On June 26th, Democratic Representative Joe Crowley of New York was defeated in a primary challenge from the left by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a twenty-eight-year-old former organizer for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory shocked many as Crowley, the powerful chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, had been named as a potential replacement for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and led in several polls in the weeks leading up to election day. Yet despite the upset, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said Ocasio-Cortez “represents the future of our party;” and based on her support amongst younger voters, he would seem to be correct.
In addition to running on a progressive platform similar to that of Senator Sanders in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez’s policy positions are indicative of a larger trend within the Democratic Party. Over the last eighteen months, Democrats have begun pivoting to the left of their Obama-Era stances as a result of President Donald Trump’s actions in an effort to oppose him as strongly as possible.
Take immigration for instance. President Barack Obama famously deported more people than any of his predecessors and called for tough and secure borders, while simultaneously supporting a path to citizenship and implementing the DACA program, which protected minors who were brought to the U.S illegally from deportation. All of which were at the time moderate. Obama called them, “common sense” solutions. Yet Trump’s rhetoric and actions on immigration, regardless of how disrespectful and inhumane they may be, have caused Ocasio-Cortez to call for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, and a number of other high-profile Democrats are now doing the same. The policy represents a strong shift to the left from Obama’s positions. Thanks to Trump, Democrats who used to back Obama’s “common sense” immigration reform and strong border security measures would be hard pressed to utter any sort of support for them now.
The same is happening in healthcare. Before Trump, Democrats supported working to improve the flaws within the Affordable Care Act. Regardless of what many in the Republican Party may say, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement was both a moderate plan and a compromise solution to one of the nation’s toughest and most divisive issues. However Trump’s efforts to strip Americans of their health insurance and wreck the Obamacare market through repeal of the individual mandate have led rising Democratic stars such as Ocasio-Cortez to instead call for a more radical Medicare for All plan. Again, due to Trump, attempting to fix the flaws in Obamacare is seen as outdated while support for a Single Payer system has now become a litmus test for Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2020.
Across many issues, the pattern remains. Democrats under Obama supported moderate policies and positions. Along comes Trump, and Democrats move to the left to oppose him as strongly as possible. Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign platform embody this trend, and now it “represents the future of [the] party.”
Yet when it comes to foreign policy and support for the U.S-led liberal, international order, the pattern stops. On domestic policy, Ocasio-Cortez’s platform is filled with aggressive stances opposing Trump, and yet there is no mention of his tariffs jeopardizing the global network of free trade, no position on Russian election interference constituting a threat to American democracy and democracy worldwide, and no reference to Trump’s rhetoric and actions against NATO threatening the Western-democratic alliance. What explains the dichotomy?
Given the lack of criticism Trump has received from Ocasio-Cortez for his actions, it has become clear that the far left is willing to go along with the President in renouncing America’s role as the world’s leading economic, democratic, and military power. For instance, Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of opposition to Trump’s tariffs and potential instigation of a global trade war can be explained because, like Trump, progressives have their own issues with free trade. President Obama championed trade deals through pursuit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the U.S-Korea Free Trade Agreement. In contrast, Bernie Sanders said in 2015 that agreements like these “have been a disaster for the American worker,” because “corporations that shut down here move abroad.” Later in a Democratic primary debate, Sanders even touted his “being on the picket line in opposition to NAFTA” in the 1990s. And Sanders is not alone. A number of left-leaning economists such as J.W Mason and Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Policy and Economic Research, have also spoken out strongly against the benefits of free trade. Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of criticism towards- and agreement with- the President’s trade policy is actually in line with her fellow progressives. What’s notable is that just as Trump’s victory represented the triumph of protectionism within the GOP, Ocasio-Cortez’s has done the same for Democrats.
Second, similar to her silence on trade, there is not a word in Ocasio-Cortez’s platform, criticizing Russia’s efforts to sway the result of the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Likewise, I have yet to hear her denounce President Trump’s denials of what unquestionably constitutes a foreign threat to the strength of American democracy, or comment on how the President’s partisan attacks against the Justice Department, FBI, and the media over investigating those threats are eroding public faith in American institutions. Moreover, Bernie Sanders– for all his vocal support and outspoken appeals for progressive policies–has not really spoken strongly either about the dangers Russian meddling poses to democracy worldwide. Why is that?
