At a time when Americans are worried about escalating conflict abroad but convinced — rightly — that sending in our troops again is not the answer, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (D) is putting forth principles for a foreign policy that will make us safer in the long run. Murphy laid out his principles on a website and in an op-ed in Foreign Affairs, co-authored with Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).
The biggest shortcoming of our foreign policy is that it is mostly a military policy, where our responses to immediate threats endanger our long-term security, while leaving no place for addressing, as Murphy says, "the root causes of conflict."
Over and over, we find that the overreliance on the use of force makes us less secure. It's like pouring gasoline on a fire. Exhibit No. 1 is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). When he was asked recently if he had regrets about invading Iraq, President George W. Bush said, "My regret is that a violent group of people have risen — risen up again."
Bush was right to connect invading Iraq and the rise of ISIS. In fact, without that invasion, there would be no ISIS. The leadership, financing and weaponry of ISIS all originate from the aftermath of sectarian chaos unleashed from the invasion of Iraq. What did we accomplish with force in Libya? More chaos and more room for ISIS.
What do drone strikes get us? As former Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said, "The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes ... is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who've never seen one or seen the effects of one."
All of which is why the new direction Murphy puts forth starts with the observation that "we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword." He rejects the "knee-jerk military intervention" pushed by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the isolationism of Sen. Paul Rand (R-Ky.), which leaves out "America playing a positive role in the world." At the same time, he questions the Obama administration's policies of "domestic surveillance, drone attacks, and most recently, military intervention in Syria."
Murphy does not foreclose using military action, but he insists that Congress needs to stop shirking its responsibility to approve them. In doing so, he would have Congress look for clear goals, a clear exit strategy, a reasonable political strategy to "clean up the mess once fighting ends," and uphold "our commitment to care for every serviceman and woman when they return." He also asserts the importance of working with "international organizations and broad military coalitions." His principles here follow a commonsense bipartisan consensus from George H. Bush to President Obama.
Where Murphy forges a new direction is in focusing on how we create a world where military action is less needed. He asks for, "A new humility to our foreign policy, with less emphasis on short-term influencers like military intervention and aid, and more effort spent trying to address the root causes of conflict." The first of his eight principles is "Military spending shouldn't be 10 times our foreign aid budget. We need a new Marshall Plan for at risk regions."
Murphy points out that while the public believes the United States spends more than one-quarter of our budget on foreign aid, the actual amount is less than 1 percent. Instead, he says we need "a substantial transfer of financial resources from the military budget to buttress diplomacy and foreign aid so that our global anti-poverty budget, not our military budget, equals that of the other world powers combined."
Murphy is keenly aware of the impact of our policies on how we are seen around the world and on our lives: "We can't talk about economic empowerment overseas if millions of Americans still live in poverty." He points out that both "mass surveillance and drone strikes, unchecked, steal moral authority from America." He insists that "we need to practice what we preach on human rights," stopping "secret detention and torture." And he reinforces what the Pentagon has said, that "climate change is a national security threat," and should be an integral part of our foreign policy.
While Republicans are counting on fear to motivate voters, Sens. Murphy, Schatz and Heinrich know that Americans understand we can't send more of our young men and women to die in endless wars. Americans also understand that we can't simply walk away from the world and that America's security and prosperity is linked to a prosperous secure world. Murphy and his colleagues are leading for a new approach, one based on preventing fires before they start; one that honors our values and the lives of our troops and offers a path to our long-term security.
The Democratic candidates for president, remembering the importance that opposition to the war in Iraq played in both the 2004 and 2008 Democratic primaries, should pay attention.
