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Bernie Sanders is America’s best hope for a sane foreign policy

In the American foreign policy discussion, socialists are often presented as gormless naifs — people whose utopian projects might sound good in theory, but who can’t be trusted to exercise real power in a dangerous world. Only hard-nosed liberals or conservatives can make the tough decisions required to protect American interests.

Yet it is beyond question that, for at least the last 20 years now, American foreign policy has indeed been in the grips of starry-eyed utopian cranks — the imperialist variety, whose violent madcap schemes have unleashed hell across the globe, for no purpose or benefit to anyone but a narrow elite. Most recently, the supposedly anti-war President Trump has assassinated Iran’s most important military leader under the delusional belief that it will somehow reduce instability and violence in the region.

Meanwhile, the 2020 presidential candidate with the most serious, realistic foreign policy agenda is the self-identified socialist, Bernie Sanders. Sanders promises the most stubborn confrontation with this lunatic militarism on offer, and the best possibility that America might become a responsible member of the international community.

Sanders shuttle: Trump trial could trap candidates in D.C. One senator has an escape plan.

Less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidates should be finalizing plans for campaign blitzes in the state with the nation’s first nominating contest.

Instead, five 2020 contenders are wondering how often they’ll be able to set foot there at all, with senators preparing to sit as jurors in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, which is expected to begin sometime this month.

The Senate has not yet set rules or a schedule for the trial, but many senators, including some of those running for the Democratic presidential nomination, believe it will look something like Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. Senators met for the trial every afternoon, six days a week, Monday through Saturday, from Jan. 7 to Feb. 12.

A Trump trial lasting that long has the potential to disrupt campaigning in both Iowa (which votes Feb. 3) and New Hampshire (which votes Feb. 11).

Of the five senator-candidates — Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Michael Bennet of Colorado — Sanders appears to be the best positioned to balance his senatorial duties with campaigning.

Sanders’ war chest, including his field-leading $34.5 million haul in the last quarter of 2019, allows him flexibility that other contenders can’t match — including the use of private jets to ferry him back and forth for late rallies in early states.

“They’re not going to be meeting at night [for the trial], so we can obviously fly from D.C. to states and hold events in the evening and fly back, you know, so he can be back in the morning to do his work in the Senate,” Sanders campaign adviser Jeff Weaver told NBC News.

“He’s an energetic candidate,” Weaver added. “He has a very vigorous schedule, and, you know, he can do that.”

Sanders unloads on Biden as battle for Iowa intensifies

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) unloaded on former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday night, intensifying a battle between two top contenders for the Democratic nomination with the Iowa caucuses less than a month away.

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Sanders attacked Biden’s record on foreign policy, trade and entitlements and questioned Biden’s electability in key Midwestern states.

The new attacks come just 28 days before the Iowa caucuses.

Polling has been sparse in recent weeks, but both Biden and Sanders look strong in the final stretch, with polls finding them jockeying for a top finish alongside former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

On Monday night, Sanders ripped Biden for voting to authorize military action in Iraq in 2002. Sanders voted against the measure.

“Joe Biden voted and helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq, the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country,” Sanders said.

Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren all walk into Dubuque … Here’s what the people who saw them said

Mike Fleming of Dubuque had a busy weekend.

Former Vice President Joe Biden was in his hometown Friday morning, and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders stopped there about 24 hours later. About five hours after Sanders’ event wrapped, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren had a town hall of her own less than three miles away.

Fleming, 65 and retired, hoped to catch all three. After all, a slew of leading candidates for the Democratic nomination don’t visit town every day. But it does happen sometimes. Especially in Iowa, a month before the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

The first weekend of 2020, which also happened to be the one-month-from-caucus marker, highlighted intense focus on Iowa from the still-crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates.

Nine cities had multiple candidates visiting within a day or two of each other; three had multiple presidential contenders on the same day at separate events. Over the course of 24 hours, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Biden and Warren were all in Davenport. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Biden and Sanders were all in Waterloo within 24 hours.

In Anamosa, a place named as the Pumpkin Capital of Iowa with a population just over 5,000, Biden and Sanders were even at the same venue, the National Motorcycle Museum, albeit about 22 hours apart from each other.

