The Progressive Case for American Power

After more than 20 years of costly military adventures, the United States has failed to root out extremism or bring liberal democracy to the oppressed. Thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in the failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond—and the death toll among civilians is in the millions. In the wake of these calamities, progressives have united around an overriding foreign policy prescription: the United States should jettison its world-dominating ambitions, restrain itself from taking on new commitments, and retrench from the world, shrinking the U.S. military’s footprint. In think tanks and universities, progressives are calling on Washington to avoid what they view as belligerent policies toward China and Russia. In Congress, the Progressive Caucus—the most left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party—has hesitated over U.S. support for Ukraine and opposed a U.S. military presence in Syria.

The trouble with this new consensus, however, is that Washington is not operating in a vacuum. An undeviating policy of U.S. restraint risks giving free rein to decidedly regressive forces in the world—such as China’s authoritarian influence across the global South, Iran’s financing of terrorism in the Middle East, and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Progressives are right to have a healthy skepticism of using military force and coercive power. But the reality today is that there are authoritarian powers that are repressing their own populations, bullying neighboring states, and wielding economic influence and military force in other ways that are antithetical to progressive values. If the United States retrenched, the world would surely see more such behavior, not less.

Today’s progressives need to get comfortable with American power, which, for all its flaws, has a crucial role to play. That doesn’t mean condoning illiberal actions to achieve just ends or cynically invoking progressive ideals to justify military adventurism. But it does mean seeking to harness power to advance the values progressives cherish—and accepting that might sometimes makes right.

PILLARS OF PROGRESSIVISM

A progressive foreign policy shares some features with other approaches but stands apart in key ways. Liberal internationalism, a foreign policy that aims to spread and protect liberal economic and political values, seeks to promote democracy and undermine authoritarianism. So does conservative primacy, which calls for the United States to maintain the preponderance of global power. But compared with progressivism, these doctrines are more optimistic about the ability of military force to achieve its goals, and they are less committed to opposing imperialism and encouraging self-determination.

Progressive foreign policy also has some similarities to deep engagement, an approach that demands the buildup of a military arsenal sufficient to deter attacks against not only the United States but also its allies. Proponents of both progressivism and deep engagement want Washington to work with allies through multilateral institutions such as the UN. But progressives go further, championing significant changes to these institutions, with an eye to making them more equitable rather than necessarily U.S.-led. Progressives are also more willing to hold back military aid from allies—as when the Biden administration paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May over growing concerns about the civilian death toll in Gaza.

On domestic policy, progressives mostly agree on specific priorities: higher taxes for the rich, more spending on social programs, legal protections for abortion, reforms to address the legacy of racism, and so on. But there is far less consensus on foreign policy; instead, there is a more general agreement on certain values that should inform U.S. foreign policy.

The first is political and economic egalitarianism. This value can be furthered through policies that promote equal political rights and economic opportunities for women and other marginalized people, enforce strong labor and environmental protections in trade agreements, and condition military aid on human rights conditions. Just as progressives support domestic policies that advance such goals at home, they champion similar policies abroad. The platform of Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, calls for “a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness.”

Restraint risks giving free rein to decidedly regressive forces in the world.

The second principle fundamental to progressive thought is opposition to needless war and excessive militarism, a tenet often described as restraint. Progressives generally want Washington to avoid the use of force and instead resolve disputes through talks. They are skeptical of military alliances, which they argue can antagonize rivals and imperil other states. “There are significant drawbacks to NATO’s continuing existence,” the progressive historian Daniel Bessner has argued. “For this reason, one of the major goals of the anti-imperialist left should be to dismantle NATO.” Some progressive advocates of restraint, such as the economist Jeffrey Sachs and the historian Stephen Wertheim, view NATO enlargement as one of the primary causes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The third principle is anti-imperialism, which emerged as a pillar of leftist and progressive thought in the late nineteenth century as a reaction against European empire building. To be sure, not every progressive saw colonialism as problematic—U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt chief among them. But by the turn of the twentieth century, many progressives had begun to criticize the colonial projects of France, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. Later, as anticolonial movements took root beginning in the postwar era, Western anti-imperialist activists, including many in the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement, often supported independence struggles by sending financial resources to national liberation movements and publicizing their struggles.

Even today, Western commentators sometimes invoke anti-imperialism in their calls for international solidarity, as when they argue in favor of supporting Ukrainians’ effort to resist Russia’s imperialist aggression. More often, however, contemporary anti-imperialism in the West is inwardly focused, manifested in calls to combat Western policies and practices that perpetuate systems of domination and exploitation over poor countries. Progressives worry about Western companies’ behavior in the developing world, such as their use of cheap labor, land expropriation, and environmental degradation. They worry, too, about Western governments’ imperialist treatment of other countries, as with the imposition of “Washington consensus” economic reforms in Latin America.

