Our hopes for a socialist United States are constrained as much by the material and human costs of the American empire as by the power capitalists wield domestically. If we want to build public support for socialism we must make foreign policy part of our analysis.

We need to be able to explain clearly why the United States is perpetually involved in hot and cold wars; and offer a clear pathway to a different foreign policy that serves the true interests of the vast majority of Americans and the desires of people around the world for freedom from war, environmental disaster, economic oppression, and political repression.

This country’s military budget, trade agreements, foreign “aid,” military alliances, and wars all are designed to further the interests of capitalists and of what C. Wright Mills called the military elite. We need to recognize that at times some capitalists are in conflict with others and that the military elite has its own interests that go beyond making the world safe for American capitalism. Those differences provide leverage for the rest of us to challenge existing foreign policy. However, our main strength comes from showing how most people are harmed rather than helped when the government serves narrow elite interests.