America’s Role in the World

America's Power

America’s power isn’t just aircraft carriers, drones, and missiles; it’s trust, legitimacy, alliances, culture, universities, science, markets, and the ability to build coalitions that solve problems. That’s our soft power – and it’s been depleted by decades of choice after choice to reach for war first, often in the same parts of the world, with the same rhetoric, and the same predictable outcomes: instability abroad, cynicism at home, and a political economy where contractors and connected interests reap profits & turn around and buy politicians to write their laws, while working people pay the bill.

This isn’t abstract to me. I’m a father, an educator, and someone who’s had to make budgets work in the real world. Foreign policy is not a separate universe. It’s a set of priorities that shows up in our national deficit, our cut social safety nets, our neglected infrastructure, and our credibility when we tell the world we stand for human rights.

The last several decades proved a painful truth: wars are easy to start, hard to stop, and it corrodes everything it touches

We’ve spent trillions and lost enormous amounts of life in post-9/11 wars. The Costs of War project estimates more than $8 trillion in U.S. spending and 900,000+ deaths connected to the post-9/11 wars, with 940,000+ killed by direct war violence across multiple theaters between 2001–2023, including 432,000+ civilians.

And we still haven’t learned the institutional lesson: the Pentagon remains unable to fully account for its spending – failing its department-wide audit year after year, including its eighth consecutive failed audit, with $4.65 trillion in assets and $4.73 trillion in liabilities on the books and dozens of material weaknesses in financial controls.

When a country can’t track its money, it can’t claim it’s being serious about national security.

Energy wars, fossil dependence, and the opportunity cost we refuse to face

A lot of U.S. militarized posture in the Middle East has been justified as “stability” and “security,” but it’s inseparable from decades of fossil-fuel dependence and strategic obsession with the Persian Gulf. While we poured blood and treasure into repeated conflict arcs tied to energy geopolitics, we delayed the real transition – and ceded manufacturing leadership in the technologies that actually determine 21st-century power.

China now dominates major clean-tech supply chains. The IEA has documented China’s very large share of global solar PV (photovoltaic) manufacturing and its commanding position across the battery supply chain, including nearly 85% of global battery cell production capacity. Chinese batteries are estimated to be 30%+ cheaper than Europe and 20%+ cheaper than North America, and solar module prices driven by Chinese oversupply and scale have fallen dramatically.

This means that China’s energy needs can be met at scale, cheaply, and fast while the US scrambles to secure supply lines with expensive military equipment, which further puts our servicemembers at risk. We must be smart enough to stop confusing strength with constant war.

Here is where I stand with American Foreign Policy:

1) No more forever wars; war must be the last resort.
If we are going to use force, it must be tied to clear objectives, lawful authority, defined timelines, and measurable end-states. If those don’t exist, the answer is “No.” The default posture should be diplomacy, deterrence, and coalition pressure, not escalation-by-habit.

2) If we can’t audit it, we shouldn’t expand it.
You cannot ask Americans to accept social safety net cuts while writing blank checks to institutions that can’t pass an audit. The Pentagon’s repeated audit failures are not a “paperwork problem”; they’re a governance and corruption risk. 

And the broader war economy is real: SIPRI reported record arms revenues for the world’s top arms-producing companies in 2024 – $679 billion, the highest since SIPRI began tracking. If we want different outcomes, we have to change the incentives.  

3) Break the revolving door.
We need tougher rules on the pipeline between the Pentagon and contractors, transparent disclosure, longer cooling-off periods, and stricter procurement integrity – because when the same firms that profit from war help shape policy, we shouldn’t be shocked that war keeps showing up as the solution. We have to overturn Citizens United which would prevent these companies from donating dark money into federal campaigns, which allows them to buy politicians’ votes which then serve to approve war appropriations.

Israel – Palestine: draw lines, end complicity, and stop funding atrocities

Let me be completely clear.

  • Hamas committed a horrific attack. Hostages should have never been taken and terrorism is not a viable strategy for policy change. Civilians should never be targets – anywhere.

     

  • But U.S. policy has crossed a line. Continued, unconditional military and diplomatic cover for Israel’s actions in Gaza makes the United States complicit in human right attrocities – and I will not sanitize that reality.

The scale and pattern of destruction – particularly against civilian infrastructure and health care – has been extensively documented. 

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights produced a thematic report on attacks on hospitals in Gaza; it also noted that by the end of June 2024, a large share of Gaza’s hospitals were non-functional. WHO has repeatedly warned of Gaza’s health system breaking under hostilities and evacuation orders pushing facilities out of service. 

