This article was originally published by Mennonite World Review

Time to get realistic

We encourage MWR and its readers to use this time of transition between presidents to speak up for a more realistic and less interventionist U.S. stance in the world. For 15 years, our country has been at war. Few, if any, U.S. objectives have been achieved. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen have been terribly damaged. Ukraine has become a basket case. President-elect Trump has criticized these wars and interventions and has called to account both Washington-based factions that promoted them: the neo-cons, whose scheming produced Iraq, Ukraine and Yemen; and the humanitarian interventionists, whose idealism produced Libya and Syria.

It isn’t clear to us how Trump will proceed internationally. Will he emphasize more realism about how much America can remake the world in its own image? Less naiveté about what is accomplished by interfering in how other nations pursue their interests?

We urge pulling back NATO from Russia’s borders, abandoning the effort to surround China with military and trade alliances, care in repairing relations with Iran and a shift of federal spending priorities away from the Pentagon and toward rebuilding America’s infrastructure.

Signed by Rick Stamm, John K. Stoner, Harold Penner, Marian Buckwalter, Marie Riehl, Daniel Riehl, Jim Gibbel and Berry Frie­sen, members of 1040 for Peace, a Lancaster County, Pa., group.

Sign up to our newsletter for important updates and news!