Biden’s run puts focus on foreign policy

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden is staking his presidential bid in no small part on the premise that he doesn’t need on-the-job training to lead the U.S. on a world stage that President Donald Trump has upended.

But his more liberal rivals aren’t ceding that ground.

The former vice president’s entrance into the campaign is reigniting Democratic debates over foreign policy that have largely faded to the background during the Trump era. Biden, long part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, is being pitted against progressives more skeptical of the use of military intervention.

On Thursday, it was Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders who seemed to be leading the debate. Sanders helped push a failed effort to overturn Trump’s veto of legislation withdrawing the U.S. from the civil war in Yemen. As a top Sanders aide urged Biden to weigh in, the former vice president made clear he stood with Sanders on the issue.

But Biden demurred in Iowa when asked about trade, saying there’d be “plenty of time” for such discussions. He avoided a question about unrest in Venezuela, only later tweeting his support for “legitimate, internationally monitored elections.” And he passed on a chance to respond to Sanders quipping that Biden had voted for the 2003 Iraq invasion, which most Democrats now see as a mistake.

When Biden did talk foreign affairs while campaigning, he invited backlash. In Iowa, Biden dismissed China as a geopolitical threat.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” he said, arguing that the world’s most populous country and second-largest national economy faces more serious challenges than the United States.

Again, Sanders pounced, tweeting that “it’s wrong to pretend that China isn’t one of our major economic competitors.”