Foreign policy differences among 2020 Dems

[Mr. Morden]

Warren has teamed up with Adam Smith in the House to propose a bill that would codify in law that the US will not launch a first strike of nuclear weapons:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-democrats-introduce-bill-to-prevent-us-from-striking-first-with-nuclear-weapons/2019/01/30/a5959ee6-24bc-11e9-ba08-caf4ff5a3433_story.html

[John Dule]

Warren has teamed up with Adam Smith in the House to propose a bill that would codify in law that the US will not launch a first strike of nuclear weapons:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-democrats-introduce-bill-to-prevent-us-from-striking-first-with-nuclear-weapons/2019/01/30/a5959ee6-24bc-11e9-ba08-caf4ff5a3433_story.html

I understand the logic behind it, but it's still silly policy. The far left likes to use nukes as the big bad boogeyman of the world, but there's a reason we haven't had a major conflict between global powers since WWII. Hint: It's not because of the UN.

[Mr. Morden]

This story notes that last month Booker became a co-sponsor of the anti-BDS bill that Gillibrand infamously supported and then withdrew support from.  It says he's the only prospective 2020 Dem. to support it currently, though the list of cosponsors is here:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/720/cosponsors

and Michael Bennet, who has recently said that he might also run for prez, is also cosponsoring it.  But all the other 2020ers are staying away, including those who are normally hawkish on foreign policy, like Klobuchar:

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Looks like Booker flipped on the anti-BDS bill, while Klobuchar ended up voting for it in the end, after being noncommittal earlier:

link

Among those contemplating a presidential run (or already running), only Bennet and Klobuchar voted for it.  Booker, Brown, Gillibrand, Harris, Merkley, Sanders, and Warren voted against.

Then today we got this bill that criticizes the proposed withdrawal of forces from Syria and Afghanistan:

link

Bennet voted for, while Booker, Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, Merkley, Sanders, and Warren voted against.  Brown was absent.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Not a single source included? I'd love to know what bills we're talking about here.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Not a single source included? I'd love to know what bills we're talking about here.

I found the 3 Senate votes they used. It's these 2:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00199
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00212

Plus 1 or the other of these, they're the same for the listed Senators:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00147
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00181


For a bonus I found this one from when Trump was President-elect:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=2&vote=00159

[UWS]

Warren backs Syria/Afghanistan withdrawal (unclear from this context if she means more of a withdrawal from Afghanistan than what Trump proposes):

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/politics/elizabeth-warren-troops-syria/index.html

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LOL. They are already conceding to Trump on Syria/Afghanistan because they know he is right.

Warren and Sanders represent the Dove side of the party, so yeah, if any Dems were gonna agree with Trump on this, its these two.

Not so much. During his 2016 campaign, Sanders opposed any expansion of NATO, declaring that it is a « waste of taxpayer money » and would increase tensions with Russia and yet in 2017 he supported Montenegro’s ascension as NATO member.

http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-nato/

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00098

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Warren backs Syria/Afghanistan withdrawal (unclear from this context if she means more of a withdrawal from Afghanistan than what Trump proposes):

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/politics/elizabeth-warren-troops-syria/index.html

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LOL. They are already conceding to Trump on Syria/Afghanistan because they know he is right.

Warren and Sanders represent the Dove side of the party, so yeah, if any Dems were gonna agree with Trump on this, its these two.

Not so much. During his 2016 campaign, Sanders opposed any expansion of NATO, declaring that it is a « waste of taxpayer money » and would increase tensions with Russia and yet in 2017 he supported Montenegro’s ascension as NATO member.

http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-nato/

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00098

I think that was more about neighbors of Russia, how it would increase tensions to have Finland or some other former Soviet Republics join.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Not a single source included? I'd love to know what bills we're talking about here.

I found the 3 Senate votes they used. It's these 2:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00199
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00212

Plus 1 or the other of these, they're the same for the listed Senators:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00147
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00181


For a bonus I found this one from when Trump was President-elect:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=2&vote=00159

Interesting to note then that Tulsi Gabbard also opposed all three votes;

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll378.xml
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll230.xml
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2016/roll600.xml

Thank you! 

