Is Bernie Sanders the only candidate conservative on foreign policy?

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is never going to win much support from conservatives and libertarian-leaners because of his love of far-left fiscal policy. But when it comes to military interventionism, Sanders just may be a true conservative.

I know you’re thinking that mentioning Sanders and conservatism in the same sentence is sacrilege. But, unless you’re a devout neocon, Sanders’ brand of foreign policy restraint is pretty appealing.

The libertarian-leaning American Conservative recently put together a little report card grading each of the current presidential candidates’ foreign policy views. They scored the candidates based on how likely they would be to lead the U.S. into another unwinnable and financially ruinous military boondoggle.

Sanders made a ‘B’.

“Sanders is the least hawkish of all the candidates. He supports diplomacy and restraint abroad, and has an established record of voting against military interventions in the Middle East. He made a rare deviation from this anti-interventionist stance on Libya,” The American Conservative announced on its website.

By comparison, Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton made a ‘D’. A Clinton administration would almost certainly steer the U.S. toward renewed and ongoing troop involvement throughout the Middle East because of her partiality to unilateral military intervention. In particular, this means Americans could expect a Clinton-initiated war in Syria.

“Clinton has endorsed both a safe zone and a ‘no-fly zone’ in Syria. While she has said that this would be done in coordination with the Russians, it’s unclear how such a policy would work in practice,” the American Conservative noted.

It’s unclear how it would work, because it wouldn’t.

As Bob Livingston has previously noted: “A no-fly zone is an act of war. ISIS — our purported enemy in the region — doesn’t have an air force. So who is the no-fly zone for if not to oppose Russia and Syria? So establishing or attempting to establish a no-fly zone over Iraq — which has hinted it’ll ask the Russians to use their aircraft to help defeat ISIS — would provoke a clash between U.S. and Russian aircraft, sparking World War III. Likewise, the Syrians have asked Russia — not the U.S. — for help. So any no-fly zone over Syria is an overt act of war.”

As for the Republicans, most didn’t score very well either.

Donald Trump earned a ‘C’, mostly helped by his willingness to work on diplomatic solutions with Russia rather than poking the bear in the ways his primary challengers advocate.

But Trump is also pretty vague when it comes to explaining his foreign policy plans to the American people.

As the American Conservative noted: “When it comes to foreign interventions, Trump can’t seem to make up his mind. He supported regime change in Libya in 2011, but wants to withdraw completely from Syria. He would review the Iran deal and has made comments that could indicate he supports a smaller defense budget, but offers no concrete stance.”

Marco Rubio, who many see as Trump’s biggest potential threat to nomination, scored the worst out of all the candidates because of his unwavering support for massive military spending and shoot-first policy proposals.

In recent interviews, Rubio has claimed that reducing U.S. military spending by a single cent is an “unsustainable,” “dangerous” and “reckless” idea.

The post Is Bernie Sanders the only candidate conservative on foreign policy? appeared first on Personal Liberty®.

from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/is-bernie-sanders-the-only-candidate-conservative-on-foreign-policy/

from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/is-bernie-sanders-the-only-candidate-conservative-on-foreign-policy/