At this moment, when the United States is bombing Iran, and the Epstein files reveal a global network of powerful men raping children and the earth for profit, it is a good time for us to consider what an internationalist, feminist, justice-oriented foreign policy would look like. I offer these points as a way to begin the conversation.
- No Blood for Oil (or any other desired resource). At anytime, there are regimes, including those with small and medium-sized despots, sitting on resources that US elites desire. We must never support intervention or all-out war for resource extraction.
- Demilitarize our Economy. Our human needs are great: health care, education, mass transit, climate change mitigation, and aid for floods and droughts that come. We need an economic transformation that creates dignified and life-giving work. A feminist foreign policy transforms domestic policy and knows that the two are one.
- Advocate for Global Mutual Aid. The intervention we support is mutual aid. Robust disaster aid, public health without borders, and climate mitigation as if melting icebergs affected all of us,
- Support Human Rights. We build a world that respects all human rights through our solidarity with social movements that support workers’ rights, not billionaires. We support the rights of Indigenous people, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and movements that fight racism everywhere.
- Solidarity against Despots. We know better than to think that ‘our enemy’s enemy is our friend.’ Rather, we understand that in this historical moment, despots are cloaked in diverse stripes. When people struggle to overcome their despot, we amplify their voices, circulate their appeals, and take heart in their example to do likewise.
- Center Refugee and Immigrant Rights. If we do 1-5, we will do much to relieve the need for people move for safety, but there will still be reasons people will be forced to evacuate their homes and cross borders. If we center the needs and rights of refugees, we will increase safety and security for the whole world.
The world is in a fragile state. It can not support a WWIII. Nor can it support the persistence of exclusive pockets of power and networks of abuse. The only way to fight them is through social power and networks of mutual sustainability.
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Anne Winkler-Morey is from Minneapolis. She studied macho foreign policy at a university for decades, and she says enough is enough. In October 2023, she and her spouse began traveling the world. She writes a blog about each place, with a historian’s eye and an internationalist lens, wondering how memory can liberate the present.