What’s the Left’s Vision for Foreign Policy After Trump?

What It Covers

Ezra Klein and Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and former Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser, examine how Gaza is fracturing Democratic foreign policy consensus, what a left-oriented foreign policy would look like in practice, and how the next Democratic administration should break from Biden-era approaches on Israel, China, trade, and military intervention.

Key Questions Answered

• •Gaza as Democratic litmus test: Senator Brian Schatz's call for "a whole new crop" of foreign policy staffers and Senator Chris Van Hollen's op-ed warning that primary voters will reject candidates who funded Netanyahu's military campaign signal a concrete generational shift. Duss argues specific Biden administration officials who carried out Gaza policy should be barred from future Democratic administrations — not as blacklisting, but as accountability for what he characterizes as a policy of supporting genocide.
• •Biden's disinformation pattern on Gaza: The Biden administration assessed Russian war crimes in Ukraine within one month of the February 2022 invasion, yet repeatedly refused to make equivalent assessments about Israel despite having vastly greater operational visibility into Israeli military conduct. Duss frames this asymmetry as a deliberate choice to not see documented atrocities, not a genuine intelligence gap — a distinction Democratic candidates will need to address directly when running in 2028 primaries.
• •Conditioning arms sales through existing law: Rather than treating arms conditions as punishment, Duss argues the Leahy Law and the Arms Export Control Act already prohibit weapons sales to military units with documented human rights abuses. The actionable shift is enforcing laws already on the books — applied consistently to Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — rather than creating new policy frameworks. Multiple administrations have simply ignored these statutes, making enforcement a concrete, legally grounded first step.
• •Anti-war positioning wins elections: In every U.S. presidential election since 1992 except 2004, the candidate perceived as more anti-war won. Duss uses this data point to argue Democrats abandoned a structurally winning lane in 2024, allowing Trump to claim the anti-war mantle despite later launching military action against Iran. The strategic implication: the next Democratic candidate should occupy that lane credibly and early, rather than ceding it to Republican populists who will not follow through.
• •Congress reclaiming war powers as structural reform: Congressman Jason Crow's framework — that Congress must reclaim constitutional authority over trade, treaties, appropriations, and war powers before any foreign policy debate is meaningful — offers a procedural anchor for left foreign policy. Duss notes the Iran war could not have passed a congressional vote, while Iraq required one and still passed. Forcing legislative authorization slows decisions and creates accountability, even if it does not guarantee correct outcomes.
• •China policy: coexistence over primacy: Duss argues defining U.S.-China relations primarily as strategic competition structurally leads toward conflict. The alternative is building a genuinely equitable global trade order that empowers workers in both countries rather than framing them as zero-sum competitors. Concrete proposals include a global minimum corporate tax (already partially pursued under Biden) and a global minimum wage framework — positioning the U.S. as a partner in shared prosperity rather than a hegemon defending market dominance.
• •Elite impunity as the connective tissue: Duss identifies elite impunity — the pattern where senior officials face no professional consequences for failed wars, financial crises, or policy disasters — as the underlying driver of public distrust in foreign policy institutions. The actionable response is not just personnel turnover but building a political coalition around anti-corruption as foreign policy: closing U.S. money-laundering channels used by global kleptocrats, reforming campaign finance, and naming specific officials whose records disqualify them from future government service.