Jim Winkler
General Secretary
General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church
“Mutual respect and cooperation between nations is an important value of the United Methodist Church. I am grateful to the Global Good Neighbor Initiative for reminding us of a time in our recent past when our nation sought to build constructive relationships internationally. Let us remember the positive lessons of history so that we may repeat them.”
Julia Greenberg
Director, International Programs
American Jewish World Service
“Through grants to grassroots organizations, volunteer service, advocacy, and education, AJWS fosters civil society, sustainable development, and human rights for all people, while promoting the values and responsibilities of global citizenship within the Jewish community. AJWS is convinced that the Global Good Neighbor principles promoted by the International Relations Center will resonate with our constituency, and will inform and enhance our efforts to galvanize the Jewish community to advocate for U.S. policies that promote sustainable development and respect for human rights in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.”
Peggy Huppert
Executive Director
Iowans for Sensible Priorities
“The Global Good Neighbor Initiative is invaluable in helping us re-think our framework for dealing with global conflict and cooperation. Although much has changed since FDR's time, much is also the same—including what makes good neighbors. Anyone concerned with the United States' place in the world and our global future should be part of this discussion.”
Neil Watkins
National Coordinator
Jubilee USA
“In this era of global instability when the politics of fear dominate the national debate, the Global Good Neighbor Initiative offers a positive, constructive vision for American foreign policy. We need to spread the word far and wide about this new approach and use it to frame our proposals for a new foreign policy. It is high time for the United States to become a global good neighbor.”
Antonios Kireopoulos
Associate General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace
National Council of Churches USA
“The Global Good Neighbor principles offer a way to inject U.S. foreign policy with a needed moral corrective. In fact, relating to other countries as a responsible global citizen requires us to think in such terms. In many ways, the well-being of the world depends on it.”
Miriam Pemberton
Research Fellow, Peace and Security Program
Institute for Policy Studies
“The current extraordinary level of anti-Americanism is not a problem that the greatest public relations campaign in the world is going to solve. We will need to find our way to a fundamentally different way of engaging with the world, and the Global Good Neighbor framework is one good place to start.”
Carl Coon
Board Member
American Humanist Association
“Humanity is in the middle of a painful transition from competing state systems to a global network of cooperating states and regions. The more progress we make, the sooner we'll find solutions for nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change, local war and refugee problems, and other global issues. Initiatives like Global Good Neighbor pave the way and contribute importantly to building a better and more viable human society.”
Lisa Schirch
3D Security Initiative
Eastern Mennonite University
“The security challenges we face today cannot be solved by one country alone. There is no military anywhere capable of addressing the root causes of terrorism, stopping global warming, or preventing health epidemics like SARS or Avian Flu. U.S. security has never been more interdependent with global security. The Global Good Neighbor campaign guides us in this new age toward policies the U.S. public supports—a shift in U.S. policies away from a heavy reliance on military solutions, isolation, and antagonism toward cooperation, global engagement, and relying instead on robust diplomacy and development assistance to our global neighbors.”
Editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, has cited the Global Good Neighbor Ethic for International Relations twice—once as part of her foreign policy speech at the Take Back America conference in June 2005 and recently in a Nation column.
According to vanden Heuvel: “What we need to do is reclaim another liberal, internationalist, and eminently (as well as ethically) ‘realist' foreign policy tradition. It is the ‘Good Neighbor' policy crafted and championed by Franklin Roosevelt.
“A ‘Good Neighbor' policy [linking to the IRC's GGN webpage] stresses the need for a community of nations to keep the peace and to promote economic dignity and prosperity for people in the developing as well as developed worlds. This liberal internationalist tradition rejects unilateral dominance and favors developing a ‘community of power' to keep the peace; It gives priority to a system of international law and governance over ‘preemptive' wars and unilateralism; It understands that to be effective, our foreign policy must work in tandem with reforms at home—to improve security, quality of life, and basic rights; It considers military power to be a complement to, not a substitute for, economic power and diplomacy; and it gives a more central role to spreading economic prosperity to ensure peace and stability and environmental sustainability.”
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Restoring an ethic of mutual respect for each other's rights and an understanding of the importance of community, will, we believe, greatly enhance the security and well-being not only of U.S. Americans, but also of our global neighborhood.”
