section_path: Political views/Foreign affairs and military intervention
section_name: Foreign affairs and military intervention
paragraph_text: Foreign affairs and military intervention
  
  Kennedy is critical of the United States' alliances with dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. He criticized the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemeni civil war, calling it a "genocide against the Iranian-backed Houthi tribe". Kennedy is a supporter of Israel. In December 2023, he had a heated exchange with Breaking Points host Krystal Ball, in what Rabbi Shmuley Boteach called "the single greatest defense of Israel on videos since the start of the" Gaza war. In a March 2025 HHS news release, he referred to student protests against Israel's actions in Gaza as "anti-semitism" and the product of "woke cancel culture".
  
  An opponent of the military industry and foreign interventions, Kennedy was critical of the Iraq War as well as American support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion of the country. He condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but called the Russo-Ukrainian War "a U.S. war against Russia" and said the war's goal was to "sacrifice the flower of Ukrainian youth in an abattoir of death and destruction for the geopolitical ambition of the neocons". He called for a peace agreement in Ukraine based on the Minsk Accords; in his view, the Donbas region should remain in Ukraine but also be given territorial autonomy and placed under the jurisdiction of United Nations peacekeeping forces, while Aegis missile systems should be removed from Eastern Europe.
  
  Kennedy said Ukraine should be forbidden from joining NATO, and announced that as president he would consider admitting Russia to NATO and deescalating tensions with China. He said the 2014 Ukrainian revolution was an attempted coup sponsored by the U.S. against the Ukrainian government, and that the Ukrainian government committed atrocities against the Russian population in Donbas, wrongly claiming that all casualties of the Donbas War between 2014 and 2022 (about 14,000) were Russians. He said that Russians living there "were being systematically killed by the Ukrainian government".
  
  Kennedy denounced the operations of former CIA director Allen Dulles, condemning U.S.-backed coups and interventions such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état as "bloodthirsty", and blamed U.S. interventions in countries such as Syria and Iran for the rise of terrorist organizations such as ISIS and creating anti-American sentiment in the region. Kennedy said the CIA has no accountability and declared his intention to restructure the agency.
  
  Kennedy's disapproval of U.S. intervention in foreign governments was expressed in a 1974 Atlantic Monthly article titled "Poor Chile", discussing the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende. He also wrote editorials against the execution of Pakistani president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. In 1975, he published an article in The Wall Street Journal criticizing assassination as a foreign policy tool. In 2005, he wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times decrying President Bush's use of torture as anti-American. His uncle Senator Ted Kennedy entered the article into the Congressional Record.
  
  In an article titled "Why the Arabs Don't Want Us in Syria" published in Politico in February 2016, Kennedy referred to the "bloody history that modern interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio miss when they recite their narcissistic trope that Mideast nationalists 'hate us for our freedoms.' For the most part they don't; instead they hate us for the way we betrayed those freedoms—our own ideals—within their borders." Kennedy blames the Syrian war on a pipeline dispute. He cites apparent WikiLeaks disclosures alleging that the CIA led military and intelligence planners to foment a Sunni uprising against Syria 's president, Bashar al-Assad, following his rejection of a proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline through Syria in 2009, well before the Arab Spring.
  
  In a June 2023 interview, Kennedy said that in broad terms, he believes that U.S. foreign relations should involve significantly reducing the military presence in other nations. He specifically said the country must "start unraveling the Empire" by closing U.S. bases in different locations worldwide.
  
  Kennedy believes that the administration of President Joe Biden, in large part, caused the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia due to reckless and militant action; he has specifically cited the issue of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. At the same time, he has clarified that he refuses to connect this criticism with anything considered support of the government of Russia under Putin, particularly given Kennedy's ethical opposition to the regime's beliefs and politics. He has called Putin a "monster", a "thug", and a "gangster". He also criticized the Trump and Biden administrations' "provocative policies" in regard to U.S. relations with China, saying that "China does not want a hot war" and calling for a reduction in tensions.
  
