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

Jackson helpfully maps the ideas of left-wing thinkers in debates over U.S. foreign policy. What unites these progressive critiques is the belief that the United States, guided by an old-style liberal internationalist vision, has failed to use its power to build a more peaceful, democratic, and egalitarian world. According to left-leaning thinkers, the regressive features of U.S. foreign policy that block global peace and progress include its imperial tendencies, its drive for primacy and hegemony, its militarism and construction of a national security state, and its support for neoliberal economic policies. Jackson identifies three schools of left-wing strategic thinking. “Progressive pragmatists” want the United States to promote economic equality at home and abroad; “anti-hegemonic” thinkers want restraint and retrenchment; and “peacemakers” want democratic solidarity and deeper cosmopolitan ties across borders. Each has its own theory about how to expand peace and security worldwide, variously through the spreading of economic opportunity, the reduction of the United States’ global military footprint, and the building of regimes for nonviolent peacemaking. Jackson argues that together these ideas constitute a vision of “progressive worldmaking,” in which U.S. power would be redirected in service of a better world. The book identifies tensions and inconsistencies within the progressive tradition but emphasizes its unity as a pragmatic agenda for statecraft.