Anyone hoping for a more realist U.S. foreign policy had to be buoyed by Senator Bernie Sanders’s performance in the New Hampshire debate last night. He said that the United States should stay out of the “quagmire” of “perpetual war” in the Middle East. He called out Hillary Clinton for backing “regime change” that just fosters turmoil. He said that Assad must stay in Syria. And he mentioned great interventionist foreign policy mistakes, from removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq to toppling Allende in Chile in 1973 to removing Mohammed Mossadegh as Iranian Prime Minister in 1953.
Will anti-interventionist ideas get traction in the US political process? Bernie Sanders is pushing them by warning the U.S. against entering the „quagmire“ of perpetual war in the Middle East, and citing the terrible consequences of the U.S. overthrowing Mossadegh, the Iranian prime minister, more than 60 years ago.