The Democrats must radically rethink foreign policy | Anatol Lieven

A deep and searching debate on the Democratic party's approach to foreign affairs is now urgent

In domestic political terms, the foreign policy of the Biden administration has proved almost unimaginably successful - for Donald Trump, whom it enabled to run for president as the representative, however mendaciously so, of foreign policy restraint. A deep and searching debate on the Democratic party's approach to foreign affairs is now essential.

Since the second world war there has only rarely been a significant difference between the Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy. The most significant divergence around the time of the backlash against the Vietnam war (initiated by a Democratic administration) and Watergate. This, however, lasted barely a decade.

Anatol Lieven is director of the Eurasia programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case