Green New Deal is great for foreign policy, too
Speaking Security Newsletter | Congressional Candidate Advisory Note 25 | 14 July 2020
The genius behind Green New Deal (GND) is that it reconciles several sources of working-class insecurity simultaneously. Climate, obviously, but it’s also about job creation and providing health care. But despite being popular enough to qualify as both a policy and a movement, GND is still underrated because the foreign policy dimension falls out. Here are a few ways that GND is also great for foreign policy.
Situation

^Underrated
Three ways GND can work to reform US foreign policy
The (global) climate crisis
Rejoining the Paris Accords won’t be enough. Economies need to transform (namely, those of large industrialized states). So the GND needs to ‘go global’ in a way. In order for the US to lead on this (or even participate), it needs a certain credibility that can only be obtained by implementing GND itself.
A positive/productive vision (instead of endless military escalation)
The foreign policy establishment treats the world like a battlefield. Take the 2018 National Defense Strategy, for example. It states that “The surest way to prevent war is to be prepared to win one” (p. 5). None of the authors apparently took the time to Google “security dilemma” which suggests the exact opposite. Basically: if Country A builds up its military due to a perceived threat from Country B, Country B will respond by building up its own military…to which Country A will respond by further investing in its own armed forces, etc., etc. When tensions escalate like this, mistakes can happen (mistakes as serious as your imagination allows). It’s also really counterproductive for everyone (sans the one percent).
Globalizing the GND gives the US and China (and Russia) something better to do with their time, an excuse to cooperate (and therefore de-escalate) for a totally legitimate reason (the shared threat of global climate change).
Reduces the power of militarism at home
The military-industrial complex derives much of its power by being a state-funded project. While the non-war economy gets neoliberal austerity, the war economy gets state protections. So what we’ve got is an increasingly militarized welfare system.
GND would reverse this trend in a significant way. It gives the people in the war economy somewhere else to go. It also gives a whole bunch of other people somewhere to go, too. Again dropping in this chart from Costs of War (Watson Institute). Considering what Fiscal Year 2021’s military budget will likely turn out to be, you’ll want to multiply the job differential below by 3 ($690 billion, still short of expected $740 billion defense budget) or you can multiply it by 4 if you want to calculate the ‘real’ investment in ‘national security.’

A fun(?) factoid that will serve as this note’s conclusion
As a function of its obscene funding levels, the US military produces more pollution than more than 100 countries combined. Since the Vietnam war, natural disasters/man-made climate change have destroyed more US military aircraft than any armed group.
DOD requested over $9 billion in additional (“emergency”) funding last year “to cover hurricane, storm, and flooding recovery costs that the Department is not typically expected to absorb.” (Looks like Congress ending up authorizing/appropriating $8 billion for this purpose.)

Thanks,
Stephen (stephen@securityreform.org; @stephensemler)