The Nation: Bernie Sanders Just Gave the Progressive Foreign-Policy Speech Weve Been Waiting For

[JHan]

85. First the good bits:

It is good for us to be aware of how shortsighted our foreign policy has been over the years. Bernie is right to point this out.
However, I have heard similar speeches a million times before. I don't know what the author was "waiting for" unless they don't avail themselves of what other people say.

I have heard Obama speak with soaring rhetoric , Bill Clinton speaking about the promise of a better tomorrow, and Hillary herself.

Anyone could stand in front of people and make soaring speeches about world peace.

I was looking out for certain details as to why conflicts happen - the particulars. Why certain countries suffer despite being resource rich, the effects of corruption on wealth creation for all and how that drives conflict, how to address historical and political divides which feed conflicts...The understanding that resources are finite and how to develop a more sustainable approach towards economic development. Nothing Sanders said has not been said before by Secretaries of State and Presidents.

And I am not the only one who feels this way re present foreign policy : https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/21/16345602/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-speech-westminster

"Yet he decries both full-scale US military intervention and the use of drone strikes and other airstrikes to kill terrorists around the world. That’s all well and good, but then how does he plan to address the threat — both to the US directly and to the security, stability, and prosperity of people around the world — from groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, if not by some combination of military intervention or drone and airstrikes?

Does he have an alternative idea of how to approach the threat from international terrorist groups, beyond the vague notion that if everyone is happy and prosperous, terrorism will automatically disappear? If he does, he failed to share it with the rest of us during his speech.

Similarly, while Sanders sang the praises of the Iran nuclear deal and encouraged Trump not to pull the US out of it — which would essentially destroy the deal — he never mentions the very real concerns the Trump administration and many of the deal’s supporters and detractors have raised about Iran’s other dangerous and destabilizing actions, such as its support for terrorist groups and sectarian militias throughout the Middle East, its atrocious human rights record at home, and its continued testing of ballistic missiles.

And while he rightly slams the US for supporting Saudi Arabia in its disastrous war in Yemen, he fails to acknowledge that the Obama administration gave that support in the first place in order to convince Saudi Arabia to support the Iran nuclear deal and to do more to help fight ISIS in Syria.

And then there’s North Korea — probably the most acute foreign policy challenge the United States is currently facing and one that carries the threat of potential nuclear war. Sanders correctly acknowledges the failure of past efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and the urgent need to confront the threat.

“Despite past efforts they have repeatedly shown their determination to move forward with these programs in defiance of virtually unanimous international opposition and condemnation,” Sanders said of the North Korean regime.

Yet his prescription for how to solve the problem is just more of the same:

As we saw with the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, real US leadership is shown by our ability to develop consensus around shared problems, and mobilize that consensus toward a solution. That is the model we should be pursuing with North Korea.

As we did with Iran, if North Korea continues to refuse to negotiate seriously, we should look for ways to tighten international sanctions. This will involve working closely with other countries, particularly China, on whom North Korea relies for some 80 percent of its trade. But we should also continue to make clear that this is a shared problem, not to be solved by any one country alone but by the international community working together.

So we should work together with other countries to tighten sanctions on North Korea and try to get China to cut off its trade ties with the North. In other words, the same basic policy President Trump is currently pursuing and that President Obama pursued before him. How this will magically solve the problem when — as Sanders himself just admitted — it has consistently failed to do so thus far is something Sanders conveniently fails to address."

I'm sure if that speech were given by anyone other than Sanders, the author of the article in the OP would say it's more of the same.

this is what I don't get, the unnecessary adulation of what was actually a very middle of the road, safe speech that would not have gotten headlines were it not for the speaker.