Some of the exchanges I've most enjoyed at the café took place four or five years ago.   They took place among some of the early regulars at the café among us ordinary denizens, on the topic, broadly, of what a useful, functional US foreign policy might look like.  More specifically, what sorts of policy changes, including institutional reforms on a post WWII or even broader scale, might serve to jumpstart flagging global efforts to address transnational threats such as climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation, lack of sustainable energy supplies, threat of pandemic, development/poverty reduction, terrorism, and genocide prevention? 

I recall cafe denizen DanK as among those offering notably penetrating comments.   

Conceptually there seemed to be a lot of agreement among the participants that the major security threats of our day are transnational in scope (or should be, if the people who are aching to bring on another Cold War can be prevented from doing that).  They cannot be solved by any one country.  Nor can they be solved without widespread international cooperation.

Since that time I've tried to keep an eye out for reports or books or really just arguments in any form that offered specific conceptual and practical policy recommendations for the kind of foreign policy reorientation needed for our era. 

I think I've come upon one that is most worthy of receiving attention from policymakers at the highest levels as well as from interested and engaged citizens at the café and elsewhere.    

It's called Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats, by Bruce Jones, Carlos Pascual, and Stephen Stedman.  Stedman was special advisor to Kofi Annan at the UN circa 2005; Jones was his deputy, tasked especially to assist negotiations over a new Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Support Office at the UN.  Pascual was their American counterpart for most of that time as coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization at the State Department.  The book was published by the Brookings Institution a couple of months ago. 

Early chapters outline a concept of "responsible sovereignty" and their argument for it. 

The bulk of the book consists of six chapters, each devoted to proposals for international governance reforms and policies the authors believes they can facilitate, to address what they see as the six most critical transnational threats: climate change, nuclear proliferation, security from biological threats (principally ones that can lead to pandemics and those stemming from misuse of biotechnology); civil violence/regional conflict; transnational terrorism; and economic instability on account of financial instability and poverty in particular (this was the weakest of the six by far).  Each of these chapters identifies and assesses major threats, the current performance of the international community in addressing them, and the structural and policy gaps that inhibit effectiveness and need to be overcome, before offering the authors' own recommendations for how to do so.   

The penultimate chapter seeks to sketch out how the ideas and proposals might be put together to form an agenda for addressing major security threats arising from the Middle East, as the toughest case. 

A few highlights:

*The single most important structural change they recommend is the creation of a G16 as the smallest grouping possible that still includes the leading economies and most populous countries, regionally (and, they don't say, religiously) balanced.  It would replace the G8.  The 16 would be the current G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, US) plus China, Mexico, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Turkey and a second African nation, most likely Egypt or Nigeria.  Its major purposes would be to prenegotiate agreements on basic parameters of responses to major global challenges, often as a precursor to UN General Assembly refinement and hopefully adoption, and to serve as a mechanism for building knowledge, trust and patterns of cooperative behavior among the most powerful countries. 

*They offer recommendations for UN Security Council and other UN reforms, the former to come after the G16 is formed.  (as any effort to lead with Security Council membership reform would be DOA)

*The formation of several new multilateral institutions is recommended in the six chapters addressing the various transnational security threats.

*They argue against seeking a concert of democracies organizing framework (recommended by G. John Ikenberry, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Ivo Daalder, James Lindsay, and John McCain, among others), using pretty much the arguments that were used to argue against it here at the café a few years back.  It would be likely to increase international tensions by actually encouraging a hard bipolarity between democracies and non-democracies ("...the attempt to pit democracies against nondemocracies will provoke conflict, mistrust and hostility in the short term, and risk triggering a second cold war at a time when international cooperation is essential for mitigating transnational threats").  It is not clear what problems it would help to solve.  And most eligible members would not want to join, based on the authors' consultations. 

Jackets blurbs are from Kofi Annan, Brent Scowcroft, Madeleine Albright, Chuck Hagel, former Clinton Sec Def William Perry, and, yes, Anne-Marie Slaughter.  I believe the authors could have gotten many other folks not part of the DC foreign policy establishment to write positive blurbs.  The fact that they have support from this group I take as an encouraging sign that many others in addition to these establishment figures are probably also thinking much more boldly about the current situation than might be assumed, or at any rate might well be receptive to bold new initiatives if the Obama Administration decides to pursue some.

Certainly there is plenty of room for disagreement with their argument and specific suggestions.  But this is major intellectual work on what US foreign policy reflecting true global leadership should be moving towards, pronto.  The authors have done a great service.  If the Obama Administration were to embrace something close to this agenda and move to implement it aggressively I for one would feel a hell of a lot better about our country and world's prospects.