The most straightforward extension of the emerging consensus on Gaza would be to scale back American militarism. If eliminating military aid to Israel is the clearly articulated demand, a natural extension is to flip the cozy relationship with other abusive and belligerent actors like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Similarly, it is a no-brainer to avoid military interventions like the war in Iran, whose historic unpopularity points to widespread public fatigue with American war-making. Slashing a bloated defense budget set to top $1 trillion is also a clear part of this agenda.

But while scaling back militarism is a necessary component of a progressive foreign policy, it cannot be the only component. For example, Darializa Avila Chevalier has called “to have our tax dollars come back home to invest in our babies here and not in bombs abroad” — useful rhetoric, to be sure, but this framing also presents a binary between doing good at home and causing harm abroad. The possibility of progressive international engagement is absent.

The problem with the United States’ Israel policy is its backing of egregiously violent and undemocratic action — not that the United States is engaging internationally. Indeed, the depth of the horror that many Americans have felt watching children suffering in Gaza demonstrates that their solidarity is by no means limited to American citizens. In any case, in a deeply interconnected world, even fulfilling promises to Americans will depend on effective management of the US relationship with the world.

But in contrast to a foreign policy that prioritizes bellicosity toward a set of adversaries, a different form of international engagement would emphasize international cooperation to address shared challenges. Notably, domestic policy can only address the United States’ outsize but minority share of global emissions. Comprehensively defending a safe climate will demand international action to ramp up climate finance and cooperation on decarbonization. Cross-border health threats like COVID-19 or the recent Ebola outbreak present similar dynamics. A progressive approach would not only bolster international disease surveillance systems but also strengthen basic health infrastructure in poor countries and take on intellectual property monopolies that limit the diffusion of vital health technology. Other notable global challenges include managing supply shocks and enabling a humane and orderly migration system.

It is fair to question whether a domestically troubled country that has just bankrolled a genocide can be a constructive actor in addressing these global challenges. But noninvolvement is not an option: the global economy runs on the dollar; the United States is the world’s largest consumer market; and it is a central hub of technological innovation. Further, as indicated by the funding crisis facing international organizations after Donald Trump slashed US support, international cooperation demands funding that is hard to come by without the world’s richest country pulling its weight. But as much as US involvement is needed to solve global challenges, so is China’s — and defusing tensions with China to a level that allows a working relationship is a core component of a less militaristic foreign policy.

Gaza also points to another lesson for foreign policy: the need for an international approach to counter oligarchy. The wave of antiestablishment Democrats has emphasized economic populism alongside Gaza, and there is a coherence between the two. Public funds were put toward unpopular support to Israel rather than meeting the needs of working-class Americans, elites from university leadership to legacy media closed ranks, and AIPAC poured huge sums of money into targeting critics of Israel.

However, policies to reorient the economy toward the interests of the many will struggle as long as the wealthy have an international escape valve on offer. The rich can shift money to tax havens to avoid increased taxes, corporations can dodge labor and environmental standards by moving operations to lax jurisdictions, and AI regulation may come to face similar arbitrage. Scaremongering can exaggerate these impacts of progressive policies — the US market has enough advantages that few will flee it entirely — but the global race to the bottom is a real challenge. The antidote is global cooperation to raise the floor, such as minimum corporate taxes or even a global minimum wealth tax.

Perhaps most profoundly, Gaza has exposed the ways the foreign policy blob can treat people in the Global South as subhuman and disposable, shredding the legitimacy of American claims to uphold human rights, international law, and democracy. Meaningfully living up to those commitments requires a much broader reorientation of US foreign policy — and crucially, one that extends beyond the realm of peace and security. Domestically, politicians increasingly understand that most Americans’ core concerns are economic: access to health care, affordable housing, good jobs. This holds true internationally too. Especially for the half of humanity living on under $4,000 per year, development is a chief concern.

In this light, excising the harms embedded in mainstream foreign policy is not only about cutting the flow of US-made bombs that fall on Gazan children. It is also about ensuring that money goes to nourishing the one-third of Ethiopian children whose growth is stunted and is not paying off high-interest debts to foreign financial institutions. Correcting an international economy stacked against development will require a new approach to US engagement at institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, ensuring that countries can affordably finance investment and have sufficient policy space and access to technology to move up global value chains. Well-designed international aid, too, has a role to play — and given the role of the world’s richest man in eviscerating aid to the world’s poorest people, reviving the United States Agency for International Development also aligns with the broader agenda of unwinding the influence of the superrich.

One advantage the establishment holds is that it is, well, established. There are relatively low barriers to entry to critiquing a palpably egregious status quo that lends a hand to a genocide. Developing a new, holistic foreign policy vision is a much harder task. Creating it will require a much more developed institutional infrastructure and set of personnel — a counter-blob, so to speak — that can seriously respond to the types of questions demanded of a sitting government.

What should security cooperation with countries like Finland and Djibouti look like? How should the United States balance broader left priorities in trade with keeping the price of imported goods low for consumers? What international reforms should be pursued through the more democratic UN versus potentially more agile multilateral groupings?

Right now, the main people offering up answers to questions like these are the foreign policy establishment that backed a catastrophically wrong policy in Gaza. The moment is ripe for the people who were right on Gaza to come up with their own set of answers, but they won’t get there unless they start asking the right questions.