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Dear President-Elect Obama: 

Your Administration will confront challenges and opportunities in an interconnected world, in which our security and prosperity are tied to the security and prosperity of others, problems cannot be managed in isolation, and addressing critical national security concerns will require that we further shared global interests. To consider these challenges, over 215 foreign policy leaders, experts and practitioners, who work across the country and are affiliated with non-governmental organizations representing millions of Americans, have come together to identify principles and policy priorities for your first six months that we believe are critical to re-establishing U.S. global leadership in the first six months of your term. Our unprecedented collaboration reflects our understanding of the unprecedented challenges that we face.

We recognize that in the first months of your administration, you will face urgent foreign policy challenges, which include ending the war in Iraq, promoting security and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, addressing the global financial crisis, and dealing effectively with nuclear weapons development in Iran and North Korea. These urgent problems will impose formidable demands on your time and attention, but they must not prevent you from addressing broader and systemic challenges to U.S. leadership worldwide. In particular, the ability of the United States to achieve key national security objectives has eroded over the past eight years, as the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from other vital needs, the civilian instruments of U.S. power – both development and diplomacy – have been neglected, and our capacity to lead effectively has been undermined through unilateral actions in disregard of the views and interests of key friends and allies.

For these reasons, our capacity to address both urgent crises and long term challenges will require that your Administration articulate – and quickly signal to the American public and the world – a renewed commitment to international cooperation.  This includes a willingness to practice at home the standards we encourage others to follow overseas, to recognize and respond to the concerns of our friends, allies and other major stakeholders on global issues that are critical to our common long term well-being, and to strengthen the capacity of international institutions to address key global challenges.

During the first six months of your Administration, action on the following measures will be critically important to signal this new commitment and new course for U.S. foreign policy.  Moreover, it will lay the groundwork for progress on the full range of foreign policy priorities you have identified.  We appreciate that progress on these measures will require close consultation with the Congress, and we are hopeful that both branches of government will proceed in a new spirit of bipartisan cooperation on these issues.

We urge that you take action in the following five areas:

Repair U.S. credibility and influence on international human rights and humanitarian law:

• Issue an executive order that reaffirms an absolute prohibition on torture and ensures that all detainees within the custody of the United States are treated consistent with standards articulated in the U.S. Army Field Manual and international legal instruments; that halts the practice of secret detention; that ends rendition to torture and that directs a review of all legal opinions and policy guidance relating to treatment of detainees.
• Announce your intention to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center promptly and to treat all detainees in U.S. custody in a manner consistent with international obligations and domestic law.
• Re-engage in a positive way with international human rights institutions, such as by supporting the work of the ICC to investigate and prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Establish U.S. leadership on international efforts to address climate change:

• Commit to binding caps on carbon emissions that would reduce greenhouse gases by at least 80% by 2050, and thereby effectively contribute to worldwide efforts to limit the average world temperature increase to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels; to funding and mechanisms to assist developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change, access clean energy technology and avoid deforestation and degradation; and to legislation that promotes domestic green jobs and renewable energy.
• Quickly put in place a U.S. negotiating team led by a senior White House official, to work with Congress and civil society to formulate key elements of the U.S. position prior to climate negotiations scheduled for June in Bonn.

Reduce the threat of nuclear war and weapons proliferation:

• Resume talks with Russia on a new, legally-binding, and verifiable agreement that would, by the end of 2012, achieve significantly deeper and irreversible reductions than currently planned in deployed and reserve U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles and delivery systems, and that would extend or strengthen key verification and monitoring provisions of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
• Outlaw nuclear weapons testing: undertake bipartisan efforts to win prompt Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and actively support ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring on board other states whose ratifications are required for the treaty to enter into force.
• In order to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, commit to the goal of securing and retrieving vulnerable nuclear weapons usable materials worldwide within four years.

Ensure a safer and more secure world by dramatically strengthening U.S. programs to promote diplomacy and development:

• Transmit to Congress with the FY2010 budget a separate national security and international affairs budget that includes funding for Foreign Operations, Homeland Security, and Defense. The justification for this separate budget should highlight how the four agencies that support national security (DOD, Homeland Security, USAID, and the State Department) complement one another to make America and the world more safe.
• Include in the FY2010 budget substantially increased resources for civilian agencies engaged in development, diplomacy and efforts to assist fragile states.
• Elevate the development functions within government:  promptly name a highly respected development professional to lead U.S. development programs and ensure that that the National Security Council staff includes a senior staff position dedicated to development.
• Work with Congress to create a coherent, effective, U.S. development strategy that affirms the Millennium Development Goals, as well as the use of all key tools to achieve them (such as increased and reformed foreign aid, expanded debt relief and trade reform), and that guides a rewrite of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
• Request that Congress ensure that the appropriation for the International Affairs Budget for fiscal year 2009 is at least at the level requested by the current Administration.
• Ensure that international deliberations on the global financial crisis include representatives of developing countries, and that decisions on managing the crisis do not unduly impact critical international development priorities.

While this listing of policy priorities is not exhaustive, it does include measures that represent crucial indicators of a new direction for U.S. policy that will enhance your capacity to lead effectively on the full range of national security challenges. They will signal a commitment to respect for human dignity and for the values, interests and concerns of other governments and their people on key global issues; an appreciation of the importance of cooperative engagement and decision-making; and an understanding of the need to consider longer term challenges even as we seek to address pressing crises. We commit to working with your Administration to engage both the Congress and the American people in a national dialogue on these critical concerns.

Signatories (coming soon)

Steering Committee Members

Community Consultation and Survey Participants