Foreign Policy

The Green Party supports democracy and self-determination worldwide and promotes ending the U.S. practice of economic and political colonialism. U.S. foreign policy should emphasize promoting other nations' self-sufficiency and self-determination, rather than ensuring security for overseas U.S. multinational corporate interests through the expansion and retention of military bases.

International business practices have taken advantage of other countries’ lenient safety and environmental standards and labor forces that are easily exploited. Such practices are often in conflict with local efforts to address environmental and safety problems and to establish or strengthen workplace regulations.
The continuing establishment of bases and overseas deployment of military personnel overseas heightens global tensions, positioning the U.S. military as a global police force. Together with economic leveraging, such military presence assures that U.S. and multinational businesses will encounter little resistance in their profit-seeking overseas.

U.S. foreign aid programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) have promoted U.S. development methods without adequately examining their feasibility, appropriateness, or cultural and economic implications for the host country. Aid is given in inordinately greater amounts to countries that are considered strategically and militarily beneficial to the U.S.

The majority of U.S. foreign aid is provided as military aid. This military aid is generally split between training foreign military officers and providing U.S.-made weapons and warfare tools to foreign governments. Both are basically cash handouts propping up the U.S. military industry and do nothing to bolster a foreign country's economy or living standards.
The U.S. government's lack of oversight of such aid programs has wreaked havoc on local populations on a global scale. This is not only corporate welfare, but it also creates deep conflicts of interest and a dependency of foreign and public policy decisions on domestic corporations with politicians awarding massive ‘aid’ contracts to special interests funding. Most of all, it robs the recipient country of the opportunity to build up its own industries and become self-sufficient in meeting the needs being addressed by foreign aid.

The Greens believe in policies consistent with participatory democracy and global responsibility:

1- Demand that U.S. corporations maintain foreign business practices that do not jeopardize workers or the environment and avoid interference with foreign governments.

2- Negotiate a World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement that promotes the economic development and self-sufficiency of recipient countries, rather than profitability for rich donor countries.

3- Reevaluate and restructure our government's aid programs and practices (by U.S. AID and others to emphasize appropriate-level technologies, ecologically sustainable projects, cultural sensitivity, and monetary aid consistent with recipient countries' real needs.

4- Encourage U.S. cities to develop municipal foreign trade relationships centering around "sister city" arrangements and cultural exchange programs that are socially and environmentally beneficial.

5- Support and endorse United Nations conventions to use the U.N. finally for its intended purpose as an objective, multilateral body to maintain world order. The U.S. could help attain this objective by paying its U.N. dues on time.

6- Close all foreign military bases and clean up any toxic materials left behind. Promote fair and responsible trade and business practices that eliminate the need for the vast number of U.S. military bases.

7- Prohibit military foreign aid or any aid contingent on military agreements, loans, debts, or other financial agreements with the recipients. Provide all monetary foreign aid distributions only as cash payments to foreign governments, or reliable non-government agencies. Recipient countries should have more authority in deciding how aid funding is spent, rather than being forced to purchase U.S. goods and services. All foreign aid should be based on empowering people to achieve self-determination and to develop their own institutions of governance.

The Palestinians & Israel

We recognize and reaffirm the right of self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis, and their right to live in a single undivided secular state where all residents have full and equal rights, and freedoms.

History records that, just as Europeans employed colonization and genocide to take over the lands now known as the 'Americas', it was through an illegal and violent process of colonization, displacement, and dispossession of Palestinians that the State of Israel was formed, based on the Zionist concept of an exclusive Jewish homeland. Since then, Israel has sought to deny the existence of Palestinians and completely eliminate Palestine as a nation.

This has resulted in millions of Palestinians being driven from their homes (that were and are still being illegally taken over by Israeli colonizers). Palestinians are living in apartheid conditions of extreme inequality and are systematically denied access to land, resources, and personal and economic freedoms. As a result, generations of Palestinians are living in a state of perpetual brutal war on occupied lands resembling a vast open-air prison.

To rectify this devastating practice of colonization and displacement, and end its deep generational economic impacts, Israel must restore the freedom and wealth of the Palestinian people through sweeping reparations; end all occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands; dismantle all barriers and divisions on occupied territories, and support the right to return for displaced Palestinians (as stipulated in UN resolution 194).

Toward achieving these objectives, the GPCA declares the following:
Israel Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Declaration

The Green Party of California endorses the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel because for several decades, all forms of international intervention and attempts at peace-making have failed to end Israel’s occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine,

We will maintain our participation in the BDS movement until the State of Israel meets all the demands of the BDS movement, including compliance with United Nations-recognized international laws, all resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, and all decisions and directions by all United Nations-recognized international courts, regardless of Israel's participation in, or ratification of such courts.

The BDS movement (based on the similar campaign that was key to ending apartheid in South Africa) has become one of the most effective nonviolent means for achieving justice and genuine peace between Palestinians and Israelis. See: https://bdsmovement.net

The Green Party of California calls upon all of its members and allies, the Government of California, and all California residents, businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, political parties, and local and regional governmental agencies, to likewise join and support in the worldwide BDS efforts.

The Green Party of California also calls upon the United States government to join the BDS movement, enact all sanctions called for by that movement, and to immediately cease all civilian economic and material support to Israel until the State of Israel complies with all international laws, resolutions, and court decisions.

Finally, the Green Party of California demands that the United States government immediately and permanently cease all funding and material support, direct and indirect, to the Israeli military.

(Amended by GPCA Standing General Assembly, June 19, 2022, SGA ID#237)