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Foreign policy circles in Washington may or may not be lamed in the same way as the Beltway media. But the development of foreign policy does not work at the behest of the press, and its "seriousness."
And so far, none of the major Democratic candidates appears to be hostage to the ideas of Beltway (or even Ivy league) thinkers. Foreign policy is shaped by domestic as well as international actors and agents, HRC and Edwards both seem aware of this.
Samantha Powers may have done some pathbreaking work on the way that the US has paid lipservice to the jus cogens norms against genocide without really enforcing them, but her memo really only delineates the differences between what the democratic field as a whole would do and what GWB has done. It doesn't really set out a new paradigm for foreign policy, just some common-sense approaches that probably all the democratic nominees would feel comfortable with.
If you want a sense of what a real, path breaking foreign policy might look like, here are some suggestions:
(1) The US should work to dismantle sovereign immunity for violations of international law by: (a) subjecting all US persons to the full jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court; (b) charging our own war criminals, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush for their crimes against the Iraqi people
(2) Systematically creating and enforcing international legal norms against torture and genocide;
(3) Creating an enforceable norm against pre-emptive war in all circumstances outside of those authorized the the UN Security Council.
(4) Creating and sustaining an international legal order against environmental damage and global warming;
(5) Taking real steps to eliminate the US nuclear arsenal and create enforceable norms against nuclear proliferation;
I could go on.
