Cleveland Peace Action Positions/Recommendations

January 2007

A new foreign policy ensuring real security for Americans based

international cooperation and protecting human rights

Real security comes, not from intimidating adversaries with massive military force, but from reducing the number of our adversaries and reducing their desire to hurt us. The Bush administration's unilateralist, go-it-alone policies, military and diplomatic bullying, and unsavory intelligence gathering have produced widespread and deep-seated anger at the US, inspired more recruits to anti-American terrorism, and created a much less secure world than six years ago. We need a new foreign policy -- based on cooperation with our allies and support for human rights -- that will inspire support and cooperation instead of angry resistance.  Peace Action urges our congressional representatives to work for three overarching goals:

1.  Cooperate with the World Community:  Respect international treaties, base our foreign policy on a cooperative role for the U.S. in the world community, and repudiate the current policy of “preemptive” unilateral wars of aggression and an arrogant lone ranger foreign policy.  We got into the Iraq quagmire by ignoring international agreements, the checks and balances of the UN, reports by the international inspectors, the international Red Cross, and concerns of other nations.  As recognized in our own constitution, concentration of power in the hands of one power-center leads to tyranny and injustice.  We need international checks and balances.    

US Position on International Treaties, July 2003, Global Policy Forum http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/tables/treaties.htm    

Pacts Americana?, David Kay, I. Russel Lamotte, Peter Hoey, NY Times Op-Ed, 12-15-06  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/opinion/15kaye.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

2.  Eliminate Weapons of Mass Destruction: Block funding for research and development of  new “useable nukes” and to upgrade the existing U.S. stockpile.  Press for international cooperation to stop nuclear proliferation and move toward a nuclear-weapons-free planet. The Bush administration has withdrawn from six international treaties designed to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction: the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Nuclear Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Landmines Treaty, and inspections for the Biological Weapons Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Treaty (also the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Accords). Instead, we should be doing all we can in cooperation with other nations to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

3.  Support Human Rights, Economic Justice, and Democracy:  Under the guise of the war on terrorism, the U.S. is expanding its military presence in the energy-rich regions of Central Asia and Latin America by establishing military bases, selling arms and giving military aid and training to autocratic, human-rights-abusing governments. We should exhibit international leadership by exposing and opposing the policies of human rights abusers, rather than rewarding them with weapons. We fight terrorism more effectively by supporting those working for human rights, economic justice, and democracy than by supporting militaristic policies that undermine human rights and democracy.

SMART Security Platform for the 21^st Century” – H Con. Res. 158 (Sensible, Multilateral American Response to Terrorism) introduced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey in 2005, articulates the need for a new U.S. security policy based on strengthening international cooperation and the rule of law, reducing weapons proliferation and promoting disarmament, and addressing the root causes of terrorism and other deadly conflicts.  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:1:./temp/~bdvE1Y:@@@L&summ2=m|/bss/d109query.html