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The First 2020 Democratic Debate and Foreign Policy

Foreign policy didn't come up a lot during the debate, but there was some discussion of the nuclear deal with Iran and the war in Afghanistan.
Tulsi Gabbard

The first Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 cycle was held last night, and several of the candidates made statements about important foreign policy issues that merit a few comments. Foreign policy didn’t come up a lot during the debate, but there was some discussion of the nuclear deal with Iran and the war in Afghanistan. There was also a brief, rambling answer from Beto O’Rourke about the “responsibility to protect” doctrine that had very little to do with the doctrine, and a surprising rebuke of O’Rourke from New York Mayor Bill de Blasio about the importance of Congress’ role in declaring war. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii gave the most noteworthy and impressive statements regarding a possible war with Iran and a need to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Her exchange with Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio on Afghanistan was a clear win for her, which left Ryan sulking afterwards and whining about her so-called “isolationism.” Her statement on a possible war with Iran was her best of the night, and it set her apart from the rest of the field:

Let’s deal with the situation where we are, where this president and his chickenhawk cabinet have led us to the brink of war with Iran.

I served in the war in Iraq at the height of the war in 2005, a war that took over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniforms’ lives. The American people need to understand that this war with Iran would be far more devastating, far more costly than anything that we ever saw in Iraq. It would take many more lives. It would exacerbate the refugee crisis [bold mine-DL].

And it wouldn’t be just contained within Iran. This would turn into a regional war. This is why it’s so important that every one of us, every single American, stand up and say no war with Iran.

Gabbard distinguished herself as the only candidate on the stage last night to state clear opposition to starting a war with Iran, and she was likewise the only one to call for ending the war in Afghanistan. There are other candidates, including some who were on the stage, that hold the same positions, but she was the only to talk about them. Unfortunately, her remarks about the nuclear deal itself were flawed and to some extent echoed hawkish talking points:

We need to get back into the Iran nuclear agreement, and we need to negotiate how we can improve it.

It was an imperfect deal. There are issues, like their missile development, that needs to be addressed.

The defensive hedging about support for the nuclear deal is unfortunately very common among Democratic candidates and more than a few other supporters of the agreement. Every negotiated agreement is “imperfect” in the sense that it is always a compromise and we never get everything we might have wanted, but that is the wrong way to judge such things. If the nuclear deal has succeeded at everything it was meant to do in terms of restricting Iran’s nuclear program and verifying Iran’s compliance, and it has, it needs to be touted as the important and groundbreaking achievement that it is. Iran hawks are happy to find “flaws” in a deal that they want to destroy, and amplifying their bad faith complaints about the deal just makes it easier for them to do that. Talk of “improving” the deal is moot until the U.S. reenters the JCPOA, and the Iranian government is unlikely to be interested in talking about other issues until the U.S. has earned their trust back. That will take concrete measures in the form of the immediate lifting of all reimposed and new sanctions, and it will take time before Iran’s leaders will be ready to take the risk of new negotiations.

To her credit, Gabbard called on Trump to deescalate the situation with Iran and reenter the deal:

That’s why we need to de-escalate tensions. Trump needs to get back into the Iran nuclear deal and swallow his pride, put the American people first.

Sen. Klobuchar’s answer on the nuclear deal was underwhelming to say the least. She said that she would have “worked to get longer sunset periods, and that’s something we could negotiate, to get back in the deal.” This is parroting the misguided arguments of analysts that want to pursue the fantasy of a “better deal” that was never available and certainly can’t be had now. Klobuchar did say that Trump should seek Congressional authorization “if there is any possibility of a conflict” with Iran, and she said she would do that as president, but that was the extent of her statement about a possible war.

The worst statement about the nuclear deal came from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who was the only candidate on the stage that wouldn’t commit to rejoining the JCPOA. He had previously indicated that this was his position, and his explanation was poor:

We need to renegotiate and get back into a deal, but I’m not going to have a primary platform to say unilaterally I’m going to rejoin that deal. Because when I’m president of the United States, I’m going to do the best I can to secure this country and that region and make sure that if I have an opportunity to leverage a better deal, I’m going to do it.

Trying to leverage the Trump administration’s violation of the deal to extract additional concessions may sound clever, but it is an underhanded thing to do and that is one reason why Iran isn’t going to go for it. If one party to an agreement breaks the agreement and betrays the other parties by going back on all of his commitments, the deal-breaker is the one that has to make concessions to repair the breach that he caused. The U.S. is not in a position to demand more from the aggrieved party that it wronged. If the next administration were to try this hare-brained approach, it would just convince the Iranian government that there is no point in talking to any American administration regardless of who the president is.

Regrettably, most of the candidates on the stage didn’t have an opportunity to talk about any of this. The short amount of time devoted to these issues and the absurdly large field of candidates made it so that only these three were able to address questions about Iran at any length. Since this was the most sustained coverage that any foreign policy issue received last night, that was a major omission by the debate moderators and a disservice to the audience. Let’s hope they do a better job tonight with the second set of candidates. At the very least, the discussion of these issues last night should put an end to the lazy, inaccurate, and misleading claim that the 2020 Democratic candidates don’t talk about foreign policy.

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