Franklin Foer: “There’s no doubt that Sanders shares some of the Corbyn view of the world. He will sometimes invoke the inglorious American history of intervening in Latin America. But Sanders is less conspiratorial and more open-minded than his British cousin. Consider how differently they have reacted to Vladimir Putin. When the Russians poisoned an ex-spy and his daughter in Salisbury last year, Corbyn expressed immediate skepticism about how quickly the British government apportioned blame for the crime. Sanders hasn’t similarly hesitated to criticize Putin. He readily condemned Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And he has said that he would make opposition to authoritarian kleptocrats central to his foreign policy. (His speeches linking global inequality to illiberal authoritarianism contain a theory of kleptocracy that other candidates should borrow.)”
“While Sanders might have been a foreign-policy outlier in the years immediately following 9/11, his views aren’t so far from the prevailing post-Iraq consensus. He doesn’t reject humanitarian intervention on principle, even as he rails against endless wars. Sanders supported the U.S. air strikes during the Kosovo War; he was sympathetic to Barack Obama’s intervention in Libya, although he eventually came to view that policy skeptically. Where Corbyn has said that he wished NATO never existed, Sanders has merely bellyached about member states paying their dues.”
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