Domestic Legitimacy and Progressive Grand Strategies in US Foreign Policy

Van Jackson’s “Left of Liberal Internationalism: Grand Strategies within Progressive Foreign Policy Thought” offers an exceptionally clear and fascinating picture of three different threads of grand strategic thinking— progressive pragmatism, antihegemonism, and peacemaking—that exist in current progressive policy circles. All three approaches share a commitment to reduced militarism in US foreign policy (for example, ending the force-based approach to counterterrorism), but each is distinct. Pragmatists advocate strengthening democratic alliances, US leadership in regional order-building, sanctioning autocrats, and achieving greater equity in Global North-South economic relations. Antihegemonists advocate restraint: a full drawdown of US military forces worldwide, an end to all alliances (including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)), and brokered spheres of influence with China and Russia. Finally, peacemakers advocate multilateral security arrangements, unilateral US demilitarization to stem security dilemmas, and bureaucratic changes to advance peace. This essay does not critique Jackson’s impressive analysis of progressivism. Instead, it focuses on the issue of feasibility. Alexander L. George argues that in the United States, domestic legitimacy (or, “a climate of acceptance”) is invaluable to sustain “a coherent and consistent” grand strategy amid the vicissitudes common to policymaking in democratic states. 1 Which or what parts of the progressive grand strategies Jackson identifies are more (or less) likely to gain domestic legitimacy, and with that shape US foreign policy going forward?