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Tom Steyer on Foreign PolicyDemocratic Presidential Challenger; CEO |
STEYER: No. It's very clear that if we're going to do something with North Korea, we're going to have to do it in concert with our allies, that meeting with him without preconditions is not going anywhere, that the staff can meet to try and see how far we can get. But this is a classic situation where the United States' idea of going it alone makes no sense. And when you are talking about Iran, let's face it. Iran is under great pressure economically. So every single discussion we've had about Iran has had to do with military power and America versus Iran, whereas, in fact, what worked with President Obama was an alliance of our allies and us putting economic pressure on them for them to give up their military tactic. That, to me, is called strategy. Having a goal to make America safer, by looking more broadly than just us, as the policeman of the world spending money.
Steyer says he would "work with our traditional allies in a multilateral way" and argues that Trump's pullback from global institutions has left a vacuum that China and Russia are eager to fill. He says he will "reinvigorate" the State Department, where Trump has sought budget and staffing cuts.
He says he will provide more foreign aid for Central American countries as part of his plan to address the record number of asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. southern border.
Steyer: The way the US should be reacting in Hong Kong is by gathering our coalition of democracy and freedom loving partners and allies to push back. In fact, when we're making moral statements around the world, it should not be us threatening and trying to be the world's policemen. It should be us leading on a value-driven basis with the other people who share our values and want to change the world. We actually can't isolate ourselves from China. In fact, we have to work with them as a frienemy. If we are going to treat climate as the threat that it is, we are going to have to partner with the Chinese. They're going to have to trust us and together we're going to have to solve this problem. We need a good relationship with them. We're going to have to work with them going forward under all circumstances.
Rep. BETO O'ROURKE: Yes, we TOM STEYER: Absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Trump's America first program, which involves having no plans, having no process, and having no partners is proved to be a disaster in Syria, it's proved to be a disaster in terms of our response to Russia's attacking our democracy, and more than that, when we look at the problems around the world, the idea that the United States is going to act unilaterally against a country without the support of our traditional allies makes absolutely no sense.
STEYER: I know that there are 71 countries in the world that openly discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community. And I know that the US, as a value-driven country, where we're projecting to the world what we care about, what we're willing to do about it, and the kind of world that we're trying to create with our democracy- and freedom- loving partners, should definitely include a specific attempt to represent the rights of LGBTQ people who live outside the US. So I think it's entirely appropriate as part of our foreign policy to have a person specified for that role, but also to make it clear that part of human rights, part of civil rights, that we expect in our own country, without equivocation, and that we expect people around the world to observe, is the rights of the people in this community. So I would support that.