While serving as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders made foreign travel something of a priority, a rarity for an elected official involved in city government. He even set off on a trip to the Soviet Union after marrying his wife, Jane, in an effort to cement a sister-city relationship. (“Trust me. It was a very strange honeymoon,” Sanders wrote in his updated memoir Outsider In the White House.)

Throughout his travels, Sanders has articulated the idea that domestic and foreign priorities are inextricably linked. He has consistently railed against corporate power and advocated for workers’ rights, applying the same lens to foreign policy that he uses to diagnose many of the problems he sees in American society. That’s the picture that emerges from an examination of public travel records and media coverage of his trips; Sanders’s memoir; a partial list of countries he has visited provided by his Senate office; and Legistorm, a database that tracks privately financed congressional travel.

Ever the activist, Sanders has traveled abroad to voice opposition to American foreign policy and U.S. military intervention. As mayor of Burlington, Sanders was an outspoken opponent of president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy and visited Nicaragua in 1985 to show support for the left-wing Sandinista government, a regime Reagan worked to undermine. Sanders met with Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega during the trip, which was intended as a political statement. Sanders explained that his aim was “to convey to the Nicaraguan people that, in my view, a majority of Americans do not believe it is appropriate for the United States to unilaterally overthrow governments which it dislikes,” according to Steven Soifer’s The Socialist Mayor: Bernard Sanders in Burlington, Vermont.

In expressing dissent, Sanders outlined a vision for U.S. conduct on the global stage, arguing that America is at its best when it engages with the rest of the world on an equal footing, and not on the basis of brute force. “We want our nation to be bold and brave, but not with guns, and not with machine guns, and not with Napalm,” Sanders said in a speech during his trip to Nicaragua. Instead, Sanders argued, America should “work out problems based on mutual respect” with other nations. The message signaled his concern with America’s image abroad. Sanders seemed determined to put forward an alternative to the foreign policy ideals envisioned by the U.S. political establishment, to show that he and like-minded Americans were sympathetic to the concerns of citizens of other countries who might mistrust American foreign policy and military intervention.

Sanders hasn’t shied away from critiquing American policy even when it risks controversy and backlash. “Sanders’s trip to Nicaragua was a very bold move. Mainstream Vermont politicians did not quite know what to make of it,” Soifer wrote. In 2003, Sanders raised concerns over government surveillance and the Patriot Act during a trip to Toronto, Canada, at a time when many Americans were largely in favor of the law that stood at the heart of America’s war on terror. In 2011, Sanders called for an exit strategy for U.S. troops in Afghanistan after returning from a visit to the country, and suggested that military operations cost too much. “I think we can cut back," Sanders told a Vermont media outlet.