WHO’S TO BLAME?

For many progressives, these three principles are best pursued through a foreign policy of retrenchment and restraint, since, in their view, it is the United States that is to blame for much of what ails the world today. The political scientist Van Jackson describes “anti-hegemonism” as a branch of progressive grand strategy that “prioritizes restraining U.S. military and economic power because it is the only adequate response to the perceived root cause of global insecurity.” Bessner would also like to see Washington “restrain and reduce” its power. In this vision, the United States would have fewer military bases, less influence on global economic markets, and fewer and weaker military alliances. It would shy away from getting involved in foreign crises, especially those requiring military commitments, such as the war in Ukraine.

A United States like that, the logic goes, would no longer entangle itself in conflicts akin to the “forever wars” that followed 9/11. By shrinking its global military footprint, moreover, the country would not be able to spread democracy at gunpoint or forcibly promote its particular version of hard-edged capitalism, creating more space for political and economic self-determination and progress toward political and economic egalitarianism. And because the United States is an empire, its pulling back would be anti-imperialist almost by definition. Progressives take it as a given that retrenchment would not undermine their foreign policy goals.

UNRESOLVABLE TENSIONS

Progressive foreign policy principles—anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, and egalitarianism—often conflict. Sometimes, the pursuit of one undermines the others. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in Ukraine. In October 2022, the Congressional Progressive Caucus called on the Biden administration to negotiate with Russia to end the war, only to drop the position under pressure from other Democrats who concluded that opposition to imperialism should take precedence over opposition to war. Not all progressives agreed with the caucus’s about-face. The historian Samuel Moyn has described support for Ukraine as an aspect of “the militarization of the globe under U.S. auspices.” Days after the invasion, the Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest socialist organization, called on the United States “to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict.” But if Washington discontinued its military support for Ukraine, progressive aims and values in Europe and beyond would almost certainly be set back. A strict antimilitarist policy would not serve the cause of Ukrainian liberals, who would face a direct threat of repression, detention, or even death under Moscow’s ruthless rule.

Retrenchment cannot resolve this tension between, on the one hand, opposing war and, on the other, defending egalitarianism and resisting imperialism. In fact, abandoning Ukraine wouldn’t necessarily result in less war; it could very well embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to intensify his efforts to subjugate the Ukrainian people. And even if reducing military aid to Ukraine hastened a formal end to the war through peace negotiations, as some progressives hope, violence against Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces in occupied territories would probably continue apace. It might even escalate.

A similar tension arises in Syria policy. Some progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Becca Balint, have joined isolationist Republicans in calling on Washington to bring home the 900 U.S. troops still deployed in Syria. These troops work alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces, a predominantly Kurdish alliance of rebel groups opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, helping combat the remnants of the Islamic State, or ISIS. The SDF was a crucial ally in the U.S.-led coalition to defeat ISIS; it governs part of northeast Syria as a de facto state with a constitution-like charter that reflects a commitment to democracy, human rights, and gender equality.

American power has sometimes advanced progressive aims.

The presence of U.S. troops is crucial to the SDF’s efforts to maintain security in northeast Syria, and the SDF has in fact repeatedly expressed concerns that an American withdrawal would be catastrophic. By dialing back its modest support of the relatively progressive SDF, the United States would enable Iran, Russia, and ISIS to expand their influence in Syria and foil one of the region’s few democratic independence movements. A complete withdrawal from Syria would be even worse, creating a security vacuum in which these forces could pursue their violent, antidemocratic agendas. The same goes for Iraq, which still hosts 2,500 U.S. troops.

Some progressives have decried military intervention as a thinly veiled imperialist tool. In a 2020 interview, Matt Duss, then a foreign policy adviser to Sanders, described U.S. forces around the world as part of an “empire that we have created.” In many cases, such as the U.S. interventions in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, these arguments have proved to be well founded. But in some instances, military action has saved many lives. The British military intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000, for example, was essential to sustaining UN peacekeeping forces there, ending the war, and fostering a peace that has lasted for more than 20 years.

Outside of war, retrenchment can similarly undermine progressive goals. Consider the extensive role Washington played in preventing a coup in Brazil. From 2021 to 2022, the Biden administration worked with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the democratically elected president of Brazil, to prevent supporters of the defeated incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, from illegally seizing power. The administration publicly supported Lula’s victory, encouraged U.S. allies to take the same position, and communicated to the Brazilian military that a coup would leave the country isolated and result in a downgrading of U.S. security cooperation. The result: violence was avoided, and a popularly elected, politically progressive president survived an antidemocratic challenge from his authoritarian rival. Washington has been complicit in a long history of abuses in South America. But on this occasion, it used its diplomatic influence to preserve democratic institutions. Had the United States instead stayed out of the dispute, Brazil would probably have ended up with more violence and less democracy.

