Yeah, total agreement on the primacy of being anti-imperialist. That's the big conceptual leap for non-leftists to come around to. I'm a little hesitant to put too much stock in Gravel's approach (I'm trying to remember if he uses anti-imperial framing, or if he's more just a strict anti-interventionist), though, because it's fed into him being portrayed as "crazy idealist who might say some good things but ultimately isn't taken seriously." That's the risk I see from leaving "well what about genocide"?" and similar questions unanswered.
Having some sort of positive policy vision -- rather than simply criticizing what already exists -- really seems to help leftist ideas go mainstream. For example, there were tons of longstanding criticisms of the U.S. healthcare system, but "take Medicare and give it to everyone" galvanized that into a useful political movement. Similarly, there were tons of longstanding criticisms of the criminal legal system, but positive policy suggestions like "stop imprisoning people for marijuana possession" or "end cash bail" have been where we've seen mainstream interest and then actual change.
So I can see the reasoning behind discussing what a leftist foreign policy would look like in addition to talking anti-imperialism. I think it's OK to have that conversation in the abstract, and then oppose individual U.S. interventions as the possibility of them comes up (and criticize every intervention we've done before, outside of WWII). We never have to worry about getting stuck in a position of supporting some sort of anti-genocide intervention because the U.S. will never do that lol. The closest we'd get is when there's some claimed genocide being used as a pretext for imperial meddling, and we can call that out if the situation arises.
I think the only positive policy set that could oppose US imperialism is one of multilateralism that breaks the mould of "the world"'s consent being Europe, Japan, and South Korea. But I can't imagine that this can be motivated as a rallying cry like something like Medicare for All without already doing the work of making people anti-imperialist, which requires making them marginally international anticapitalist and is still a necessarily negative process. The imperial core is in a very different situation than the imperialized, where you can draw a straight line between US interventionism and the difficulties in their lives. It will always have to be motivated in solidarity and working on behalf of shared humanity, not nationalist politics that improve domestic policy. Imperialism actually leverages their position to improve their lives through importing the spoils and keeping their prices down, it's in contradiction of the usual material interest narrative. In addition, the USD's dominance and austerity politics means that government spending is fairly magical already, so decreasing funding for the military or IC does not actually increase funding for anything domestically.
In short, I don't think there's any way for those in the imperial core to move forward on the topic of interventionism without directly attacking US interventionism and the dominant narratives. I don't think we can shoehorn in a positive rallying cry like we can for domestic policy due to the contradiction in self-interest and the strength of capitalist propaganda in lieu of a direct challenge. Indirect challenges could help, but are risky precisely because of how easy it is to convince liberals of cynical human rights narratives, hell even simple narratives about loss of stature. Germans care not just about the cost of war but their place in NATO. This is what they think about Afghanistan. Not the incredible death and destruction of Afghans. NATO narratives handed down by imperialists.
Yeah, total agreement on the primacy of being anti-imperialist. That's the big conceptual leap for non-leftists to come around to. I'm a little hesitant to put too much stock in Gravel's approach (I'm trying to remember if he uses anti-imperial framing, or if he's more just a strict anti-interventionist), though, because it's fed into him being portrayed as "crazy idealist who might say some good things but ultimately isn't taken seriously." That's the risk I see from leaving "well what about genocide"?" and similar questions unanswered.
Having some sort of positive policy vision -- rather than simply criticizing what already exists -- really seems to help leftist ideas go mainstream. For example, there were tons of longstanding criticisms of the U.S. healthcare system, but "take Medicare and give it to everyone" galvanized that into a useful political movement. Similarly, there were tons of longstanding criticisms of the criminal legal system, but positive policy suggestions like "stop imprisoning people for marijuana possession" or "end cash bail" have been where we've seen mainstream interest and then actual change.
So I can see the reasoning behind discussing what a leftist foreign policy would look like in addition to talking anti-imperialism. I think it's OK to have that conversation in the abstract, and then oppose individual U.S. interventions as the possibility of them comes up (and criticize every intervention we've done before, outside of WWII). We never have to worry about getting stuck in a position of supporting some sort of anti-genocide intervention because the U.S. will never do that lol. The closest we'd get is when there's some claimed genocide being used as a pretext for imperial meddling, and we can call that out if the situation arises.
I think the only positive policy set that could oppose US imperialism is one of multilateralism that breaks the mould of "the world"'s consent being Europe, Japan, and South Korea. But I can't imagine that this can be motivated as a rallying cry like something like Medicare for All without already doing the work of making people anti-imperialist, which requires making them marginally international anticapitalist and is still a necessarily negative process. The imperial core is in a very different situation than the imperialized, where you can draw a straight line between US interventionism and the difficulties in their lives. It will always have to be motivated in solidarity and working on behalf of shared humanity, not nationalist politics that improve domestic policy. Imperialism actually leverages their position to improve their lives through importing the spoils and keeping their prices down, it's in contradiction of the usual material interest narrative. In addition, the USD's dominance and austerity politics means that government spending is fairly magical already, so decreasing funding for the military or IC does not actually increase funding for anything domestically.
In short, I don't think there's any way for those in the imperial core to move forward on the topic of interventionism without directly attacking US interventionism and the dominant narratives. I don't think we can shoehorn in a positive rallying cry like we can for domestic policy due to the contradiction in self-interest and the strength of capitalist propaganda in lieu of a direct challenge. Indirect challenges could help, but are risky precisely because of how easy it is to convince liberals of cynical human rights narratives, hell even simple narratives about loss of stature. Germans care not just about the cost of war but their place in NATO. This is what they think about Afghanistan. Not the incredible death and destruction of Afghans. NATO narratives handed down by imperialists.