Primer on Foreign Policy for Candidates Published

RootsAction Education Fund has published a primer on Foreign Policy for Congressional Candidates.

Congressional candidates often have little or nothing to say about foreign policy, and a lot of them have a surprising reason when asked: they say that they don't know anything about it.

Some of them seem to be telling the truth, and others who don't explain themselves may also lack knowledge of foreign policy.

Even some candidates who do know something about foreign policy don't know enough, while others have positions that should really be corrected.

The primer has just been made public on a website and downloadable as a PDF.

"With over half of federal discretionary spending (the money spent at the discretion of the U.S. Congress) annually going into military spending," said David Swanson, author of the primer. "There seems to be a real gap in need of filling when we look at lengthy candidate platforms that give no indication that foreign policy exists."

RootsAction was founded in 2011 by two longtime progressive advocates and journalists, Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, and quickly grew.

"We need a fresh approach to defend the public interest and expand social justice. Our country faces an increasingly extremist Republican Party that is largely a subsidiary of corporate America, and a Democratic Party whose leadership is enmeshed with and compromised by corporate power," the organization said.