What would the last two years have been like if Bernie Sanders had beaten Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination and won the general election? How, for example, would he have handled Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — or would the outcome of other races around the country have changed enough with Bernie at the top of the ticket for the Senate to look substantially different?

We can only guess at the answers to most such questions. We can, however, be confident about at least one aspect of this alternate timeline. Foreign policy is the area where the executive branch has the most power, and we know how a President Sanders would have addressed the crisis in Ukraine — because Senator Sanders spelled out his approach weeks before the Russian invasion.

In a February 8 op-ed for the Guardian, Bernie correctly predicted many of the grim consequences that have played out in the last five months and urged the United States to get involved in negotiations to head off the catastrophe. We should have listened.