Today is the official launch of the Quincy Institute, a think tank dedicated to peace and restraint in U.S. foreign policy. I wish our colleagues the best of luck with their work. The Quincy Institute has already provoked a lot of healthy and necessary debate about the future of U.S. foreign policy, and with their impressive roster of experts I am sure that they will be making a major contribution to reorienting our foreign policy away from militarism and endless war. QI has assembled some outstanding scholars from a number of different fields, and most of them will probably be familiar to TAC readers.

Today is also the debut of their publication, Responsible Statecraft, and the first new piece on the site is a “manifesto for restrainers” by Stephen Walt. Walt outlines the goals of advocates for restraint in terms of what we are seeking rather than just listing what we oppose. He makes clear that advocates of restraint champion international engagement, but it is engagement that is focused on commerce and diplomacy.

Advocates of restraint want the U.S. to have fewer security commitments, but that in turn means taking the remaining commitments more seriously:

Restrainers believe the United States should pledge itself to defending another country–and thereby risking the lives of its troops—only when doing so will make a direct and significant contribution to U.S. security and prosperity, and when these obligations command broad support from the American people. Carefully considered commitments will be more credible, because both allies and adversaries can see for themselves why it is in the U.S. national interest to live up to them.

In short, restrainers want the United States to define its interests more narrowly but defend those interests more vigorously.

A strategy of restraint assumes that most of America’s current commitments aren’t necessary for our security, and that will force us to set priorities and focus only on those commitments that affect our vital interests. Security guarantees are not something that should be given out easily or often, and by making too many commitments the U.S. stretches itself too thin, wastes limited resources on unnecessary conflicts, and distracts itself from the relative few commitments that genuinely matter for keeping the U.S. secure.

Walt also calls for avoiding the excessive attachment of “special” relationships and maintaining relations with as many states as possible, including the states that we have shunned for decades:

No two states have identical interests, and no U.S. allies are so valuable or virtuous to deserve generous U.S. support no matter what they do. Restrainers believe the U.S. should support its allies when doing so makes the United States more secure or prosperous, and distance itself from those allies when they act in ways that are contrary to our interests and values.

Restrainers also want the United States to maintain diplomatic relations with acknowledged adversaries, both to facilitate cooperation on issues where our interests overlap and to maximize U.S. leverage.

This necessarily means that there will always be some “daylight” between the U.S. and its allies and clients, and it also implies that the U.S. will be prepared to downgrade relations with other states when our interests no longer converge. At the same time, it leaves the door open to constructive cooperation even with adversaries on occasion. This recognizes that refusing to have diplomatic ties with other states puts the U.S. at a disadvantage by eliminating the possibility of having influence, and it acknowledges that these relationships are not ends in themselves but are meant to advance U.S. interests.

Walt goes on to describe the kind of diplomacy that advocates of restraint favor:

Restrainers believe diplomacy should take center stage in the conduct of America’s foreign relations and that sanctions and the threat or use of force should be our last resort rather than our first impulse. They recognize that many of America’s greatest foreign policy successes—the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods economic order, the peaceful reunification of Germany, etc.—were won not on a battlefield but across a negotiating table. A more restrained foreign policy strives for mutually beneficial agreements with other countries, rather than trying to dictate to them.

The implication here is that a restrained foreign policy isn’t going to make far-reaching and unrealistic demands on pain of economic devastation. This is an acknowledgment that any lasting diplomatic agreement has to be based on a compromise that benefits all parties, and it is not something that can be imposed through coercion and threats. A restrained foreign policy is necessarily a less intrusive and overbearing one, and that means that the U.S. won’t be making laundry lists that demand that other states completely overhaul their own policies.

Perhaps the most important part of the manifesto is Walt’s appeal for the U.S. to live up to our own ideals by eschewing the illegal and destructive behavior of the last twenty years:

For restrainers, promoting liberal values abroad begins by setting a good example at home. Using American power to remake the world has led to illegal wars, excessive government secrecy, targeted killings, the deaths of thousands of innocent foreign civilians, and repeated violations of U.S. and international law. At the same time, it has squandered vast resources that could have been used to build a better society here in the United States, and distracted Americans from the efforts needed to improve our own institutions.

As our foreign policy has become increasingly militarized and intrusive around the world, our government has employed increasingly illiberal and intrusive measures at home. The threat inflation and fear-mongering that have driven our endless wars have also corroded our constitutional system by letting presidents launch wars at will without debate or accountability. The waging of these wars has meant trampling on human rights and aligning ourselves with some of the greatest human rights abusers on the planet, and it has meant running roughshod over the laws that were intended to preserve international peace and security. No nation can be perpetually at war without being corrupted by that warfare, and if we want to preserve a free and representative government in the United States we need peace and restraint.