I suspect it stems from the fact that many on the far left have long seen American democracy and its institutions as intensely flawed, and therefore don’t view them with much essential value. If the American political system was not valuable to progressives to begin with, then attacks by foreign adversaries against it are not perceived of as being particularly threatening. Similarly, if the U.S can’t reasonably claim to represent democratic ideals, then it has no moral right to tout democracy around the world. Though conservatives always questioned whether or not President Obama “loved America,” he never failed to speak glowingly about the country and its political system, saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” and “in no other country is my story even possible.” Certainly those statements illustrate a belief in a system worth protecting from foreign threats. Yet as Peter Beinart noted in The Atlantic on July 4th, it is hard to imagine Ocasio-Cortez, or any progressive of her caliber for that matter, saying something similar. Thus, unlike Trump’s immigration policy, his passivity regarding defense of democracy and actions in assistance of its demise have failed to provoke Ocasio-Cortez and others on the far left to speak out.
When President Woodrow Wilson announced America’s entrance into World War I with the intention of making “the world safe for democracy,” he became the first U.S. President to articulate a belief in defending the American system of government both at home and abroad. Trump’s victory however symbolized the end of a Republican Party that cared about Wilson’s conviction of protecting American ideals and institutions in the face of foreign threats. Apparently this view now constitutes “the future” of the Democratic Party as well.
Third, Ocasio-Cortez’s platform lacked criticism of Trump’s dismissal and undermining of American multilateral military alliances such as NATO. Additionally, she has not discussed in any of her post-Election Day interviews the effect those actions have had on weakening and eroding the U.S.-led liberal order that every post-War President, including Barack Obama, has strongly supported. On the campaign trail Trump consistently complained about NATO, lamenting the fact that our European allies weren’t paying their fair share towards their defense and that the distribution of costs was “unfair, economically, to us.” Just this past week in advance of the NATO summit in Brussels, the President levied criticism at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, claiming Germany free rides off U.S security guarantees and threatening to pull back the 35,000 U.S troops deployed to Germany. Such actions are indicative of Trump’s belief that America is getting a raw deal when it comes to NATO and that the U.S would be better off avoiding the international entanglements and obligations that come with the alliance.
When it comes to scaling back U.S military commitments abroad, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez often agree with Trump. Bernie Sanders has long sought to cut American defense spending and once criticized President Obama’s plan to combat ISIS for not encouraging Middle Eastern states to “step up their military efforts and take more responsibility for the security and stability of their regions,” a statement with echoes of Trump’s rhetoric towards Europe. To quote Reihan Salam, the executive editor at the National Review, Ocasio-Cortez is actually “keeping with the fact that many on the hard left have their own objections to the status quo in U.S foreign policy.” Whether it be military interventions or alliances, progressives aren’t shy about their belief that the U.S should take a less activist role. So just as Trump has cowed the GOP into reversing and renouncing its history of support for multilateral agreements and mutual defense, if Ocasio-Cortez’s politics truly constitute the future, then the Democratic Party will soon do the same.
In 1947 when Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Arthur Vandenberg declared that partisan politics should stop “at the water’s edge,” he solidified a bipartisan consensus behind Democratic President Harry Truman’s proposals to drag the U.S from its isolationist past towards an internationalist future. However President Trump’s takeover and transformation of the GOP into an inward-looking party hostile to globalization has threatened the strength of this internationalist consensus. Moreover, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the likely soon-to-be Democratic-Socialist Congresswoman from New York, who openly and proudly opposes Trump on domestic issues, has yet to criticize the President and GOP for this radical shift. If the Republicans are the party of Trump and Ocasio-Cortez is the Democrats’ future, then there may yet be a bipartisan consensus on foreign affairs. It just isn’t the one Truman and Vandenberg had in mind.
The belief that the U.S should abdicate its world leadership arises for different reasons on the Trumpian Right and the Progressive Left. While Trump believes America is better off when it doesn’t concern itself with the interests of the rest of the world, progressives believe the world is better off when America doesn’t. Both positions however are intensely flawed. There is widespread agreement amongst economists on the benefits of free trade for all parties involved. American democracy, imperfect as it may be, is a stronger force for good in the world than Russian or Chinese autocracy. And without military alliances to defend Western liberalism from Moscow and Beijing, there is no way to guarantee its survival. Hopefully one of America’s two parties will recognize this reality before it’s too late.
In the past few months most international news has focused on conflicts throughout the Middle East, while little has been said about the incredible transformation the Guatemalan justice system is currently undergoing. The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) is an independent UN body that has stabilized and rebuilt Guatemala’s previously failing justice system. CICIG has helped Guatemala reduce its impunity rate, democratically elect a new president and prosecute various high-level officials for corruption in “La Línea,” or “The Line,” kick-back scandal.
