Grand Strategies of the Left: The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be. This book maps the constellation of left-progressive foreign policy thought and conceptualizes grand strategy as worldmaking. It brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice to show that durable security prioritizes peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, American progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. Introduction; 1. Thinking differently about security; 2. liberal internationalism and its critics; 3. The Politics of progressivism; 4. Principles of progressive worldmaking; 5. Progressive pragmatism as a progressive grand strategy; 6. Anti-hegemonism as a progressive grand strategy; 7. Peacemaking as a progressive grand strategy; 8. varieties of progressive political economy; 9. Political terrain and social democratic statecraft.