Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding many of today's greatest national security challenges and outlining a new framework for foreign policy for the 21st century.

Whereas the national security challenges facing people in the United States this century include— (1) the spread of infectious diseases and global pandemics; (2) the climate crisis; (3) the proliferation and threat of use of nuclear weapons and materials; (4) human rights violations; (5) corruption, conflict, and violence; (6) authoritarianism and distrust in democratic institutions undermined by disinformation; (7) gender, economic, and social inequality; and (8) transnational White supremacist violence and racist nationalism; Whereas such national security challenges are highlighted by the facts that— (1) a year and a half after the World Health Organization declared COVID–19 a global pandemic, just 3.07 percent of people in low-income countries had received 1 or more doses of a vaccine while 60.18 percent of people in wealthy countries had; (2) in 2020, natural disasters, worsened by climate change, displaced more than 30,700,000 people from their homes; (3) the United Nations estimates that about 10 percent of people suffer from hunger worldwide; (4) the total amount authorized to be appropriated by the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 is $740,500,000,000; (5) 9 countries hold more than 13,000 nuclear warheads and military stockpiles worldwide are on the rise; and (6) about 900,000 military personnel, contractors, opposition combatants, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, national and military police, and other civilians have been killed in United States wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, and other major war zones since 2001; Whereas these challenges cannot be primarily solved through the use of military force or Department of Defense budget increases; and Whereas refocusing United States national security strategy on these issues requires robust new investments in nonmilitary tools of statecraft, as well as domestic and international institutions that rely on dialogue, inclusivity, accountability, conflict resolution, and global cooperation over competition: Now, therefore, be it That— (1) it should be the policy of the United States— (A) to prioritize mitigating and, where possible, resolving the harms created by the security challenges outlined in the preamble to this resolution by— (i) supporting robust investments in diplomacy, development, justice, human rights, and conflict prevention; (ii) putting local leadership and partnership at the center of policy design, development, and implementation; and (iii) using both bilateral and multilateral relationships and United States influence to uphold human rights and human dignity; (B) to acknowledge that United States national interests are aligned with the well-being and rights of people around the world by placing human dignity, social justice, and cooperation at the center of United States foreign policy; (C) to implement effective, bold, and immediate domestic and multilateral responses to climate change in order to adapt, mitigate, prevent, and, where possible, reverse the worst effects of this urgent, existential crisis this decade and to provide refuge to those impacted; (D) to focus domestic and international investments on equitable and inclusive, people-centered solutions that empower individuals, workers, and communities, and safeguard universal human rights to equality, migration, and human security; and (E) to support the United Nations, including funding its programs and specialized agencies, participating in its committees, and supporting reforms to make international institutions more responsive to the most pressing needs of the global community, including the global migration crisis, the climate crisis, and global health crises; and (2) it is the sense of the House of Representatives that to address the national security priorities outlined in the preamble and achieve the policy described in paragraph (1), United States foreign policy must be reformed by— (A) making the United States national security workforce more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, both in terms of representation of historically marginalized groups as well as underrepresented prodiplomacy and anti-interventionist perspectives; (B) creating formal and informal processes to ensure United States foreign policy is regularly informed by, and responsive to, the expertise, experiences, and needs of communities most directly impacted by United States foreign policy, especially marginalized groups such as poor people, racial, religious and ethnic minorities, indigenous people, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and youth; (C) democratizing issues of war and peace in the United States by reasserting article I of the Constitution, which puts the decision to go to war solely in the hands of the legislative branch, the branch of government most accountable to people in the United States; (D) substantially reducing and bringing accountability to wasteful Department of Defense spending, outdated weapons systems, security assistance, and overt and covert regime change policies that fuel conflict; (E) engaging in diplomacy, peacebuilding, and conflict prevention to address violent groups that perpetrate terrorism rather than the existing framework predicated on high-value assassinations, containment, coercion, torture, and abuse; (F) ending the use of broad-based, sectoral sanctions as a punitive tool short of war, which too often feeds authoritarianism and corruption while disproportionately harming the most vulnerable; (G) holding the United States Government and its partners accountable to international law, including the law of armed conflict and international arms treaties, and supporting international criminal justice, conducting independent investigations of suspected violations, and providing reparations, including ex gratia payments, to survivors when it or a partner fails to do so; (H) limiting United States military assistance, arms sales, and security sector cooperation for governments that commit grand corruption, gross violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, or genocide, regardless of their political relationship to the United States Government; (I) acceding to and supporting universal implementation of international conventions and treaties that uphold the rule of law, promote universal human rights and human dignity, protect the most vulnerable, and democratize international governance; (J) recommitting United States resources and capacity-building to international and bilateral nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament treaties to work toward a world without planet-destroying nuclear weapons; (K) devoting adequate resources toward, and aligning United States policy with, the pursuit of equitable, sustainable global development, including but not limited to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; (L) ensuring that the rules of international trade and investment, in the form of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements and international bodies governing trade, enshrine the right to collectively organize, protect labor rights and the environment, promote gender equality, public health, and anticorruption controls over corporate profits; (M) building a more just and equitable global economy by combating illicit financial flows, strengthening measures for global corporate accountability, and reforming multilateral economic development and lending institutions so that the interests of workers, women and children, as well as their reproductive freedom, the environment, and poor people are prioritized over private and corporate interests and profits; (N) adopting an aggressive plan to transform the United States and global economy away from dependency on militarism and fossil fuels and to create the solutions needed to combat the climate crisis while centering workers displaced from those industries in a just transition into jobs in the climate resilience workforce; and (O) advancing global reproductive and gender justice by ensuring United States foreign policy and foreign assistance programs uphold all people’s reproductive rights and access to comprehensive reproductive health care, and by prioritizing women’s meaningful participation in United States foreign policy, through securing their positions within United States-influenced peace processes, devoting increased resources to grassroots women-led groups advancing social justice, and supporting women human rights defenders.

Summary: This resolution expresses the policy of the United States for addressing and mitigating national security challenges, including the spread of infectious diseases and pandemics, the climate crisis, the proliferation and threat of the use of nuclear weapons, human rights violations, corruption, conflict, and violence, authoritarianism, gender, economic, and social inequality, and transnational White supremacist violence and racist nationalism.