THREAD: Yes @ABlinken and Biden’s national security team have loads of experience, but they are open to new ideas.
That’s key, bc U.S. foreign policy has become dangerously sclerotic, and progressives have offered several productive critiques of the national security consensus.
1/ For instance, it’s time for America to finally shake our hubris of what can be accomplished by military deployments in far off places. Restraint IS a policy. Often our intervention (think Iraq or Libya or Syria) ends up doing much more harm than good.
2/ Secret wars, exempt from public view or oversight, too often go off the rails. For example, our drone program more often kills the wrong target, adding fuel to extremist groups recruitment drives.
3/ Choose to fight Russia symmetrically. That means plussing up counter-propaganda, anti-corruption, and energy independence programming on Russia’s periphery. In general, we need more non-military tools in our foreign policy toolkit.
4/ Sanctions can have impact, but their overuse is risking making the tactic feckless. Too often the are just a box checking exercise. Or they hurt orindary people while not changing the behavior of foreign regimes. We need to be much more strategic in our sanctions use.
5/ No military action without congressional authorization. Yes, it’s hard to get sign off from Congress for a military strike. But for good reason. Americans are rightly skeptical about military action, and that’s why the Constitution vests the war making power in Congress.
6/ Progressives don’t hate trade deals - just trade deals that are written for corporations instead of workers and citizens. Let’s do a new Asia trade agreement, but one that is written to protect wages, not profits and shareholder returns.
7/ Foreign policy must = climate policy. But diplomacy alone can’t save the planet. We need hard dollars for America to spend abroad to help developing nations cover to clean energy. Billions for a supersized Green Climate Fund.
8/ Let’s stop blindly fueling a dangerous arms race in the Middle East. The equipment we send to UAE ends up w extremist militias. The bombs we send to Saudi end up killing kids in Yemen. And it all just leads to an Iranian arms buildup. Let’s be more judicious in arms sales.
9/ Restore America’s commitment to a two-state future in the Middle East. Take a hard line on new settlements and annexation. Restore funding for humanitarian programs in the PA. Being an ally of Israel’s security means charting a path to a Palestinian state.
These are just a few ideas that don’t always find a home inside the national security consensus.
But I’ve worked w many on Biden’s team and I know they are willing to work with progressives - and anyone else with new, good ideas - to make American foreign policy more nimble.
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Due to Trump's petulant, delusional, democracy-smashing refusal to accept the election results, his Administration is refusing share details with President-elect Biden's team about their vaccination distribution plan .
1/ A short THREAD on why that's going to get people killed.
2/ Vaccinating 300m people would be an enormous undertaking w a single, simple vaccine. But this plan envisions multiple vaccines, with some vaccines requiring ultra-cold storage (which we don't much of) and multiple doses (requiring tracking systems). cnn.com/2020/11/10/hea…
3/ Trump and his team have screwed up every logistical element of COVID response so far. 80% of nurses say they don't have adequate PPE. Many have to wait in 3 hour lines for a test. Why would Trump's vaccine plan be magically different? nationalnursesunited.org/press/national…
1/ The disarray of the lame duck Trump White House, especially in the national security space, could be staggering. And our adversaries may try to take advantage.
A short THREAD on what could go wrong in the next 60 days, and how Congress can help fill the void.
2/ Reports suggest Trump's post-defeat rage could lead to the firings of Esper or Haspel. DoD and/or CIA could be leaderless by Thanksgiving. And if Trump refuses to concede, other national security officials could bail to try to save their careers. thehill.com/policy/defense…
3/ Emerging global powers could try to take advantage of the vacuum. At the top of that list is China. They could finish their crack down in Hong Kong, or they could make a move on the disputed islands with Taiwan. taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4038660
I want to tell you a story - one I don’t think I’ve ever told publicly before - about the man we have a chance to elect President of the United States today.
1/ A story about the day Joe Biden came to Connecticut - 2 months after Sandy Hook.
I hope you’ll read this.
2/ Biden came to give a speech at a forum on gun violence that we had organized at a state college just outside Newtown.
It was just 60 days after the shooting and the event was intended to help us push for the changes in gun laws we wanted at the federal and state levels.
3/ He stayed after his speech to meet with the Sandy Hook parents. In a somber room off the main hall, he spent about 2 hours with about 10 families. He told stories of his own loss, he explained how he rebuilt his life, he gave a lot hugs.
Joe Biden - and all of us - SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda.
1/ I’ve seen the intel. The mainstreaming of misinformation is Russia’s 2020 goal. Here’s what we know, and why we can’t take it lying down.
2/ Russia knew it had to play a different game than 2016. So it built an operation to cull virulently pro-Trump Americans as pseudo-assets, so blind in their allegiance to Trump that they’ll willingly launder Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.
Guiliani was a key target.
3/ Andriy Derkach was a top Russian agent. He was unmasked by the Treasury Dept this summer. Derkach and his team recruited Guiliani and have been feeding him info all year. The White House knew this. google.com/amp/s/www.wash…
1/ Republicans are suddenly trying to pretend that their rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett isn't about ACA repeal.
They are lying.
I've put together in one thread the story of their 10 year plan to get rid of the ACA. It all leads to this moment.
Please read the whole thing.
2/ From the start, Republicans were obsessed - I mean OBSESSED - with getting rid of the ACA. Nothing mattered more.
From 2010-2017, they tried to repeal all or part of the ACA 70 times. Their most high profile failure was, of course, in summer 2017. newsweek.com/gop-health-car…
3/ At first, Republicans' chanted "repeal and replace" - but they NEVER had a plan to replace it.
In 2017, with much fanfare, Paul Ryan unveiled the most serious replacement bill Republicans had ever offered. It ended health care for 23 million Americans. npr.org/2017/05/24/529…
1/ In light of Amy Coney Barrett's dangerous views on choice and the ACA, her views on guns haven't gotten much attention.
But she's a radical - a blinking red outlier - on how she interprets the 2nd Amendment. Like, she wants felons to buy guns.
And you need to know. A THREAD:
2/ Like Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Alito/Thomas, she is an "orginalist" on guns. It's total BS - just a way to legislate from the court and invalidate modern gun laws.
But basically, she believes that if the regulation didn't exist in 1787 then it's unconstitutional.
3/ So, for instance, that makes it easy for her to rule against bans on weapons that didn't exist in the 1700s (like semi-automatic weapons), or restrictions on guns in places that didn't exist (like airplanes), or background checks for felonies that post-date 1787.