Vermont senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has been getting flak for failing to make a strong foreign policy statement following the recent attacks in Paris, which journalists and fellow candidates alike agree seemed to demand the U.S. look beyond its own borders and consider its role on the larger global stage.
“Sanders would rather focus on his longtime hobby horse: political revolution and class-based economics” than address the “deadly terror attacks” in Paris, said Guardian journalist Lucia Graves. Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico described Sanders as “knocked off stride” by the shift in focus from economic to foreign policy, while TIME magazine’s Maya Rhodan criticized the senator for “barely [speaking] about the Paris attacks” during his opening remarks at the Nov. 14 Democratic debate. These sources and many others seem to agree that Sanders’s brief line about combatting ISIS during the debate reflected a general reluctance on the senator’s part to discuss his foreign policy platform.
Although we can’t forget that TIME is owned by one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest campaign donors, and therefore isn’t too likely to paint her biggest rival in a rosy light, the other criticisms of Senator Sanders’s foreign policy deserve some examination.
While it’s true the independent senator often chooses to focus his energy and attention on domestic issues, this isn’t to say he lacks a foreign policy.
The crux of Sanders’ foreign policy statements for most of his early campaign has been his vote against the Iraq War in 2002, which he believes is the source of many of the problems currently facing the Gulf region. He is often quick to point out that Hillary Clinton, the more-trusted candidate on questions of foreign policy, supported the war in Iraq.
However, in a recent speech at Georgetown University, Senator Sanders publicly elaborated on how he believes the issue of ISIS should be addressed. “Bernie Sanders believes that the burden of defending this world should not be shouldered just by America,” said Sanders’s top campaign strategist. Instead, he believes the U.S. ought to take part in “an organization that emphasizes cooperation and collaboration to defeat the rise of violent extremism and importantly to address the root causes underlying these brutal acts. We must work with our NATO partners,” he says, “and expand our coalition to include Russia and members of the Arab League.”
“I want to be smart,” Sanders said in an interview with news anchor Katie Couric following the Nov. 14 debate, “I don’t want to see young men and women coming home in caskets. I don’t want to see us spending trillions of dollars on a war. I want to see the entire world coming together and I want to see the Muslim nations on the ground.” In his last statement he agrees with Jordan’s King Abdallah II, who recently “noted that confronting extremism is both a regional and international responsibility, and that it is incumbent on Muslim nations and communities to confront those who seek to hijack their societies and generations with intolerance and violent ideology.”
In Sanders’ own words, “America must defend freedom at home and abroad, but we must seek diplomatic solutions before resorting to military action.” Elaborating further, his website states, “We must move away from policies that favor unilateral military action and preemptive war, and that make the United States the de facto policeman of the world.” Again, Sanders’ stance on foreign policy is to view the U.S. as a single global player rather than the ultimate international interventionist and authority on what other countries can and cannot do.
Instead of acting as the “policeman,” Sanders chooses to take a far more preventative approach, stating on his website, “we cannot combat international terrorism alone. We must work with our allies to root out terrorist funding networks, provide logistical support in the region, disrupt online radicalization, provide humanitarian relief, and support and defend religious freedom. Moreover, we must begin to address the root causes of radicalization, instead of focusing solely on military responses to those who have already become radicalized.” Rather than committing to full-fledged military action, Sanders acknowledges the importance of addressing the causes of radicalization, not just the symptoms. Hillary Clinton’s response on the other hand, is simply, “we have to fight them in air. We have to fight them on the ground. And we have to fight on the Internet”.
One of the “root causes,” as Sanders has stated again and again, is climate change. It’s no secret that one of the major factors behind the Syrian refugee crisis was the extreme drought that drove millions of rural farmers off their land and into already-overcrowded cities. The resulting resource scarcity not only destabilized the region, but the massive population displacement into the cities fostered the perfect conditions for radicalized recruiters, some experts say. Therefore, combatting climate change is an essential strategy to guarding against future waves of radicalization.
Although Sanders believes it is necessary to “remain vigilant to protect us from terrorist attacks at home,” he believes the best way to “expand our global influence [is] by promoting fair trade, addressing global climate change, providing humanitarian relief and economic assistance, defending the rule of law, and promoting human rights.”
While it’s true that Sanders has spoken very little in the debate forum about his foreign policy in deference to his economic reform platform, this is, I would argue, for good reason.
Time again, the U.S. has utilized singular acts of violence as catalysts for extreme military action, while at the same time using the distraction to conveniently push domestic policy issues to the wayside.
While the U.S. spent $1.1 trillion on the Iraq War following 9/11, according to the most recent report from Brown University, the Department of Veterans Affairs reported only $625 million in expenditures for the same period. Meanwhile, the cost of living continued to rise faster than wages, raising the national poverty rate from 12.1 percent to 15.1 percent in the years from 2002 to 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Given how many foreign distractions Senator Sanders has seen America chase in all his years of political office, it is no wonder he continually tries to refocus the public’s attention on the crises closer to home. The attacks in Paris were a tragedy and certainly deserved to be mourned, but they should not be an excuse to run headfirst back into another conflict in the Middle East. As Senator Sanders has stated, it is not America’s role to play the international policeman, nor to risk the lives of our troops for little more than a parade of force. There is much more we can contribute by aiding our potential allies with technological, intellectual, and humanitarian resources, instead of waging war, as Clinton so aptly put it, “in air” and “on the ground.”