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Clinton’s Obviously More Aggressive Foreign Policy

On every front, she is opting for more aggressive measures or confrontation of some kind.
Clinton

This report on foreign policy and the 2016 election merits a few comments:

The 2016 presidential campaign has thoroughly scrambled traditional positions on foreign policy and international intervention, obliterating many of the usual partisan distinctions and presenting political challenges for whoever wins in November.

It is true that Clinton is clearly the more interventionist and aggressive candidate in this election, but then this has been perfectly clear for at least the last six months. Notably, Clinton’s much more aggressive foreign policy received little coverage during the Democratic primaries, and it has received even less during the general election. Instead of commentary emphasizing her reliable hawkishness, we have usually been treated to many attempts to deny the obvious and spin Clinton as something other than a consistent hawk. Now that the campaign is almost over and Clinton’s victory seems likely, we are suddenly hearing about her plans for a much more aggressive international posture.

The article continues:

If she wins, a senior adviser said, Mrs. Clinton, before her inauguration, would pressure Europe to renew sanctions against Russia, which expire in December. Aides say she also will take a more aggressive posture than the Obama administration in Syria, work to impose a no-fly zone, and will consider new sanctions on Iran [bold mine-DL], despite Tehran’s threat to pull out of a new nuclear agreement if she does.

Note that these are not charges coming from the opposing camp. These are things that Clinton’s allies are happy to confirm. On every front, she is opting for more aggressive measures or confrontation of some kind, and we know this because people from her campaign are telling us so. The detail about supporting more sanctions on Iran is a particularly troubling one. Clinton has publicly endorsed the nuclear deal, but she was always at most a grudging supporter of the negotiations that led to the agreement and reportedly favored additional sanctions while the talks were happening. If one of the first things Clinton does is to pursue new sanctions on Iran, it is possible that she will succeed in sabotaging the deal where its many Congressional opponents failed.

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