People should pay more attention to Bernie Sanders on foreign policy

Judy Woodruff:

Senator, a question about foreign policy.

As you know, President Trump this month pulled out 1,000 U.S. troops from Syria, from Northern Syria. He's been criticized by people in both political parties as selling out the Kurds.

You in the past have been someone who has been, to put it mildly, skeptical of the value of U.S. troops abroad. What would you do if you were president right now about Syria? Would you put those troops back in?

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Well, two things.

Judy, you're certainly right. I would say the word skeptical is an understatement. I helped lead the opposition to the war in Iraq. And, tragically, much of what I feared ended up taking place.

And I will say this, that I think Trump's betrayal of the Kurds, people who lost 10,000 soldiers fighting against ISIS, is one of the worst foreign policy and military decisions ever made by any president in the history of this country. It is outrageous.

And it's going to haunt us for a long time, because our allies all over the world are going to say, can we really trust the United States of America to stand with us?

Now, Syria, as you well know, is an enormously complicated issue. You have got a president there who has used chemical weapons against his own people.

But our job right now is to work with the international community, with our allies to prevent further Russian gains and Iranian gains in that region, bring stability to that area, and do everything we can to create a peaceful situation in terms of what's going on there right now.

Judy Woodruff:

So would you put the troops back into Northern Syria?

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Well, you are asking me how I would undo the damage that Trump has inflicted on us in that region.

It's something I think that, as a nation and as a community, as allies, I — we and our allies are going to have to work together on that issue.

But what Trump did is unforgivable in terms of his betrayal of the Kurds.

Judy Woodruff:

You would have left the troops there?

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Yes, I would have.

Judy Woodruff:

And, finally, Senator…

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

I think, when you deal with troop withdrawal, when you deal with the — trying to end endless wars, was you don't do it based on a phone call with Erdogan of Turkey, and you don't do it through a tweet.

I mean, these are difficult issues. We want our troops home. I will do everything I can to end our involvement in endless wars. But you don't do it just based on a phone call with the president of Turkey.

Judy Woodruff:

Senator Bernie Sanders, joining us today from Vermont, thank you very much.

I suspect many members of the American left have been looking for their leaders to speak out on this. On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders came through with a searing op-ed in the Guardian condemning this far-right movement and calling it out for the serious threat it is. He calls it "a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet – economically, socially and environmentally – is at stake ... we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis."

Sanders didn't use the term "axis" by accident. He writes:

While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests. ... This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.

It is extremely important that one of the most important leaders of the American left puts this is such stark and evocative terms. He calls out the corrupt, authoritarian leadership of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, China and more and makes the connections among them clear, calling them part of a "common front" sharing tactics and even some of the same mega-rich funders.

Sanders doesn't offer specific policies to combat this threat, beyond his social-democratic economic agenda and standard non-interventionist philosophy but that's not the important part. He is issuing a wake-up call to the American left:

In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power. 

Such a movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we would like to see. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now. 

We must look honestly at how that order has failed to deliver on many of its promises, and how authoritarians have adeptly exploited those failures in order to build support for their agenda. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace.

Neither the American left nor the international left is buying into Bannon and company's cramped, ugly, Hobbesian worldview and it never will. The right-wing racists and nationalists are on their own.