“Our legitimacy abroad rests on our democracy at home,” Mayor Peter in First Major Foreign Policy Speech: WATCH
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South Bend, IN. Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday, in a speech he delivered on foreign policy and national security at the Indiana University Auditorium in Bloomington, Ind. that, “Our legitimacy abroad rest on our democracy at home.” It was perhaps the lengthiest speech of his campaign, although he emphasized it was not an effort “to deliver a full Buttigieg doctrine,” but instead to lay out why “the world today needs America more than ever, but only if America can be at her best.”
Speaking in particular about Israel, which many progressives see him as hawkish on, he was clear about drawing a line at aid and the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party that currently control the Israeli Knesset.
Buttigieg said that in the same way an American patriot can criticize the policies of an American president, an ally of Israel should be able to oppose the actions of its government without being perceived as anti-Semitic.
”Especially when we see increasingly disturbing signs that the Netanyahu government is turning away from peace,” he said.
Buttigieg said both Israelis and Palestinians should be able to “enjoy the freedom to go about their daily lives without fear, and to work to achieve economic well-being for their families.”
He said his administration would support a two-state solution to the conflict that ”achieves legitimate Palestinian aspirations and meets Israel’s security needs remains the only viable way forward, and it will be our policy to support such a solution actively.”
About 2.8 million Palestinians live in the West Bank along with more than 400,000 Jewish settlers.
Buttigieg has assembled a volunteer team of more than 250 foreign policy experts, according to Doug Wilson, the former assistant secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama. Wilson is leading the group, which includes Tarek Ghani, a Washington University assistant professor, and Ned Price, a former National Security Council special assistant under Obama.”There was a process of discussing what major things he wanted to accomplish and what he wanted to articulate,” Wilson said. “He very much did not want to do a check-the-box, laundry list speech and he wanted to talk about what you wanted to know in order to build foreign policy over the long term.”Wilson added that the “speech was written virtually entirely by” the mayor.
Echoing an issue he’s repeatedly mentioned on the campaign trail, Buttigieg focused heavily on repealing the Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted in 2001, which today stands as the legal rationale for troop deployments in at least 10 locations around the world, including Syria and Iraq.
“Correcting this is not only a matter of presidential restraint but of renewed congressional oversight,” Buttigieg said.
“Our legitimacy abroad rest on our democracy at home,” Buttigieg said,
“The world needs America. But not just any America,” he said. “Not an America that has reduced itself to just one more player, scrapping its way through an amoral worldwide scrum for narrow advantage. It has to be America at our best… It has to be an America that knows how to make better the everyday life of its citizens and that of people around the world, knowing how much one has to do with the other.”
