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More Questions That Should Be Asked, But Won’t Be

Five questions the candidates should be asked.
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I don’t expect foreign policy to be covered much at tonight’s debates, but I’ll suggest a few questions that the moderators ought to be asking the candidates anyway.

1) President Obama has once again expanded the war on ISIS with the announced deployment of several dozen soldiers to “advise” rebel groups in Syria, but the war remains unauthorized after more than a year. Do you believe the president has the authority to start and escalate foreign wars as the president has done in Iraq and Syria? If not, explain how you think Congress should respond to the president’s illegal war.

2) It appears that Metrojet flight 9268 was destroyed by a bomb, and a local ISIS affiliate in Egypt has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack. Since this seems to be a straightforward case of terrorism in response to Russia’s military intervention, how does this affect your understanding of the causes of terrorism? Does this make you rethink your support for U.S. military interventions in Syria and elsewhere in the region? Why or why not?

3) The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed intervention in Yemen is now more than seven months old, it has killed more than five thousand people, displaced a million and a half, and brought the country to the brink of famine, and yet it has failed to achieve any of the coalition’s stated goals. If you were president, would you now try to pressure the Saudis and their allies to halt their campaign, or would you continue to support it?

4) The Catalan regional parliament recently voted in favor of a plan for secession from Spain over the objections of the Spanish central government. If Catalonia declared its separation from Spain, would your administration recognize its independence?

I posed the next question to the Democrats already, but it is worth asking the Republicans as well:

5) There is increasing support in Sweden and Finland for NATO membership in response to recent aggressive Russian rhetoric and actions. Would you support further expansion of the alliance to include these countries given the strong likelihood that it would greatly antagonize Russia and might precipitate a new crisis in Europe?

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