Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich security conference.
Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, the New York representative outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US’s increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture.
She also condemned the US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
“I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” Ocasio-Cortez said during another panel discussion. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”
Ocasio-Cortez also said that she and her fellow Democrats were calling for a return to a “rules-based order” without the “hypocrisies” of US foreign policy that have dominated the past and current administrations.
AOC accuses Trump of trying to usher in ‘age of authoritarianism’
In her remarks, Ocasio-Cortez said Trump and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, were “looking to withdraw the United States from the entire world so that we can turn into an age of authoritarianism”, as they sought to “carve out a world where Donald Trump can command the western hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox, where Putin can saber-rattle around Europe and try to bully our own allies there”.