Foreign Policy First Principles

#### BRIEF

While America has undoubtedly made mistakes, we’ve been a positive force in world history, leading to the spread of peace, prosperity, and democracy. Presidents from JFK to Ronald Reagan maintained strong relationships with allies while sending clear and honest messages to those who would work against us.

Over the past several decades, we have engaged in conflicts that have cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. These misadventures have destabilized parts of the world, made enemies of allies, and resulted in untold human suffering, both for our brave soldiers and civilians of other countries.

While an unfathomable amount of money has been spent on military engagements that have accomplished little, our infrastructure has started to collapse, and our people are living paycheck to paycheck and falling prey to ills like drug abuse. We need to make sure we are strong at home if we are going to successfully project our values abroad.

It’s impossible to be a leader when you have no allies, and so we need to rebuild our relationships with the rest of the world.  Leveraging these relationships, we can more effectively deal with international issues. Working with our allies will make us stronger and more able to accomplish our goals over time.

*America is the beneficiary of the international world order we helped establish throughout the twentieth century.  That said, we have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are capable of doing things that we are not, sometimes at a terrible cost to ourselves and others.  My first principles concerning foreign policy are restraint and judgment – we should be very judicious about projecting force and have clear goals that we know we can accomplish.  We should treat our men and women in the armed services as the brave and self-sacrificing leaders that they are, both during and after their deployments. If I send young men and women into harm’s way, they will know that vital national interests are at stake and there is a clear plan for them to achieve their goal in a reasonable time frame.*

#### PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED

* America has involved itself at too high a cost in foreign issues that don’t concern us
* We’ve lowered our stature in the world community, alienating allies and making it harder to form an effective coalition to accomplish our goals on the world stage

##### Goals

* Make it harder for the United States to get involved in foreign engagements with no clear plan or goal
* Rebuild our relationships with allies to strengthen the international order
* Bring our military spending under control

##### Guiding Principles

* Safety
* Humanity
* Investing in America

#### As President, I will…

* Work with our allies to rebuild our stature in the world, and strengthen alliances such as NATO
* Reinvest in diplomacy and bolster funding to the State Department
* Work with allies to project our combined strength throughout the world, without engaging in activities that will cost American lives and money with no clear benefit to our long-term well-being
* Sign a repeal to the AUMF, returning the authority to declare war to Congress, and refuse to engage in anything other than emergency military activity without the express consent of Congress
* Regularly audit the Department of Defense
* Focus our federal budget on fixing problems at home instead of spending trillions of dollars abroad