U.S. foreign policy is broken — and the working class is paying the price

The Security Policy Reform Institute (SPRI) is a progressive, grassroots-funded think tank that presents an alternative to the failed policies of the existing national security establishment. Through original research and analysis, we develop novel solutions to reorient U.S. foreign policy away from the endless war and neoliberalism championed by the political and economic elite toward a democratic model that works for the rest of us. This first requires recognizing that domestic and foreign policy are intertwined. Simply put, reforming American activities abroad creates the conditions necessary for the success of progressive movements at home.

The existing national security consensus has produced infinite warfare while pushing the burden of its failed policies almost exclusively onto the working class. This consensus is reinforced by the existing think tank community, who routinely accept funding from weapons manufacturers and authoritarian regimes who benefit from sustaining these conditions. These establishment actors cannot credibly provide impartial, utilitarian advice to U.S. foreign policy-making because they willfully ignore the constituency that would be most served by a meaningful reform to security practices.

While the indifference shown by these think tanks toward the working class is due in part to their core ideology, it is also the consequence of the need to placate their corporate donors. Just as the establishment think tank elite represent the interests of corporate militarism, by relying on grassroots donations we represent the interests of our own constituency: the working class. This model is indicative of our mission to democratize U.S. security and foreign policy.

Donations to SPRI are critical for supporting our critique of existing practices and our efforts to find policy alternatives which the existing think tank community is unwilling to develop. We are actively building a values-based framework for a progressive foreign policy by working with grassroots organizations, incubating progressive ideas, and by speaking directly to the electorate and the media as well as the U.S. Congress. Our output takes the form of in-depth policy analysis, short evaluative reports, explanatory briefs, and published interviews with subject-matter experts, academics, activists, historians, and the very working-class communities whose security we promote.