Retrenchment from global markets, such as withdrawing from trade agreements or international economic institutions, can likewise create vacuums for bad actors to exploit. Consider the vacuum left behind by the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal proposed by the Obama administration that would have strengthened economic ties between the United States and 11 other economies. When U.S. President Donald Trump killed the TPP in 2017, progressives such as Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Keith Ellison applauded. Progressives can debate what effect the TPP would have had on American jobs, and they can argue that the proposed agreement did not go far enough to uphold human rights and environmental or labor standards abroad. But the TPP’s failure did not ameliorate such abuses; it exacerbated them. The United States’ trading partners went on to look elsewhere for international economic leadership, and they found it in China. In 2020, 15 countries, including China, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, creating the largest economic bloc in history in a deal that includes none of the labor, human rights, or environmental protections envisioned in the TPP. The interests of American workers should always be considered, but progressive advocates of protectionism must also grapple with how their policies affect workers in developing countries.

Progressives who push for restraint and retrenchment generally have little to say about how the United States should address its own security threats. Some advocates of restraint argue for “offshore balancing,” whereby Washington pulls back and relies instead on regional allies to keep challengers in check. Although this approach would reduce the direct role of the U.S. military in international conflicts, it still allows for the United States to exercise its influence in proxy wars that can be just as inimical to peace and security, if not more so. Today, autocratic countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia benefit from U.S. arms sales, joint military training exercises, and other security cooperation. Doling out military aid may keep U.S. troops out of harm’s way, but it does not necessarily reduce armed conflict. Often, it merely renders the United States complicit in violations of human rights and the laws of war, as in Israel’s war in Gaza and Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

Progressives’ mistrust of U.S. foreign policy and intervention is understandable, given Washington’s long history of harmful military, political, and economic interference abroad. American power has often hindered progressive aims. But it has sometimes advanced them. A rigid commitment to restraint, no matter the circumstances and whatever the cost, is the stuff of ideological zealotry, not judicious policymaking.

WHEN RETRENCHMENT IS BEST

There are still areas in which Washington should pull back. The United States maintains territorial holdings around the world. To be consistent with the principles of anti-imperialism, Washington should start an ethical self-determination process for Guam, Puerto Rico, and other U.S. territories, which must include an option for statehood if those territories choose to remain in the United States.

In other parts of the world, many peoples have been subjugated by powerful states, repressed through violence, and denied their political rights. Those who have organized in opposition to these conditions, such as the Sahrawis in Western Sahara and the Palestinians, should have the opportunity to seek self-determination, which can take the form of more autonomy, expanded domestic political rights and recognition, or recognition as an independent state. So long as self-determination does not lead to greater oppression and violence, the United States should support it.

At the UN, the United States should support reform efforts aimed at reducing the organization’s imperialist legacy. Reform is particularly urgent at the Security Council, where the permanent five members have too much sway and all other nations far too little. The United States should support a restructuring of the body with an eye to making it more representative of the distribution of global power and the countries most affected by UN intervention—for example, by advocating permanent UN Security Council representation for the powerful regional actors Brazil, Japan, and India. Although it is unlikely that either China or Russia would ever agree to give up its veto power entirely, a progressive case can also be made for changing the rules so that no country could use a veto in certain cases, such as to shield a state perpetrating mass atrocities.

The United States should also consider how its treaties perpetuate forms of domination and subjugation. The Pentagon’s basing agreements, for example, should be reassessed to take into account the costs and benefits for the host country. Progressives have long argued for the closing of the notorious U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—which Havana, with good reason, says is under U.S. “occupation.” Shutting it down would be a welcome step. There is nothing inherently wrong about U.S. military bases on foreign soil, as long as the host countries consent and as long as the presence of U.S. troops does not add to their burden. In the same spirit, the United States should overcome its concerns about potential prosecutions of its own military personnel and join the International Criminal Court.

U.S. trade and foreign investment should also be conducted in a manner that is consistent with labor protections, human rights, and environmental standards. The federal government already holds U.S. companies to certain baseline standards; the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, for example, prohibits Americans from paying bribes to foreign governments. But Washington must do more to ensure that U.S. corporations operating abroad live up to the highest ideals. And if the host country’s environmental or labor practices surpass those of the United States, then it is incumbent on American firms to improve their own operations accordingly.

A FORCE FOR GOOD

Progressives are rightly skeptical about the ability of military force to achieve political goals. But there are scenarios in which the use of force aligns with progressive principles: military support for anti-imperialist efforts, limited humanitarian interventions, and defensive wars of necessity. Washington should rarely resort to military solutions to international problems, but it must retain the capacity—and the will—to wield force or support its use by others in ways that align with progressive principles.