[Comrade Funk]

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Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

[John Dule]

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Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

Spoken like someone who's never lived in a country that was surrounded by foreign powers on all sides.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

A senate bill siding with the Trump administration to rebuke Obama for supporting a UN resolution calling for Israel to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank

Co-sponsors: Harris, Klobuchar, Booker, Gillibrand, Brown, Bennet
Not a sponsor: Sanders, Warren, Merkley

www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-resolution/6/cosponsors

[Shadows]

A senate bill siding with the Trump administration to rebuke Obama for supporting a UN resolution calling for Israel to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank

Co-sponsors: Harris, Klobuchar, Booker, Gillibrand, Brown, Bennet
Not a sponsor: Sanders, Warren, Merkley

www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-resolution/6/cosponsors

Harris Klobuchar Booker are all shi*

[Big Abraham]

Not a sponsor: Sanders, Warren, Merkley

Three anti-Semites, obviously

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

A senate bill siding with the Trump administration to rebuke Obama for supporting a UN resolution calling for Israel to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank

Co-sponsors: Harris, Klobuchar, Booker, Gillibrand, Brown, Bennet
Not a sponsor: Sanders, Warren, Merkley

www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-resolution/6/cosponsors

Wow. This may have singlehandedly pushed me into the Sanders / Warren camp more than I already was. Disappointed in both Harris and Gillibrand.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

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Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

Where exactly do you want to expand NATO beyond its current borders? Unless you plan to add Ukraine or Georgia, which would be a huge provocation, NATO has pretty much reached the limit of its possible borders.

[Big Abraham]

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Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

Where exactly do you want to expand NATO beyond its current borders? Unless you plan to add Ukraine or Georgia, which would be a huge provocation, NATO has pretty much reached the limit of its possible borders.

Try telling that to Karpatsky

[Mr. Morden]

Sanders and Warren sign pledge to end "Forever War":

https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-end-forever-war-1351424

“The United States has been in a state of continuous, global, open-ended military conflict since 2001. Over 2.5 million troops have fought in this ‘Forever War’ in over a dozen countries—including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Niger, Somalia, and Thailand,” reads the pledge signed by the lawmakers.

It goes on, “I pledge to the people of the United States of America, and to our military community in particular, that I will (1) fight to reclaim Congress’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of U.S. foreign policy and independently debate whether to authorize each new use of military force, and (2) act to bring the Forever War to a responsible and expedient conclusion.”

[Sestak]

Anti-Expansion: Bernie is against the expansion of NATO because it provokes unnecessary aggression from Russia. Moreover, he believes European nations should fund more of the costs of an alliance primarily intended to protect their continent.

Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

Spoken like someone who's never lived in a country that was surrounded by foreign powers on all sides.

Isn’t that every landlocked country?

[Gustaf]

Anti-Expansion: Bernie is against the expansion of NATO because it provokes unnecessary aggression from Russia. Moreover, he believes European nations should fund more of the costs of an alliance primarily intended to protect their continent.

Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

Spoken like someone who's never lived in a country that was surrounded by foreign powers on all sides.

Isn’t that every landlocked country?

I suspect that he's regurgitating the soundbite without realizing that it doesn't make sense without the addition of a word like "hostile," which has the effect of making this attempt at a political crack sound more like a tautology. "Spoken like someone who's never lived on an island that is surrounded by water on all sides!"

And even so most countries "surrounding" Russia are hostile towards Russia because of their repeated attempts to invade and enslave them.

[Karpatsky]

Anti-Expansion: Bernie is against the expansion of NATO because it provokes unnecessary aggression from Russia. Moreover, he believes European nations should fund more of the costs of an alliance primarily intended to protect their continent.

Wow, this is incredibly terrible policy. I didn't know Bernie's foreign policy was that naive.

Anti-Expansion: Bernie is against the expansion of NATO because it provokes unnecessary aggression from Russia. Moreover, he believes European nations should fund more of the costs of an alliance primarily intended to protect their continent.

Ah yes. It's NATO who is provoking tensions with Russia, and not the Russians themselves. What a load of crap.

Where exactly do you want to expand NATO beyond its current borders? Unless you plan to add Ukraine or Georgia, which would be a huge provocation, NATO has pretty much reached the limit of its possible borders.

Reaction to aggression isn't provocation.

To answer your question in good faith: First priority, Finland and Sweden. The most likely target for Russian aggression in EU territory in the case of serious escalation is Gotland, which would severely limit NATO's ability to operate in the Baltic and to reinforce the Baltic States in case of invasion. Bringing these states under the collective security umbrella would significantly deter such an attack and so lessen the chance of serious conflict.

Second priority, Ireland, Austria, and Cyprus. Right now the EU's CSDP is defanged given most of its members prioritize collective defense via NATO. Consolidating the entirety of the EU within NATO would allow European defense to be developed in conjunction with rather than as an alternative to NATO.