Guatemala has lacked a legitimate justice system since its civil war ended nearly twenty years ago. Today unpunished crime is the status quo. The Human Rights Watch released a report in 2012 that announced homicides had 95% percent impunity in 2010 (that is, 95% of homicides went unpunished) and previously, a UN-sponsored commission found the Guatemalan federal government responsible for 93% of the human rights abuses that occurred during its 36 year civil war. CICIG has made great strides towards ending the impunity that destabilizes the country, an immense accomplishment considering the violence and lack of legitimate justice that has been constant for nearly half a century. Working closely with the Attorney General’s office, CICIG arrested thirty-eight government officials tied to La Línea scandal earlier this year, including ex-President Otto Molina and former Vice-President Roxana Baldetti. The body has also successfully prosecuted other corruption scandals since 2007, actions that were non-existent before CICIG’s inception.
The most pressing questions regarding the recent success of CICIG reach across national borders: Can the commission be reproduced in other countries, such as El Salvador and Honduras? If so, under what circumstances can the commission be successful and long-lasting? Although CICIG is less than 10 years old and the long-term viability of the Guatemalan justice system remains in doubt, a progressive national leader, committed commissioner and overwhelming domestic support can effectively fight impunity within other Latin American countries.
Three main factors are responsible for the recent arrests of Guatemalan government officials that brought CICIG to the forefront of international news. The first was the willingness of Guatemalan President Óscar Berger and the Guatemalan Congress in 2007 to approve an agreement with the UN to establish CICIG. A previous attempt at creating a commission to support domestic investigations failed due to the Guatemalan Constitution’s specific declarations regarding the delegation of justice. The Guatemalan government made it a priority to work around the constitutional issue and reach an agreement on CICIG, accomplishing the most difficult step towards ending impunity. The importance of the Guatemalan state’s support of CICIG cannot be understated; this initial barrier will be the hardest to overcome in other Latin American countries due to corrupt government officials having no interest in an international body investigating their own wrongdoing.
The second factor was the appointment of Commissioner Iván Velásquez by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2013, a full six years after the body was created. Although the previous commissioner of CICIG was quietly successful— the impunity rate dropped from 95% to 70% under his term— he lacked a celebrity presence and the body’s accomplishments were not widely covered by the media. On the other hand, Velásquez is currently a domestic superstar, symbolizing hope and justice while carrying the informal label of most popular man in Guatemala. His investigation and arrests in La Línea scandal have shown Guatemalans that nobody in their government is above justice. The UN Secretary-General did not appoint Velásquez as the first commissioner of CICIG; it may take time to find the perfect leaders of future commissions against impunity in other countries. Therefore the focus must be on domestic governments’ continual support of independent commissions in order to keep renewing their short mandates (CICIG has a two-year mandate that must be renewed by the Guatemalan government).
The third factor, and perhaps the most complex of the three, is the Guatemalan domestic support for CICIG. The Guatemalan public is currently vocal in their support of CICIG, especially with the recent arrests of top government officials. The two candidates that ran for President last month both promised to keep CICIG intact, which shows the enormous value the public places in the commission. If the successful trend of CICIG investigations and arrests continue, no presidential campaigns will be successful without voicing support, which assures future extensions of the commission. The first two factors listed, agreeing to create the commission and allowing enough time for it to become effective, are reliant upon the domestic and international support of CICIG as public pressure can force other states to agree to similar independent commissions and ensure the extension of its mandate when necessary.
Those in the region and the international public sphere must also be loud in their support for such commissions in other Latin American countries, as is the case in Guatemala. The most recent CICIG arrests have thrust the commission into the public spotlight within Latin America and Commissioner Velásquez’s current popularity adds to the CICIG’s domestic support, marking the perfect time to pressure other governments into installing their own commission. That being said, creating financial incentives for the federal government may be the most effective way to incentivize states’ acceptance of anti-impunity institutions.
So far there have been some calls for implementation in El Salvador and Honduras but each state’s government has opposed a commission that replicates the mandate of CICIG. One way to overcome the reluctance of these governments is to link the creation of a similar commissions to foreign aid programs, which the United States has attempted. El Salvador and Honduras both refused to agree to a commission with similar domestic power, even with these added financial incentives. The US government and others across the globe must be more demanding of these aid recipients and it is the job of the international community, including the American public, to raise awareness and support for the implementation of CICIG-like bodies in other Latin American countries marred by government corruption. If CICIG is to truly mark a turning point in the history of Latin American corruption there must be multilateral efforts by the US, the UN and other democratic nations that pressure states like El Salvador and Honduras into implementing similar independent institutions.