AP Photo 2016 Bernie Sanders Is More Serious on Foreign Policy Than You Think

Lawrence Korb, who has worked at several think tanks, served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. The views expressed here are his own, and do not represent the views of any of his employers or the Sanders campaign.

On CNN last week and on Meet the Press this week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders cited me as someone who has given him foreign policy advice. I admit I was surprised to hear this—I have spoken to Senator Sanders only once since he declared his candidacy, in October. In the time since, this fact has been used by the media and his opponents to cast doubt on Sanders’ foreign policy credibility, to point out a supposed weak spot in a surging candidacy: Since I’m not on his campaign, and have met with him only once, how serious could Sanders—the socialist crusader battling the former secretary of state—really be?

The answer is: serious. Since Sanders’ public mention of me, I have been asked repeatedly whether I think his foreign policy positions and experience are sound. I do.


In my dealings with him, and in analyzing his record in Congress over the past 25 years, I have found that Sanders has taken balanced, realistic positions on many of the most critical foreign policy issues facing the country. In the mold of realists like Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, Sanders voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2002, while wisely supporting the war against in Afghanistan in 2001 and the intervention in the Balkans in 1990s. And Sanders certainly isn’t a foreign policy lightweight: In fact, given his long tenure in the House and Senate, he has more foreign policy experience than Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama did when they were running for office the first time.

What would a President Sanders’ foreign policy look like? Based on his record and my conversation with him, I believe it would be rooted in a number of key principles. First is restraint in using American force abroad. As he has stated, and as is demonstrated by his vote against the Iraq War and the first Gulf War, Sanders believes military action should be the last, not first, option and that, when taken, such action should be multilateral. I also believe, based on our conversation, that he would follow the Weinberger Doctrine (also known as the Powell Doctrine): When the United States uses military force abroad, our objectives should be clear, we should be prepared to use all the force necessary to achieve those objectives, and we should know when they have been achieved.

Sanders has demonstrated these principles in Congress. Before the 2016 campaign, I briefed him once, in 2006, when we discussed a foreign policy paper I had coauthored about how the United States could begin a strategic, phased withdrawal from Iraq. Unlike many of his Democratic colleagues, who characterized our plan as cut-and-run, Sanders supported it. He recognized that Iraq was not the most critical front in the war against terror; that America’s involvement there was creating more terrorists in the region and around the globe than we were capturing or killing; and that the Iraq War was diverting attention and resources from the necessary war in Afghanistan.

Sanders’ military restraint extends to spending, too. Since coming to Congress, he has argued forcefully and repeatedly for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon so that we can reduce defense spending. There is no need for the United States to spend more than the next seven top-spending countries in the world combined, several of which are our allies, and more in real dollars than we spent annually on average during the Cold War. As President Obama has pointed out, while America has many challenges in the world, we are not in the midst of World War III.

Twenty-five years after the Cold War, there is also no need to spend a trillion dollars to modernize our nuclear arsenal, and Sanders has even pledged to cut $100 billion in nuclear spending over the next decade. Instead the United States should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Sanders told me he would push for, in order to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for both military or civilian purposes. In fact, Sanders has demonstrated a much more forward-thinking foreign policy. He would, like many of our military leaders, treat climate change as a national security threat and indicated to me that he would seek to have the Senate ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, which defines the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for business, the environment and the management of marine natural resources.

Finally, Sanders has demonstrated an admirable commitment to diplomacy. He is not naive in suggesting, as he has, that the United States should reach out to Iran to try to normalize diplomatic relations. Nor was Nixon naive when he went to China in 1972, at the height of the Cultural Revolution and at a time when Mao Zedong’s government was still providing arms to North Vietnam to kill American troops.

A President Sanders would govern more like a President Dwight Eisenhower, who refused to give in to the demands of the military-industrial complex even after the Russians launched Sputnik, and focused on nation-building at home rather than spending billions on unnecessary weapons systems. Or like Nixon, who cut defense spending dramatically and developed a health care plan more inclusive than Obamacare. Or like Obama, who not only reached out to Iran, but also has tried to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, and who restored diplomatic relations with Cuba.

It’s not just what Sanders promises to do as president. He also has strong experience on foreign policy issues. I advised Reagan and Obama on their campaigns in 1980 and 2008, respectively, and was the co-coordinator of Obama’s foreign policy team. At the time of his first presidential campaign, Reagan had been a two-term governor of California but had never held a position in the federal government, while Obama had been in the Senate for only three years when he announced his candidacy. Sanders, meanwhile, has been in Congress for the past quarter-century, voting on issues like the end of the Cold War, the rise of China, and the military interventions in Somalia, Kuwait, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those who argue that Sanders should get more specific about foreign policy should keep in mind that some of our more successful foreign policy presidents were not all that specific as candidates. Eisenhower said only that he would go to Korea; he had no specific plan for how to end the conflict there, which, by the time of his presidential campaign in 1952, had cost 30,000 American lives and was already a stalemate. Candidate Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam but never said what it was. What’s more, many presidents go back on their campaign promises. Lyndon Johnson said specifically that he would not send American boys to fight wars in Asia, before escalating America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Bill Clinton said he would crack down on the “butchers in Beijing”; he not only failed to do so but also helped get them into the World Trade Organization. George W. Bush said he would have a humble foreign policy, and then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan happened.

Other critics point out that Sanders has not assembled a foreign policy team that could advise him in the White House from Day One. But what matters is not who advises you, but what positions you take. Obama gave his “dumb war” speech about Iraq while he was a state senator, without a cadre of foreign policy advisers. And learning who is advising a candidate does not necessarily tell you who will be part of his or her administration. How many members of Obama’s campaign team envisioned him appointing his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, or keeping Robert Gates, a longtime Republican operative and supporter of the war in Iraq and the surge, as secretary of defense?

It is hard to know what challenges the next president might face. That’s why, ultimately, judgment matters more than experience for a potential president. The presidents I have advised—Reagan and Obama, as well as George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State John Kerry—all showed great judgment in considering, but not bowing to, the advice of the foreign policy establishment. Reagan proved wise in choosing to withdraw from Lebanon and negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev, and Obama has smartly avoided getting involved in the Syrian civil war, negotiated an arms-control deal with Iran and set a deadline to end the surge in Afghanistan.

I have no doubt that Sanders will be willing to challenge the foreign policy establishment, as Obama did on such issues. Does Sanders have the same amount of foreign policy experience as Hillary Clinton? Obviously not. But Bill Clinton had far less foreign policy experience than George H.W. Bush, and Obama had less than John McCain—and both presidents had effective foreign policies. If he is elected, I believe Sanders will also be able to attract a competent foreign policy cohort, just as Obama did—including many of the current Clinton team. With the right partners in place—and, above all, the right principals and instincts—a President Sanders could be just the foreign policy president we need.