Bernie Sanders Should Push for a New Realism in Foreign Policy

Bernie Sanders Should Push for a New Realism in Foreign Policy

Bernie Sanders Should Push for a New Realism in Foreign Policy

Sanders is helping to energize and educate a new generation coming into American politics—it is imperative that a real security agenda be part of that education.

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Donald Trump’s formal foreign-policy address last week hurled a stick into the hive of the foreign-policy establishment. Republican and Democrat foreign-policy mavens erupted and buzzed around to attack the intruder. Anyone not reading the text would think it was a contradictory spewing of nonsense, another in the long line of Trump outrages. In fact, the reaction to the speech was far more revealing than Trump’s address itself.

The Clinton campaign brought out former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) to respond. Albright, a supporter of Bush’s Iraq debacle and promoter of America as an “indispensable nation,” scornfully announced that she was “hoping for something that made sense.” Kaine termed Trump’s use of the words “America First”disqualifying. Neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer damned it for echoing President Obama’s foreign policy. The Washington Post editorial board dismissed Trump’s argument as “loose, frequently contradictory and embedded in a bucket of falsehoods,” suggesting it reflected the “isolationism of Robert A. Taft” and Pat Buchanan’s “fondness for authoritarian regimes.”

Trump’s speech did recycle many of the lies that Republicans routinely tell about Obama’s foreign policy. He accused Obama of apologizing to enemies and alienating friends. He called the Iran nuclear deal a disgrace and wrongly claimed Iran is violating it. He postured that Obama’s failure to enforce the “line in the sand in Syria” was a measure of weakness. He charged Obama with mistreating Israel, gutting missile defense and abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic. Although Trump read from a teleprompter, the prepared speech didn’t cover up the shallowness of his understanding.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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