Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Donald Trump of breaking the transatlantic alliance with Europe and seeking to usher in an “era of totalitarianism” as she denounced her administration’s foreign policy before top policymakers from its allies at the Munich Security Conference.
Speaking on a panel on populism on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for the left. US foreign policychallenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front of an audience of US allies, increasingly wary of the US’ increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture.
Ocasio-Cortez said in her remarks that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “seek to withdraw America from the whole world so we can go into an age of totalitarianism.” Donald Trump He can command the Western Hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox, where Putin can lash out in Europe and try to bully our own allies there.
She also denounced the U.S. takeover of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, and U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent progressive figures in US national politics, flew to Munich as an apparent counterweight to Rubio, who will address a high-level meeting of leaders and top ministers on Saturday and say he will tell them that “the old world is gone … and we live in a new era of geopolitics.”
JD Vance, the vice president, wowed last year’s meeting with his full-on delivery Attacking Europe for “backtracking from its fundamental values”. Then met with the far-right German party, Alternative für Deutschland.
Appearing on the panel “Vox Populi? Responding to the Rise of Populism”, Ocasio-Cortez condemned the US-led war on Iraq as well as the development of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), calling instead for foreign countries to cooperate with “labor-centered politics” that aided “labor-centered politics.”
“I believe that extreme levels of income inequality in economies around the world, including in the United States, are leading to social instability and to authoritarianism, bigotry and very dangerous domestic internal politics,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the panel.
Ocasio-Cortez also called for a return to a “rules-based order” without the “hypotheses” of US foreign policy that she and her fellow Democrats have dominated in past and current administrations.
“Even if it kidnaps a foreign head of state. Threatening our allies to colonize Greenlandlooking at the other side of genocide, frauds are vulnerabilities and they threaten democracies around the world,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez’s visit to Munich comes amid a government shutdown in the US, with some US lawmakers canceling their travel plans.
Ocasio-Cortez is later scheduled to appear on a panel on “The Future of Foreign Policy.” During her remarks, she said the international tide in authoritarianism was “not just due to income inequality, but decades of democracy’s failure to deliver, failure to deliver high wages, failure to regulate corporations.”
“This is a moment where we are watching our presidential administration dismantle the transatlantic partnership,” she said. “What’s happening is really terrible, and we’re in a new era domestically and globally … but that doesn’t mean most Americans are ready to walk away from the rules-based order and we’re ready to walk away from our commitment to democracy.”