Sanders Should Challenge the Foreign-Policy Status Quo

Sanders Should Challenge the Foreign-Policy Status Quo

Sanders Should Challenge the Foreign-Policy Status Quo

We desperately need to overturn a foreign policy that grows ever more divorced from the interests and security concerns of the vast majority of Americans.

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Global economic troubles threaten our economy, a cold war heats up with Russia, the Middle East is aflame, and 2015 was the hottest year on record, as climate change accelerates. Despite this, the presidential campaigns have offered little more than foreign policy by bumper sticker.

In the Republican race, particularly now that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has ended his campaign, the debate has descended into bellicose posturing, xenophobia, fervid denunciations of all things Obama and, of course, climate change denial. The candidates vie to rip up the Iran deal, rev up a new cold war with Russia, fan the flames in the Middle East and walk away from the progress made in Paris on climate.

Democrats have a genuine opportunity to offer a sorely needed new, real security agenda. Yet we’ve seen little evidence of it. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has made a stirring argument about our rigged economy and our corrupted politics, electrifying young voters and unsettling the party establishment’s favorite, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. But Sanders has said little about foreign policy, apparently viewing it as a distraction from his core economic message.

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.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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