Among several Democratic politicians emerging as potential candidates for the 2020 presidential primary is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. Gabbard has already made clear her ideas about foreign policy, which combine strict noninterventionism with a tough stance toward Islamist terror. But, notes Noah Rothman, her approach brings with it “support for some of the world’s most atrocious and bloody authoritarian regimes,” namely those of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. Could this unlikely combination gain traction in her party?
Gabbard traveled to Damascus in January of last year—long after the Assad regime was credibly implicated in some of the worst humanitarian atrocities of this century—where she met with the Syrian dictator. . . . In April 2017, Gabbard . . . suggested that the Assad regime was not responsible for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in which over 70 were killed and hundreds more seriously injured. When the Trump administration responded with a limited cruise-missile strike on Syrian targets, Gabbard accused the White House of acting in service to the objectives of al-Qaeda and of having been swayed by “war hawks” who seek to escalate America’s “illegal regime-change war to overthrow the Syrian government.” Even as evidence of Assad’s culpability for the attack mounted, Gabbard held fast to her skepticism. . . .
Gabbard’s advocacy on behalf of the genocidal despot in Syria invariably aligned her with Assad’s chief patron, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. . . . Gabbard’s conspicuous adoption of the Putinist line on Syria places her outside the mainstream of her party, but it once yielded admiration from Donald Trump’s brain trust. . . . As is often the case, the quasi-isolationist views of the “America First” wing of the GOP align with those of the left’s appeasement caucus.
But that caucus has lost much of its influence over the Democratic party in the age of Trump. Those on the left who could once be counted on to endorse a more humble and conciliatory approach to Russo-American relations have abandoned that perennial campaign plank, leaving Gabbard out on a limb. Maybe Gabbard thinks she can command the fealty of that forsaken Democratic constituency in a presidential campaign, and she might. But it’s more likely that Gabbard will stand as a painful reminder to voters about what Democratic stewardship of Russian-American relations and crises like the Syrian civil war looks like. That’s the last thing Democrats want.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/campaigns-elections/tulsi-gabbard-will-remind-voters-democratic-foreign-policy-looks-like/