Bernie Sanders Sets His Sights On The Foreign Policy Establishment

Heather Hurlburt was interviewed by the Huffington Post about Bernie Sander's foreign policy.

Foreign policy watchers on the left say the time is ripe for a change in the conversation ― particularly given frustration among some progressives about how Obama and Clinton adopted relatively traditional establishment foreign policy positions.

“We haven’t seen much from Democrats on this topic since the election… Sanders has a pretty open field, which has not been normal in the left and center-left space in recent years,” said Heather Hurlburt, an analyst at the New America Foundation and senior U.S. official under President Bill Clinton. “This isn’t an area that anybody of the others who are talked about as possible presidential contenders has rushed out to define.”

A Clinton supporter, Hurlburt said less centrist elements of the Democratic Party have yet to successfully coalesce around a shared vision of U.S. foreign policy. They have expressed opposition to major trade deals, for instance, marking themselves as different from Obama and Clinton, but are only starting to have conversations about how to improve international trade architecture, she said, rather than pursue the path supported by the similarly anti-trade Trump movement, with its more xenophobic and mercantilist undertones.