Military, economic, and humanitarian support to anti-imperialist combatants is consistent with progressive principles, as long as the recipients comply with international humanitarian law and norms regarding the use of force. Countries with long traditions of progressivism have historically supported anti-imperialist actions around the world; Sweden, for example, supplied humanitarian aid to national liberation movements in Mozambique and Guinea Bissau in the 1960s and 1970s.

Even direct military involvement can be consistent with progressive values. Many humanitarian interventions have intensified violence and prolonged wars—as in Libya, where the NATO coalition overstepped its narrow mandate of protecting civilians and ended up facilitating regime change. But there are notable exceptions, such as when the United States and its coalition partners expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War. There have also been countless humanitarian crises, such as in Rwanda in 1994, in Srebrenica in 1995, and in Sri Lanka in 2009, in which the United States failed to intervene—and in which even a modest military intervention would likely have reduced human suffering without exacerbating violence. The political scientist Alan Kuperman has estimated that a “minimum intervention” to stop the Rwandan genocide could have saved about 75,000 lives.

Finally, wars for defensive purposes, whether in defense of the United States or U.S. allies, are generally consistent with progressive values, so long as they are fought in ways that align with international humanitarian law and the laws of war. No mainstream progressive has called for surrendering the country’s right to national self-defense. But many of them advocate policies that could gut the United States’ defensive capabilities, capabilities that deter aggression by making war less desirable for would-be aggressors. For this reason, although progressives are right to call for cuts to the U.S. defense budget—which, at nearly $900 billion a year, remains the world’s largest—a progressive national security policy must prioritize the maintenance of an adequate defense base.

In its response to Israel’s war in Gaza, the Biden administration has fallen short.

Allies also form part of the broader U.S. defense apparatus. Too often, however, Washington acts as if it is not morally complicit in violence carried out by partners that receive its equipment and training, such as Israel, Niger, and Saudi Arabia. The United States does condition military aid and arms sales on assurances from recipients that the support will not be used to commit human rights abuses or contravene international law. But it must strengthen and consistently enforce those standards and better monitor allies’ use of American weapons. And if there are violations, it should work with the communities affected by the violence to find just solutions for harm done—by offering reparations, rebuilding housing, and providing food and medicine, for example.

Solidarity with the oppressed lies at the heart of progressive politics, but any attempt to promote egalitarianism abroad must be done in collaboration with the people on the receiving end. The United States should think twice before imposing harsh economic penalties on a country to achieve greater political and economic justice there. The strict limits that the U.S. government imposed on aid to Taliban-run Afghanistan, for instance, have exacerbated the risk of famine and deprived civilians of funds they need to buy fuel to heat their homes.

The United States’ broader involvement in Afghanistan illustrates that no single progressive solution can solve all foreign policy problems. And any solution will almost always require tradeoffs. The thorniest tradeoffs were those that arose with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021. The United States’ sudden departure was deeply unfair to its Afghan partners and damaging to its credibility with allies across the globe. The Taliban takeover has been devastating for many Afghans, especially women and girls. At the same time, it’s not clear whether the U.S. presence in Afghanistan could ever have helped the country achieve political and economic stability, and continuing to fight the Taliban would likely have claimed many more civilian lives. Good progressive arguments can be made in either direction. At the time, however, the near-universal consensus among progressives was that withdrawal was an easy call. A more informed progressive foreign policy would grapple with the inevitable tradeoffs and try to minimize their ill effects.

A WORLD OF TRADEOFFS

Although U.S. President Joe Biden has distinguished himself as one of the most progressive presidents in recent memory on domestic policy, his foreign policy record is more ambiguous. His administration was quick to condemn threats to democracy in Brazil and has supplied an enormous amount of military assistance to Ukraine. But in its response to Israel’s war in Gaza, it has fallen short. Although Biden has pressured Israel to exercise more restraint in its campaign, as of this writing in May, he has declined to publicly condemn Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid. The weapons pause was a welcome step, but the United States must do much more to enforce laws prohibiting military support to any country that commits gross violations of international law.

Even as the Biden administration has called for sustained support for Ukraine, it has overlooked crises elsewhere. In Sudan, for example, civil war has claimed 15,000 lives in the last year, and more than eight million civilians have been displaced. Yet Washington has failed to supply adequate emergency aid or even to exert pressure on the United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, to stop fueling the conflict through illicit arms sales. The United States, one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas, has also neglected the victims of climate change, allocating only meager resources for climate adaptation in low- and middle-income countries.

Progressive critics of U.S. foreign policy are right: for too long, Washington has wielded power recklessly, dismissed concerns about justice and equality, and done nothing to check imperialism. But retrenchment is not the answer. Turning inward may in fact exacerbate some of the problems progressives care about most. Rather than retreat from the global stage, the United States should use its power to respond ethically, humanely, and justly to a world of tradeoffs.