Fleming listed Biden, Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as his top three candidates, but said he likely won’t settle on a candidate until caucus night. Seeing the candidates, and basking in the atmosphere of their events, gives a fuller impression of their campaign than media coverage or advertisements, he said, though he didn’t dismiss the glimpses those mediums offered.

The Biden event Fleming attended was smaller than Sanders’, though also on a Friday morning versus a Saturday afternoon. Biden had “a grandfatherly approach that says, ‘everything is going to be alright. I’ll take care of business,'” Fleming said, while Sanders had a “pump them up, let’s do this,” atmosphere. Sanders’ question-and-answer session with the 650 people at Dubuque Senior High School felt especially insightful, he said.

‘They Fear Someone Will Go There and Tell the Truth,’ Says Iran’s Top Diplomat as Trump White House Bars Him From US

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Tuesday confirmed reports that the Trump administration has denied him a visa to enter the U.S. for a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week, a move the diplomat said was motivated by a desire to suppress facts about the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

“This is because they fear someone will go there and tell the truth to the American people,” Zarif told reporters from Tehran. “But they are mistaken. The world is not limited to New York. You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that.”

Zarif’s remarks came after Foreign Policy, citing three anonymous diplomatic sources, reported Monday that the Trump administration had decided to bar the foreign minister from entering the U.S., “violating the terms of a 1947 headquarters agreement requiring Washington to permit foreign officials into the country to conduct U.N. business.”

The U.N. meeting Thursday would have been Zarif’s first address to the international community since the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, which the Iranian foreign minister condemned as an “act of terrorism.”

According to Foreign Policy, Iran was “awaiting word on the visa Monday when a Trump administration official phoned U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to inform him that the United States would not allow Zarif into the country.”

Larry Johnson, a former U.N assistant secretary-general, said the U.S. is “absolutely obligated” to let Zarif into the country under the terms of the 1947 U.N. headquarters agreement.

“Any foreign minister is entitled to address the Security Council at any time and the United States is obligated to provide access to the U.N. headquarters district,” Johnson told Foreign Policy.

‘Because Insects Are Key to Our Own Survival,’ 73 Scientists Unveil Global Roadmap to Battle Bugpocalypse

Highlighting the “strong scientific consensus that the decline of insects, other arthropods, and biodiversity as a whole, is a very real and serious threat that society must urgently address,” 73 international scientists on Monday published a roadmap to battle the world’s “bugpocalypse.”

The roadmap, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, explains that a mounting body of research shows “a suite of anthropogenic stressors—habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, invasive species, climate change, and overharvesting—are seriously reducing insect and other invertebrate abundance, diversity, and biomass.”

The scientists note that in September 2019 the German government announced a €100 million ($111.9 million USD) “action plan for insect protection” that includes safeguarding key habitats, restricting pesticides, reducing light pollution, and investing in research.

“This funding should act as a clarion call to other nations across the world—especially wealthier ones—to follow suit,” the letter says of the German initiative, calling for “the immediate implementation of several ‘no-regret’ measures” on a global scale.

Among the immediate steps that the scientists propose to protect bugs worldwide are:

Aggressively curbing planet-heating emissions;
Cutting back on the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers;
Limiting light, water, and noise pollution;
Preventing the introduction of invasive and alien species;
Pursuing conservation efforts for vulnerable, threatened, and endangered species; and
Funding programs targeted at the public, farmers, land managers, policymakers, and conservation workers.

The roadmap for insect conservation and recovery also features mid-term and long-term actions as well as a call for large-scale assessments to monitor the status of insects groups.

Why Trump should fear Sanders much more than Warren in 2020

It is conventional political wisdom that President Trump stands his best chance in 2020 if Democrats nominate a far left candidate like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. That is half right. I have witnessed both of these candidates up close as a former chairman of the Vermont Republican Party when Sanders rose from the backbench of the House to the Senate, and as campaign manager for the Senate reelection of Scott Brown against upstart Warren in Massachusetts. It has given me some insight into both of their strengths and weaknesses.

Sanders may be a socialist, but his populist brand of rabble rousing mirrors Trump, and could cut into the new Republican blue collar base. Warren, on the other hand, is a traditional liberal who poses as a populist. Working class voters recognize the difference between the sincerity of Sanders and the sanctimony of Warren. To understand this dynamic, compare two instructive elections in locations that have little in common, one in tiny Essex County in the most rural northeast corner of Vermont and another in the only New England metropolis of Boston.

