America's Impact

America's Impact is a non-partisan organization of foreign policy professionals dedicated to advancing a pragmatic approach to US engagement with the world. We advocate for preparing our military to confront 21st century threats, engaging diplomatically with both allies and adversaries, and integrating foreign aid as a critical aspect of US national power. By supporting candidates who embrace a comprehensive approach to defense, diplomacy, and development, we hope to build a more secure, prosperous, and influential America.

Based in Washington, DC, America’s Impact brings together civil servants, business leaders, activists, attorneys, veterans, academics, and other professionals committed to America’s status as a global leader. Our members care about how US foreign policy helps manage an interconnected world. They want members of Congress committed to effective global engagement and American leadership on global challenges to peace and prosperity. Our members work for a US foreign policy that protects our interests, promotes human rights, advances democratization, and works to convince the world’s millions of “undecideds” to work against violent extremism.

The Challenge Today

With party majorities in both chambers of Congress, a progressive President, and new leadership at the State Department, we face a historic opportunity to change the way America engages with the world. Yet progress on crucial foreign policy and national security issues faces serious challenges: Congressional Democrats lack a unifying foreign policy platform and in a time when domestic issues such as health care and climate change dominate, serious discussion of foreign policy too often loses out.

Our Values

After the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, foreign policy thinkers began searching to find an alternative to the militarism and unilateralism embraced by the Bush Administration. Think-tanks, academics, and advocacy groups began talking about the need to rebalance the US approach to more effectively promote national security, trade, democracy, human rights, and other long-standing objectives.

America’s Impact draws on this initiative and embraces an integrated “smart power” approach grounded in the three “Ds” of foreign policy: defense, diplomacy, and development.

• Defense: We support a broadened defense concept and equipping our military with the resources and reform necessary to confront 21st century threats.
• Diplomacy: We support diplomacy with both our allies and our adversaries. We recognize that multi-level engagement is a key foreign policy tool, particularly in the areas of international commerce, climate change, global health, and poverty.
• Development: We support robust, properly guided development and public-private trade partnerships as a means to advance US interests around the world.

The Role of America’s Impact

President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Secretary Gates have clearly indicated their intention to work with Congress to rebalance the nation’s foreign policy priorities. They are aided in this initiative by many excellent advocacy organizations and think tanks, each providing specialized knowledge and concrete policy recommendations.

While our membership is drawn from these groups, America’s Impact plays a different role.

Our purview is strictly political and specifically focused on Congress. Rather than advocate for a particular policy or legislative outcome, America’s Impact instead seeks to mobilize our members, the public, and Congress around an integrated US foreign policy that promotes US security and global leadership. We educate our members and the public about the foreign policy positions of members of Congress. We actively connect our members to opportunities to support candidates who will work to advance this pragmatic foreign policy agenda.