Foreign Policy in Focus

Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) is a “think tank without walls” connecting the research and action of more than 600 scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner.

FPIF provides timely analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs and recommends policy alternatives. We believe U.S. security and world stability are best advanced through a commitment to peace, justice, and environmental protection, as well as economic, political, and social rights. We advocate that diplomatic solutions, global cooperation, and grassroots participation guide foreign policy.

FPIF aims to amplify the voice of progressives and to build links with social movements in the U.S. and around the world. Through these connections, we advance and influence debate and discussion among academics, activists, policy-makers, and the general public.

Latest Work

Environment and Security Policy

U.S. foreign policy and national security policies have significant domestic and international environmental impacts, and the increasingly precarious state of the global environment presents important new challenges to U.S. national interests.

Intellectual Property Rights and the Privatization of Life

The U.S. government has made the rigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) a top priority of its foreign policy, using international trade negotiations as the means of continually ratcheting up the terms.

Morocco and Western Sahara

On Africa’s Atlantic coast, at the western extremity of the Arab world, lies Western Sahara, site of Africa’s longest post-colonial conflict.

Global Environment Facility

One of the major challenges faced by the international community is how to address environmental problems that, although created locally, have global consequences.

World Bank’s Private Sector Agenda

Consistent with U.S. political interests to promote a private sector agenda, the World Bank has accentuated the private sector in its operations and highlighted financial support for the private sector in its own agenda in the last few years.

International Financial Flows

After a decade of rapid growth, the international financial system is now plagued with extreme volatility and crisis.

Asian Financial Crisis

The Clinton administration continues to promote the deeply flawed “Washington consensus” of neoliberal globalization in the APEC countries.

International Terrorism

The massive terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have placed the threat of terrorism on the front burner and have exposed the failure of the U.S. government to protect its citizens.

Indonesia After Suharto

Indonesia’s recent economic and political collapse is a stark example of the outright failure of a development paradigm promoting large-scale economic growth without political, social, legal, and environmental safeguards.

WTO and Developing Countries

The agenda of the WTO, the implementation of its agreements, and the much-praised dispute settlement system all serve to advance the interests of developed countries, sidelining those of the developing countries.

The IMF and Good Governance

The IMF was created as the “guardian” of the global economy, promoting unimpeded trade and ensuring that national exchange rates would stay within set values.

An Enforceable Social Clause

The failure of sustainable economic growth to take hold in the developing world demonstrates that “free trade” is not delivering on its promise to bring prosperity to the world’s poor.

Trafficking in Women

Increased economic globalization has resulted in an increased feminization of poverty, forcing greater numbers of women worldwide to migrate in search of work.

Arms & Environmental Technologies

Although the world market for environmental technologies is twice the size of the world arms market, the U.S. supports its arms exports over its environmental technologies market by a staggeringly large margin.

Drug Certification

The certification process is resented in Latin America and elsewhere as a unilateral, sometimes arbitrary and hypocritical exercise by the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs.

Aid to Russia

When the Soviet Union abruptly ceased to exist on December 25, 1991, it seemed that the West, particularly the U.S., finally had what it had always wanted–the opportunity to introduce quick, all-encompassing economic reform that would remake Russia in the West’s own image.

U.S. Russia Security Relations

U.S.-Russian security relations have slowly deteriorated since 1993.

Capital Flows and the Environment

The environmental implications of this decade’s massive movements of money into the developing world, while enormous, are also complex and somewhat contradictory.

Democratizing the Trade Debate

Shaping new international rules for labor rights, environmental protection, gender equity, minority rights, sustainable development, and other social goals is a formidable political challenge in view of the forces promoting profit-above-all trade and investment policies.

Human Rights and Intelligence Reform

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has long been associated with the overthrow of governments and the installation of bloody military regimes.