How Yemen crystallized Bernie Sanders's foreign policy message

[Donkees]

Sanders is taking his political revolution abroad.

By Tara Golshan May 8, 2019, 7:00am EDT

Excerpt:

A Bernie Sanders-style political revolution in foreign policy

But every single Democrat in the Senate voted in favor of the War Powers Resolution that day, something almost unimaginable three years ago. Since then, a group of constitutional scholars has sent Pelosi a letter urging her to bring a lawsuit against Trump for vetoing the resolution.

“It’s no small achievement to essentially unite the entire Democratic caucus in both houses behind this progressive position and also to peel off a little bit of Republican support,” Rhodes said. “It shows there is actually progressive momentum in the Democratic Party that wasn’t there when Obama was in office. We had to work harder to get votes for the Iran deal.”

And the resolution, even though it failed, influenced other world actors.

“We all want member states to think carefully, and if the US doesn’t, we will be the poorer,” Martin Griffiths, the UN envoy to Yemen, told me, lauding the debate around the Yemen resolution but unable to comment further on American politics.

“The message conveyed by the War Powers Resolution has been heard in capitals that matter, regardless of president Trump’s veto,” Robert Malley, who served on Obama’s National Security Council, said. “In Riyadh, as in Abu Dhabi, it has an impact because leaders of those countries can read our politics and can see where the bipartisan winds are blowing.”

Sanders said he saw “an opportunity to bring together principled people from the right and the left.” But it was also an opportunity to translate his revolution to matters abroad. This time, his fight wasn’t against the CEOs in Silicon Valley or hedge fund managers on Wall Street; he’s talking about the oligarchs of the world, and the powerful people who prop them up.

https://www.vox.com/2019/5/8/18525486/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-2020-yemen-war-powers