Cato's foreign policy vision is guided by the idea of national defense and a security strategy appropriate for a constitutional republic, not an empire. Cato's foreign policy scholars question the presumption that an interventionist foreign policy enhances the security of Americans in the post-Cold War world, and maintain instead that interventionism has consequences including, the formation of countervailing alliances, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and even terrorism. The use of U.S. military force should be limited to those occasions when the territorial integrity, national sovereignty, or liberty of the United States is at risk.
Strategic independence does not mean that the United States should refuse to have a leading role internationally. America's role, however, should be aimed at expanding the stabilizing interdependency created by free trade, cultural exchange, and more open immigration policies. Besides reducing the prospect of perverse security consequences, the domestic benefits of this approach are also large: a less secretive and intrusive federal government; fiscal dividends, including tax relief; and a return to the constitutionally prescribed balance of executive-legislative power.
Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies
Chris Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies
Justin Logan, Associate Director of Foreign Policy Studies
Stanley Kober, Research Fellow
Leon Hadar, Research Fellow