  Kennedy is critical of the United States' alliances with dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. He criticized the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemeni civil war, calling it a "genocide against the Iranian-backed Houthi tribe". Kennedy is a supporter of Israel. In December 2023, he had a heated exchange with Breaking Points host Krystal Ball, in what Rabbi Shmuley Boteach called "the single greatest defense of Israel on videos since the start of the" Gaza war. In a March 2025 HHS news release, he referred to student protests against Israel's actions in Gaza as "anti-semitism" and the product of "woke cancel culture".
  
  An opponent of the military industry and foreign interventions, Kennedy was critical of the Iraq War as well as American support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion of the country. He condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but called the Russo-Ukrainian War "a U.S. war against Russia" and said the war's goal was to "sacrifice the flower of Ukrainian youth in an abattoir of death and destruction for the geopolitical ambition of the neocons". He called for a peace agreement in Ukraine based on the Minsk Accords; in his view, the Donbas region should remain in Ukraine but also be given territorial autonomy and placed under the jurisdiction of United Nations peacekeeping forces, while Aegis missile systems should be removed from Eastern Europe.
  
  Kennedy said Ukraine should be forbidden from joining NATO, and announced that as president he would consider admitting Russia to NATO and deescalating tensions with China. He said the 2014 Ukrainian revolution was an attempted coup sponsored by the U.S. against the Ukrainian government, and that the Ukrainian government committed atrocities against the Russian population in Donbas, wrongly claiming that all casualties of the Donbas War between 2014 and 2022 (about 14,000) were Russians. He said that Russians living there "were being systematically killed by the Ukrainian government".
  
  Kennedy denounced the operations of former CIA director Allen Dulles, condemning U.S.-backed coups and interventions such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état as "bloodthirsty", and blamed U.S. interventions in countries such as Syria and Iran for the rise of terrorist organizations such as ISIS and creating anti-American sentiment in the region. Kennedy said the CIA has no accountability and declared his intention to restructure the agency.
  
  Kennedy's disapproval of U.S. intervention in foreign governments was expressed in a 1974 Atlantic Monthly article titled "Poor Chile", discussing the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende. He also wrote editorials against the execution of Pakistani president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. In 1975, he published an article in The Wall Street Journal criticizing assassination as a foreign policy tool. In 2005, he wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times decrying President Bush's use of torture as anti-American. His uncle Senator Ted Kennedy entered the article into the Congressional Record.
  
  In an article titled "Why the Arabs Don't Want Us in Syria" published in Politico in February 2016, Kennedy referred to the "bloody history that modern interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio miss when they recite their narcissistic trope that Mideast nationalists 'hate us for our freedoms.' For the most part they don't; instead they hate us for the way we betrayed those freedoms—our own ideals—within their borders." Kennedy blames the Syrian war on a pipeline dispute. He cites apparent WikiLeaks disclosures alleging that the CIA led military and intelligence planners to foment a Sunni uprising against Syria 's president, Bashar al-Assad, following his rejection of a proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline through Syria in 2009, well before the Arab Spring.
  
  In a June 2023 interview, Kennedy said that in broad terms, he believes that U.S. foreign relations should involve significantly reducing the military presence in other nations. He specifically said the country must "start unraveling the Empire" by closing U.S. bases in different locations worldwide.
  
  Kennedy believes that the administration of President Joe Biden, in large part, caused the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia due to reckless and militant action; he has specifically cited the issue of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. At the same time, he has clarified that he refuses to connect this criticism with anything considered support of the government of Russia under Putin, particularly given Kennedy's ethical opposition to the regime's beliefs and politics. He has called Putin a "monster", a "thug", and a "gangster". He also criticized the Trump and Biden administrations' "provocative policies" in regard to U.S. relations with China, saying that "China does not want a hot war" and calling for a reduction in tensions.