Elite Bipartisan Group Pushes for Foreign Policy Overhaul

Nearly 400 of the world’s leading foreign policy intellectuals contributed to a Princeton University-organized initiative that calls for a new grand strategy to address America’s national security concerns. Among other things, the resulting report implies that Bush’s policies have been far too simplistic, and it recommends drastically revamping the U.N.

An IPS News Agency report on the initiative:

After two years of consultations with more than 400 members of the U.S. foreign policy elite, a project headed by two leading international relations academics is calling for the adoption of a new U.S. grand strategy designed to address multiple threats and strengthen Washington’s commitment to a reformed and reinvigorated multilateral order.

In a wide-ranging report released here Wednesday, the Princeton Project on National Security suggested that the post-9/11 policies pursued by President George W. Bush have been too simplistic—even counter-productive—for the challenges facing the U.S. in the 21st century.

To be effective, according to the report, U.S. policy needs to rely less on military power and more on other tools of diplomacy; less on its own strength exercised unilaterally and more on cooperation with other democratic states; and less on rapid democratisation based on popular elections and more on building what it called “popular, accountable, rights-regarding (PAR) governments”.

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From princeton.edu