When and how to end our endless wars? Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of US soldiers from Syria put the issue of US military interventions clearly on the table. While there seems to be widespread condemnation of a tweeted, unplanned, military exit from Syria, there is yet little agreement on when and how to bring US soldiers home from other conflict zones— think of Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and the Korean peninsula. And then there are the rest of the 200,000 American military personnel, in 800 bases around the globe.

Is it really worth spending half of our discretionary tax dollars to continue this huge, global military presence? We know that skilled diplomacy, international negotiations and development assistance are three proven tools for ending conflicts and for preventing them as well. Climate change will increasingly be presenting us with new global challenges – competition over food and water resources, flooding of the world’s key coastal cities and many, many climate refugees. It’s time to rethink how American resources can be applied to meeting human needs in these situations – because people whose needs are met are much less likely to turn to conflict. It’s time to think about how the US could and should shift away from its enormous global military footprint to a collaborative, humanitarian approach to current and emerging challenges. Interestingly, a recent survey found that 46% of Americans now believe military intervention makes our country less safe, with just 27% believing the opposite.

Here are 4 suggestions for how policy makers can rethink and reshape the US global role:

End the US quest for military dominance across the world. In a very thoughtful New York Times op ed, “The Only Way to End Endless War,” Stephen Wertheim, Co-Founder and Research Director of The Quincy Institute, wrote: “It requires more than bringing ground troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. American war-making will persist so long as the United States continues to seek military dominance across the globe. Dominance, assumed to ensure peace, in fact guarantees war. To get serious about stopping endless war, American leaders must do what they most resist: end America’s commitment to armed supremacy and embrace a world of pluralism and peace.” He points out that “shrinking the military’s footprint will deprive presidents of the temptation to answer every problem with a violent solution. ” He warns, for example, that “addressing the rise of China responsibly will require abandoning nostalgia for the pre-eminence that American enjoyed in the 1990s.”

Respect that other societies have needs as important as our own and that they must find their own viable paths to conflict resolution. The US can and should have only limited influence in shaping and restructuring other societies. In an interview with The Intercept, Congressman Ro Khanna recently called for a US “doctrine of responsible withdrawal”. Khanna urged avoiding “an ‘America First’ approach that says our interests and our American lives are the only things that have moral worth”. Kate Kizer of Win Without War pointed out that responsible withdrawal plans would include welcoming refugees displaced by the conflicts in which the US has been engaged, a far cry from the Trump administration’s approach.

Prize diplomats as highly as soldiers are now valued. Conflicts are inherently complex – the participants, neighboring countries, regional powers – many competing interests which must be skillfully balanced. Experienced diplomats and a strong State Department are key to understanding the needs of all parties and identifying conflict-ending, politically viable settlements. The US needs to radically re-balance its spending on diplomacy and militarism.

An October 18th New York Times editorial described and condemned the size of the imbalance: “Once again, the administration is shrinking from peaceful engagement with the world. President Trump has gutted the diplomatic corps, and if Congress hadn’t stopped him, he would have slashed the State Department by as much as 30 percent. This all worsens a decades-long trend by Democratic and Republican presidents of relying increasingly on military power to advance

American interests. The military accounts for more than half of discretionary federal spending. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the counterterrorism wars have cost an estimated $5.9 trillion, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University, thus adding to the ballooning national debt with which future generations will have to reckon. But, fearful of being labeled unpatriotic, even lawmakers who question Pentagon spending usually end up supporting enormous budgets. As Congress argued over the defense budget this year, Democrats favored an increase to $733 billion from $716 billion while Republicans wanted $750 billion. They settled at $738 billion, a near-record level. And even before the increase, the United States was spending more on defense than all of the next seven countries combined. Allocations for the State Department and related agencies, on the other hand, were $56 billion before the White House moved to rescind the $4 billion. There are more people working in military grocery stores than there are diplomats. American foreign policy is overdue for a rebalancing, one that would curb military deployments in more than 100 countries and instead revive a more multidimensional approach to strengthen democracy and make the world safer.”

Work through global institutions and participate constructively in global agreements. The United Nations has played a uniquely valuable role in peace negotiations, peacekeeper monitoring of conflict settlements and conflict prevention through development assistance. Sadly, the Trump administration ignored this potential resource in the Syrian withdrawal, with apparently no consideration of asking UN peacekeepers to replace US soldiers as a tripwire to prevent a Turkish incursion. That same New York Times editorial pointed out that Trump’s hostility to the UN and other multilateral institutions resulted in the White House ordering “a freeze on up to $4 billion that Congress approved for global health, United Nations peacekeeping and other foreign aid. And, of course, Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Climate Accords undermined years of patient negotiations by the US and others.

As Stephen Wertheim says at the end of his article: “In truth, the largest obstacle to ending endless war is self-imposed. Long told that the United States is the world’s ‘indispensable nation’, the American people have been denied a choice and have almost stopped demanding one. A global superpower — waging endless war — is just ‘who we are.’ But it is for the people to decide who we are, guided by the best of what we have been. America ‘goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,’ Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said in 1821. ‘She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.’ Two centuries later, in the age of Trump, endless war has come home. Cease this folly, and America can begin to take responsibility in the world and reclaim its civic peace.”