The Rise of Foreign Policy

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Written by Judy Pasqualge   
Tuesday, 28 January 2020 03:11

With just days to go before the Iowa primary, it is certainly a positive thing that the general Democratic Party platform has shifted from 2016. The primacy of healthcare, the earth crisis, economic inequality and a livable wage are certainly advances.

Also welcome is the increasing attention to foreign policy ‒ not just in the military sense, but in the economic.

Here, the question facing voters is: Should the US support governments that oppose (often violently) the very same domestic policies that DP candidates support for people in the US?

Or, will the DP continue to follow a foreign policy that places the interests of the US contingent of the global corporate/financial elite first?

The New York Times endorsement of Warren and Klobuchar noted that Biden "commands the greatest fluency on foreign policy," Warren "speaks fluently about foreign policy," and Klobuchar supported the military action in Libya and Syria ‒ no doubt she is also seen as 'fluent.' (nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/19/opinion/amy-klobuchar-elizabeth-warren-nytimes-endorsement)

It is clear what 'fluency' means: active support for regime change, including imposition of sanctions against whole populations (collective punishment); targeted assassination of deemed enemies without due process and a large allowance for acceptable collateral (civilian) damage; and economic coercion via conditioning support on the acceptance of economic austerity measures, including the sale of national assets to foreign interests.

Biden's position is clear. So is Warren's, going by the members of her foreign policy advisory team, which comes from the Clinton-Biden DP set. (see: thegrayzone.com/2020/01/26/elizabeth-warren-foreign-policy-team-pro-war-regime-change) Klobuchar will follow the same. And the real intent of many of the other candidates is clear in support for, for example, the Venezuelan nondemocrat Juan Guaidó, the new right-wing coup makers in Bolivia, the gangster governments in Honduras and Guatemala, and Bolsonaro in Brazil.

We are still seeing the effects of similar established policies playing out in Libya, Yemen and Syria ‒ policies supported by Republican and Democratic administrations.

Promises to 'bring the troops home,' or a misleading placement of all responsibility on President Trump, or simplistic aims to increase US aid serve only to obscure real policy.

Does this policy actually increase US national security? Does it serve to end conflict? or make enemies?

All over the world, people are out protesting in their thousands and hundreds of thousands ‒ against brutality and corruption, for social services, against governments that enrich only a few ‒ and against foreign support for these governments.

There is a contradiction here between the social policies desired for people of the US, and the real consequences of a reverse foreign policy that harms people all over the world.

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