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

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads over foreign policy, with Gaza becoming a moral and political fault line that mirrors the Iraq War's impact on the party in 2008. Matt Duss, a leading progressive foreign policy thinker and former advisor to Bernie Sanders and AOC, argues that the Biden administration’s Gaza policy amounted to complicity in genocide, driven by a failure to uphold existing U.S. laws on arms sales and human rights. He contends that the U.S. has long operated under a double standard, offering unconditional support to Israel while imposing consequences only on weaker actors like Palestinians. This imbalance, he says, has empowered extremists on both sides and eroded trust in the foreign policy establishment. Duss calls for a values-based foreign policy rooted in solidarity, accountability, and democratic principles—not American hegemony—centered on the working class and grounded in international cooperation, not domination. He warns that without a reckoning, Democrats risk losing credibility with voters who see the system as rigged and foreign policy as disconnected from everyday life. The episode reveals a growing left-wing consensus that foreign policy must be reimagined not as a tool of global dominance but as a means of advancing domestic justice, economic fairness, and moral clarity. Duss emphasizes that the U.S.