorists and discrediting their tactics.

• Make domestic security a mission not a morass. Provision for homeland security must not be business as usual. The era of cronies and corruption must end. We must invest the resources necessary to secure our borders and our ports. Homeland security funds should be distributed according to national priorities, not congressional pork and privilege. We have to stop catering to the industrial lobbies and require nuclear, chemical and other high-risk plants to implement comprehensive security programs. The 9/11 Commission recommendations should be adopted, and we should establish a new independent investigation of priority needs. We need effective leaders in charge of key intelligence and security agencies and a permanent investigative committee to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse and end the sweetheart contracts of crony companies like Halliburton.

• Refocus on curbing weapon proliferation. We must curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and eliminate current stockpiles. We need to sustain cooperation with Russia to ensure that the “loose nukes” strewn through the states of the former Soviet Union are dismantled and protected. We need to maintain a global alliance against proliferation with Iran as an essential first test case. The United States and other nuclear powers should include themselves in the drive for nuclear disarmament as part of building the global consensus against these weapons.

• Launch a concerted drive for energy independence. The drive for energy independence is an opportunity to mobilize U.S. science and technology, to invest in alternative energy and efficiency, and to create good jobs and new industries. It is also a national security imperative—we need to reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf oil, turn around our trade imbalance, and seriously address global warming. See the New Energy section of this website.

• Address emerging real security threats. We need to adjust our security budget to decrease funds wasted on Cold War weaponry and increase resources devoted to diplomacy, emergency relief, and disease prevention. And we should give emerging threats the attention they merit—from global warming to economic imbalances.

• Make the United States a source of hope again. Progressives should reclaim the cause of human rights and democracy. We have both a moral and a strategic interest in making the United States a source of hope in the world. We should be leading the international community to respond to genocidal violence, as in Darfur. We should be leading the effort to eliminate preventable diseases. We should champion democracy but lead by the strength of our ideas not the force of our arms.

• Recommit the U.S. to building international law and effective international alliances. Our military is unrivaled, but we have neither the resources nor the desire to police the world. As a global power, with allies, markets, investments and commitments in regions across the world, the United States has the largest interest in forging a world of law depending on legitimate international institutions, strong alliances and enduring cooperation. The United States will always defend itself, but our central goal should be to build a legitimate world order with expanding zones of peace. We grow more secure when we provide an example to the world of the blessings of democracy, liberty and law.