Read Carefully

In the Brooklyn College speech in which Bernie Sanders officially kicked off his 2020 campaign, he once again articulated a new vision for American foreign policy he has been carefully laying out since the early days of the Trump administration. It’s worth listening to his 2017 Westminster College speech where he really laid it out for the first time.

Bernie has big ideas when it comes to foreign policy, the bedrock being significant cuts and restructuring of the American military machine, and a total shift in our international posture away from interventionism and toward collaboration on pressing issues of the day, like climate change. This new foreign policy focus is only further boasted by Bernie’s previous record, by which he stands out for his strong opposition to the war in Iraq.

In a way many politicians seem unwilling to do, Bernie has tied his foreign policy to his domestic policy in a big way. Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, tuition free college, basically every single program Bernie Sanders campaigns on will require new government expenditures. There are a lot of ways to raise the additional revenue and Bernie Sanders campaigns on many of them, from a Wall Street speculation tax, to raising the estate tax. However, another route Bernie Sanders has laid out to pay for his agenda, is dismantling the American military industrial complex.

American military spending is over half the budget. It represents more spending than the next ten countries combined. To say we can’t afford investment in social programs without reckoning with these programs is irresponsible and dishonest. For example, military spending has increased more since 2016 by enough to pay for five years of tuition free higher education. When Republicans talk about deficits and cutting spending military spending is almost never on the table. So if a politician says we can’t afford social programs because of the deficit, their position on military spending should be your next step.

For Bernie it’s Bigger than Domestic Spending, Interventionism Needs to end as well

Bernie Sanders ties this fiscal responsibility and a shift toward domestic social spending to a broader argument about the misguided role American military power has played on the world stage in the last few decades. Bernie has consistently made a broad critique of military intervention, siting unintended consequences and humanitarian crisis. The critique starts with the 1952 CIA coup of the democratically elected government of Iran, to the war in Vietnam, to the two wars in Iraq, and goes right on through every modern offshoot of the war on terror and potential interventions in places like Venezuela.

Bernie Sanders has consistently opposed U.S. military intervention. He started his career as an anti-war candidate with an anti-war third party. As mayor of Burlington he etched out a mayoral foreign policy staunchly opposed to Ronald Reagan’s various forays into Latin and South America. In the House of Representatives Bernie Sanders was one of the few people to oppose the first war in Iraq and again stood as one of the few opposed to the second. In the Trump era Bernie Sanders has pushed to use the War Powers Act to limit American supplies and military personnel from continuing the Saudi led military campaign that has potentially killed hundreds of thousands and displaced even more in Yemen.

Bernie Sanders has tied his broader campaign for cuts in military spending to a moral argument against military intervention, which is the first step in building popular support for cutting the military budget to begin with. This also speaks to Bernie’s consistency, almost 30 years of foreign policy decisions have all been based on the same bedrock principle. The United States needs to stay out of foreign military campaigns, both direct and indirect. Couple that with an added moral imperative by pointing out what Eisenhower pointed out so many decades ago, every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on the poor, homeless, and hungry, of which there are millions in the United States.

Bernie Sanders has created a comprehensive leftist vision of foreign policy. In a world where candidates flock to the beltway hacks which helped lead us to disastrous regime change war after regime change war, Bernie’s anti-intervention stance is a breath of fresh air. Add to that the fact the president actually wields significant authority in the realm of foreign policy and Bernie has the potential to fundamentally reshape America on the world stage. And if the last few decades are any indication, or you think our ability to fight global issues like climate change is important, that’s a transformation we should all welcome with open arms.