Essex County is the most Republican part of what was once the most Republican state. It is now the lone Republican holdout among the 14 counties in Vermont. In 2016, it was the red dot in the blue sea of the state, going for Trump by 18 points. Flashback to 2006 when Sanders ran for the open Senate seat in Vermont in the only serious contest he had faced since 1994 when socialism was still a dirty word. Sanders cruised to victory and won Essex County with 59 percent of the vote, even as those same voters overwhelmingly supported the reelection of Republican Governor James Douglas.

Vermont is not up for grabs in 2020 or anytime soon, but these same white rural working class voters are scattered throughout Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They are the voters who delivered Trump his narrow victory in 2016. Fast forward six years to Boston and the 2012 election when Warren rode the coattails of President Obama to the Senate. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and party standard bearer, lost Boston proper without cracking 20 percent. Warren won big there too, but trailed the showing of Obama by five points.

Why? Because in places like gritty South Boston, many working class voters rejected her. Like in Essex County in Vermont, they are Trump voters and could also be Sanders voters. But they are not buying what Warren is selling

Bernie Sanders Is the Anti-War Candidate

On Sunday, CBS News released a poll of Democratic voters in Iowa showing a three-way tie between Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg, all having 23 percent support in the upcoming primary. Beyond this top line, which won all the headlines, there were fascinating nuggets inside the poll. One question was what topic did voters want to see the candidates discuss. The rundown was health care (39 percent), climate change (20 percent), jobs and the economy (18 percent), gun policy (8 percent), immigration (6 percent), judges and the courts (4 percent), race and gender (3 percent), and abortion (1 percent).

What was noticeably missing from the list was any foreign policy issue. This is partially the fault of the pollster, but not exclusively. After all, on the campaign trail, the candidates themselves have mostly been talking about domestic issues. Medicare for All and the Green New Deal have been the policies dividing Democrats, not the endless wars in the Middle East or the future of America’s relationship with China. The poll merely reflected the priorities candidates have already articulated. Yet the fact that foreign policy gets only cursory consideration is strange, because this is one area where an American president has enormous power to make lasting changes.

In theory, Friday’s assassination of Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani should move foreign policy front and center. It was a reckless decision, an act of war that will almost certainly accelerate the cycle of violence between Iran and the United States. All the Democratic candidates have condemned Trump’s act, but have done so in differing terms, which should open the door for a robust foreign policy skirmish.

Writing in The Intercept, Robert Mackey notes, “Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren described the drone strike ordered by Trump as a dangerous escalation and promised to end American wars in the Middle East. Joe Biden, the former vice president, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, offered more muted criticism, suggesting that the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani might have been justified if a more responsible commander-in-chief was in charge.”

Warren initially hedged in her comments, hinting that the assassination might have been justified in other circumstances. But, after being criticized by progressives, she quickly found her feet on the issue and now articulates a forthright position against a new war with Iran.

Matt Duss, Sanders’s chief foreign policy adviser, used the issue to make a critique of Sanders’s rivals. Duss tweeted that saying, “Yeah but what’s your strategy?” isn’t a brave stance but is “the safest, lamest, most DC criticism possible. Trump’s Iran policy is foolish, dangerous, and driven by hardline ideologues who’ve been pushing for war for years. Who cares what the strategy is for achieving it. The policy needs to change.”

Chelsea Clinton reaps $9 million from corporate board position

Chelsea Clinton has reaped $9 million in compensation since 2011 for serving on the board of an internet investment company, according to Barron’s, the financial publication.

Barron’s reported Sunday that Clinton has profited handsomely as a board member for IAC/InterActiveCorp, a media and internet investment company that has an ownership stake in 150 well-known brands, such as Vimeo, Tinder, Angie’s List and Home Advisor.

Clinton, the only child of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has served on IAC’s board since 2011 and receives an annual $50,000 retainer and $250,000 worth of restricted IAC stock units, Barron’s reports.

She reported owning $8.95 million worth of IAC stock to the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of December.

Barron’s notes that IAC’s stock has risen 89 percent, 50 percent and 36 percent in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively, a far steeper rise than the broader stock market.

Clinton’s public profile has proved a valuable commodity.

She earned an annual salary of $600,000 working as a special correspondent for NBC News in 2013 and part of 2014.