Third priority, Ukraine and Georgia. These are the states where Russian aggression is at its height, and taking a forwards stance here is necessary to send a (very belated) signal to the world that such aggression is not acceptable.

Fourth priority, the rest of the Balkans, likely to happen in conjunction with EU accession.

Fifth priority, Belarus, Armenia and Russia, obviously after significant democratization and change in foreign policy in these countries. This will consolidate NATO as a truly pan-European security organization and begin the pivot to using the organization for containment of China, for which there was an opportunity in the '90s had there been better politicking by the Clinton and Yeltsin administrations. This is what I intend to spend my career attempting to accomplish.

Sixth priority, the Central Asian states, to complete this pivot.

Following this, the goal would be consolidating other friendly actors in the rest of the world into a single organization, eg Japan, South Korea, Australia/NZ, to create a truly global liberal internationalist bloc capable of promoting democracy and opposing threats to the world order wherever it is. But this would no longer be called NATO and will not be achieved until after I'm dead, so I'll stop there.

[Mr. Morden]

Among the prospective-but-not-yet-declared 2020 Dems, de Blasio is the lone potential 2020 candidate to speak at AIPAC this year.  Harris also met with AIPAC reps in her office, while skipping the conference itself.

But Delaney says he would have attended the conference if not for a scheduling conflict:

https://twitter.com/JohnDelaney/status/1110177549609361408

[Mr. Morden]

Gabbard's reaction on Assange:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1116436134547087361

[Mr. Morden]

Fred Kaplan has a story on Biden’s foreign policy, which covers the scope of his career, but I’ll quote from the Obama era portion, because it deals with his most recent thinking:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/biden-obama-foreign-policy-record-2020.html

[On Afghanistan in 2009], Biden was the main—almost the sole—advocate of a more minimal approach: sending just 10,000 more troops solely for counterterrorism operations and to train the Afghan army. The majority argued that Biden’s proposal wouldn’t solve the problem; Biden countered that their approach wouldn’t either—that it would cost too much, last too long, and go far beyond the mission that brought U.S. forces into Afghanistan to begin with.

Obama sided with the majority, but imposed an 18-month deadline to show progress. The chiefs assured him that they could get the job done; in fact, they knew that they couldn’t and figured that the president would give them more time, and maybe more troops, down the road. He didn’t. In the end, Obama withdrew the extra troops and adopted Biden’s approach.

Biden had other differences with Obama: more hawkish on some issues, less so on others. (In that sense, as well as many others, Trump is wrong in painting Biden as a mere Obama clone.) When Russia annexed Crimea and sent special forces into eastern Ukraine, Biden sided with advisers who wanted to ship Ukraine anti-tank missiles and other “lethal defensive weapons” (though he opposed sending heavier weapons, much less U.S. troops). He argued that, while the Ukrainians couldn’t win a battle with Russia, they could send some of the special forces home in body bags, a sight that might erode domestic support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and thus deter him from sending more troops. Obama, thinking that the Russians would only escalate a battle that he couldn’t win on the ground, decided not to ship lethal weapons but instead to send Ukraine economic aid and to organize international sanctions against Moscow.

The vice president also supported bombing Syria in 2013, after its president, Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons against his own people, thus crossing a “red line” that Obama had laid down. Obama delegated the decision to Congress, which declined to give him authority (and then criticized him afterward for not bombing).

On the other hand, Biden opposed intervening in Libya, against Obama, this time siding with Gates and the joint chiefs; Obama went with Clinton and national security adviser Susan Rice, who favored the move. It has been reported that Biden opposed the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, but this isn’t quite so. At the NSC meeting to discuss the options, he proposed delaying the decision, at some risk, in order to get better drone photos of the site since, at the time, U.S. intelligence agencies said there was only a 60 or 70 percent chance that the man sketchily seen at the compound was in fact bin Laden. In the end, as the two men went up to Obama’s residence after the meeting, Biden advised him to go with his gut.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

So basically late Biden is more dovish than Obama? At least, more of the opponent of military intervention. Interesting.


Opposed intervening in Libya. Like Trump.
Wanted to ship Ukraine “lethal defensive weapons”. Like Trump did.
Opposed digging into Afghanistan. Like Trump.
Wanted to bomb Assad. Like Trump did.


So like Trump, but with fetish about NATO. I start to really like Biden. Obama would be a descent president if he listened more to Biden and less to Hillary...


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