Editor's Notes: We Cannot Tackle Our Problems One at a Time

It's easy for talk about policy or even institutional reform to get siloed. But much as I disdain the buzzword "polycrisis," the structural problems that America faces today are a tightly bound knot. It's not impossible to make things better with the one-at-a-time approach, but more meaningful change will require work on multiple fronts.

In his contribution to The Reconstruction Papers, Secretary of Defense Rock argues for a return to FDR's notion of America as the "arsenal of democracy." This is not the whole of Rock's vision for military policy, but it's an important part. One thing he recognizes explicitly is that military policy is not siloed from domestic policy; manufacturing capacity is manufacturing capacity.

In America, a big part of what has drastically reduced our manufacturing capacity is our trade policy. Since Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system, we've run large and persistent trade deficits, meaning we import more stuff than we export. And part of the reason for this is the monetary arrangement that has prevailed in that period, with all international trade denominated primarily in dollars. Everyone has an incentive to have a lot of dollars in order to facilitate international trade, and they get more dollars by selling stuff to Americans.

Fixing our manufacturing capacity requires addressing our trade imbalances, a steep challenge given the demand for dollars. Steve Randy Waldman's essay tells us exactly how to meet that challenge.

Not only do these two essays complement one another well, they are each individually examples of the kind of ambitious vision we're hoping to provide for liberal politics in this country moving forward. Rock calls for a genuine reconstruction of our military itself and its relationship to civilian government. Waldman meanwhile offers a genuine alternative to both the neoliberal era theory of free trade and the new protectionism, with its heavy use of tariffs. His is a mechanism for achieving free but balanced trade, as we had in the postwar world until Nixon.

Both are aware of the weaknesses of what the Trump-era GOP has offered, but neither limits their scope to that adversary. The fact is that there have been very few alternatives offered in these areas other than reactively attempting to put back together what Trump has broken. In Biden's case, his trade policy was very continuous with the first Trump term, if less heavy-handed and stupid (and certainly far less so than the second Trump term's).

We deserve better. The Reconstruction Papers hopes to persuade future elected officials that we can actually do better, and to show them how.

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