Bernie Sanders is back – and he wants to reshape US foreign policy

If there was any doubt that Bernie Sanders is gearing up for another run for the presidency, his speech today in Fulton, Missouri removed it. Sanders appeared at the very spot where Winston Churchill pronounced in 1946 that Stalin was creating an iron curtain in Europe. Sanders, however, enunciated a more emollient message than the British prime minister, laying out the framework for a progressive foreign policy around the globe. He took some shots at Trump, but his real target was the Democratic establishment. Will he be able to push the Democratic party to the left on foreign affairs, just as he has on healthcare?

Sanders reached into the old toolkit of the left, emphasising climate change, human rights and ‘outrageous income and wealth inequality’. But in some ways, his suspicion of Washington’s actions abroad also meant that he sounded like Trump, or at least the Trump of the campaign trail who targeted the Republican establishment by espousing a more modest role for America abroad.