This week will focus on a jarring split-screen reality, highlighting America’s grand ambitions internationally amid political dysfunction at home.
As the United States and China vie for influence, two cabinet members are making another trip to the Indo-Pacific, a region with naval hubs and vital shipping lanes: It’s the 12th i eighth trip there for the secretaries of state and defense.
Meanwhile, at home, America’s notoriously bitter domestic politics are spilling over into international issues in new ways, with fights over abortion and LGBTQ issues blocking everything from the US military. recruitment i promotionsto diplomatic appointments and a new military budget.
After the Supreme Court limited access to abortion last summer, the military began low funding to allow staff to have procedures in choice-friendly states.
This prompted Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama start blocking systematically Senate Military Confirmation.
The United States is looking to build alliances in the Indo-Pacific region, a focal point of its tension with China, as seen here during a US-Philippines military exercise this spring. (Eloisa López/Reuters)
The same is true of American diplomacy: almost three dozen countries are missing US ambassadors because of a deadlock in the Senate, where Republican Rand Paul wants more information about the origins of COVID-19.
Also, an update military budget has stalled on the aforementioned abortion issue, as well as diversity and gender-affirmation initiatives, which Republicans want to eliminate from the Pentagon budget.
American allies are venting frustrations
On top of all this, US President Joe Biden recently had to cancel what would have been a historic first trip to a Pacific island nation at the center of the US-China power struggle; he returned to Washington amid a congressional crisis over the debt ceiling.
A Pacific ally was in Washington last week to explain past frustrations with dealing with the US political system, saying it creates doubts among America’s friends.
Surangel Whipps, Palau’s president, noted that it took time eight years for Congress to confirm permanent funding for aa economic and security pact between the two countries as Democrats and Republicans fought other issues.
Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr., seen here in June, was in Washington this month. He says people in his area are worried about American politics. (John Geddie/Reuters)
Whipps told a Washington audience at a meeting of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that Palau is a model US ally: It has blocked plans for a Chinese casino next to a US radar site and wants to tear up and replace the country’s Huawei cellular infrastructure.
But with the renewal of the US-Palau pact, Whipps said he hoped to avoid a repeat of last time.
“If the relationship is so important, it needs to be demonstrated,” he told the audience, noting that allies do not want to see the US so caught up in domestic politics that it ignores international responsibilities.
“Because I think that’s what our people at home have sometimes, you know, we see how divided [Capitol] Hill is.”
US Senator Rand Paul, in an effort to learn more about the origins of COVID-19, has halted all confirmations to senior US diplomats. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Political polarization is not all bad. Robust debate can reduce the risk of groupthink and related errors, and is part of what makes democracies resilient.
Generations ago, political scientists complained on the opposite problem: that America’s political parties were too similar and agreed too much.
But several scholars who study the interplay between domestic and foreign policy say the United States has gone far beyond the healthy level.
“I think it’s a big problem,” said Jordan Tama, a domestic and foreign policy major at American University.
“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot, not putting key national security officials in place … It’s troubling.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, seen during a press conference on July 14, is making his 12th trip to the Indo-Pacific region, an area of increasingly intense US focus. (Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana/Reuters)
Foreign policy is nothing new
Another type of polarization involves substantive disagreements on foreign affairs that see the US zigzagging on certain policies from one administration to the next.
The Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, for example, were all policies adopted under Barack Obama and canceled under Donald Trump. In some cases, they are now being renewed under Biden.
One international relations scholar joked that this is why Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made 12 trips to the Indo-Pacific, and probably needs 12 more.
Peter Trubowitz said the world is in a frenzy trying to follow these zigzags of US foreign policy and find out whether the country’s current positions will survive the next election.
“America’s allies need to be reassured,” said Trubowitz, an American and director of the U.S.-focused Phelan Center at the London School of Economics.
“One of the reasons they need to be reassured is because America is so deeply polarized.”
At Clemson University in South Carolina, political scientist Jeffrey Peake has tried to trace one reason why this matters: a collapse in the frequency of US international treaties.
Between World War II and the presidency of George W. Bush, Peake averaged 16 treaties per year submitted for approval by the US Senate. That dropped to four per year under Obama.
Over the last two presidencies, it has eroded to one a year.
Because it’s harder to get a treaty passed by Congress, Peake says presidents only sign agreements that aren’t enshrined in law, making it easier for a successor to simply cancel them. As Trump did, for example, with the climate agreement.
Foreign policy paralysis has happened before. When Woodrow Wilson, left, tried to create the League of Nations in 1919, the US Senate blocked American participation. Some analysts say the current level of partisanship is unprecedented since the US became a world superpower. (Reuters)
Global implications
Such actions have important global implications, according to Peake. “The world is not really addressing climate change without the US on board.”
And bitter disagreements over international affairs are not new. In a famous example from 1919, the US Senate rejected Woodrow Wilson’s plan for the forerunner of the United Nations; the idea lay dormant for another three decades, through another world war.
Later, the Senate rejected those of the UN Genocide Convention for four decades, arms control treated and various climate agreements. The chamber has also frequently blocked appointments over disputes.
But Peake says what’s happening in Washington right now is not a disagreement over foreign policy, but foreign policy becoming hostage to domestic disputes.
And it has led to separate blockages of high-level military and diplomatic confirmations.
Former football coach Tommy Tuberville, now a US senator from Alabama, says a policy to fund abortions for military personnel has no legal basis. So he has launched a roadblock against senior military appointments in the hope of forcing a policy reversal. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
“This is not something you typically see in American history,” Peake said, noting that in normal times, Alabama voters would punish Tuberville for blocking confirmations.
Instead, because the US is so polarized, they are more likely to reward him for standing up to the Democrats.
The benefits of messy debate
There are many examples throughout American history where a little more argument might have helped.
In 2003, for example, there were little opposition to the Iraq war in Congress Or McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, driven by bipartisan groupthink.
The catastrophic war in Vietnam is another example. In 1964, only after 40 minutes of debateCongress voted to increase its military involvement in Vietnam: the vote was 416-0 in the House of Representatives and 88-2 in the Senate.
“Bipartisanship is not a cure-all,” Trubowitz said. “Too much of anything can be a bad thing.”
There are many examples in American history where vigorous debate would have helped matters. Including during the Vietnam War, when the US voted to increase its military action after almost no discussion and a 416-0 vote in Congress. (Reuters)
Jim Carafano, a national security analyst who served on Donald Trump’s presidential transition team and has a long military and historical background, said the unfilled positions are not ideal.
“It’s problematic,” Carafano said of the military vacancies, which he says create inconvenience and planning problems, but he doesn’t think are debilitating. He also says there is no example of an urgent foreign crisis where the United States could not act.
“It’s a hamstring [American] giant, you know, tying us together like Gulliver with the Lilliputians? I don’t see that.”
His bottom line: Democracy is resilient.
Current blocs, Carafano says, will eventually clear up, voting coalitions will eventually undergo one of their transformative realignments, and parties will look different.
It’s a view as old as American history.
When he visited the US at the dawn of the republic, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville he remarked this autocratic government seems stable, until it isn’t. Democracy, he wrote, looks messy but is solid.
Then again, he he also wrote that democracies are bad at managing foreign affairs.
Now the US, the world’s self-described oldest democracy, seems determined to test both theories at once, facing major foreign challenges while there is so much strife at home.