And on the core question: genocide.

  • Major human rights organizations and UN experts have explicitly used this language. Amnesty International concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (in its reporting and findings).

  • UN experts have warned of an “unfolding genocide” and called for action to prevent it.

  • The International Court of Justice, in South Africa v. Israel, ordered provisional measures beginning January 26, 2024 and subsequently reinforced obligations tied to preventing genocidal acts and enabling humanitarian assistance, reflecting the seriousness of the allegations before the Court.

So yes: the United States is funding and enabling a genocide through the combination of weapons transfers, money, and diplomatic shielding – while claiming we stand for human rights.

That’s not just strategically self-destructive. It burns whatever credibility we have left, it radicalizes the world against us, and it makes every future call for international law sound like a joke but most importantly it is immoral and we can not stand for it as a nation

Using the budgetary powers of Congress, I would: 

Suspend offensive weapons transfers and end unconditional military support. Israel receives enormous U.S. military aid and it should never again go to offensive weapons. 

Condition any assistance on compliance with international humanitarian law, protection of civilians, and verifiable humanitarian access.

 

Oppose settlement expansion and land theft and treat it as the obstacle to peace that it is. The pattern is not new: decades of occupation and settlement growth keep turning each “round” of conflict into a map where Palestinians end up with less land and fewer rights. Recent EU reporting has highlighted intensifying settlement expansion and violence in the West Bank. 

Europe and Russia: defend democracy, but Europe must carry more of the load

Here’s where I’ll say something that will bother some people: Donald Trump was right about one thing – Europe should spend more on its own defense. (He was wrong in a million other ways, but on this point, I agree)

The U.S. has played a central role in deterring Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine. That’s consistent with our strategic role. But the long-term model cannot be “America pays, Europe applauds.” NATO’s own data show a rising number of allies meeting the 2% of GDP guideline, which is progress – but it also proves the point: allies can do more when pressed. 

European defense spending has also been rising, with EU-level reporting showing a climb and projections upward. 

But: our moral posture in Europe is undercut every time we enable atrocity elsewhere. You cannot credibly say “sovereignty matters” in Ukraine while writing blank checks for Israel as it bombs civilian infrastructure and blocks humanitarian systems. It is hypocrisy. Everyone can see it.

So the doctrine is:

  • Stand with allies against authoritarian aggression.

  • Make sure everyone pays their own share of defense spending.

  • And stop erasing our own credibility by enabling war crimes.

     

America can rebuild influence by building things, saving lives, and competing on development – not bombing

China has made enormous inroads across Africa through trade, infrastructure deals, and financing, including through the Belt and Road Initiative.

Meanwhile, the U.S. too often shows up as a security contractor: drones, raids, bases, and “counterterror” frameworks that don’t build legitimacy.

American soft power is not charity. It’s strategy.  Global health investments reduce pandemics and instability, climate resilience reduces conflict risk and migration pressure, & fair infrastructure finance builds partners, markets, and long-run stability.

USAID cuts create a crisis and an opening to rebuild properly

Recent policy moves dramatically shrank U.S. foreign assistance capacity: the administration paused foreign aid for review and then scrapped a very large share of USAID programs, with major operational disruption and staffing collapse documented in reporting and timelines. 

I don’t defend a system that writes blank checks or funds programs that don’t work. But blowing up the architecture of U.S. diplomacy and development without a serious replacement is self-sabotage. Congress has an opportunity to rebuild this apparatus.  The standard I want is simple:

Every major soft-power investment should answer three questions:

  1. Does it reduce catastrophic risk? (disease, famine, climate shock, war)

  2. Does it build durable partners? (local capacity, governance, anti corruption, labor standards)

  3. Does it lower future U.S. defense costs? (because prevention is cheaper than war)

With these standards, we can expect fewer blank checks, more measurable outcomes – and a rebuilt toolkit that can compete with China’s infrastructure diplomacy without falling back on some of our worst practices.

A foreign policy that constantly reaches for war is not “strong.” It is evil, and it is a wealth transfer. It shifts public money into private hands, expands executive power, and leaves the country with debt, trauma, and cynicism.

We can do better, by being disciplined about force, uncompromising about human rights (including when it’s politically inconvenient), and aggressive about rebuilding the soft power that actually keeps us safe: diplomacy, development, climate leadership, and alliances rooted in legitimacy.