The Old Consensus on U.S. Foreign Policy is Only Mostly Dead

Remember, "mostly dead" means "slightly alive"

Photo by Heidi Kaden on Unsplash

I have written one Foreign Affairs essay and co-written another arguing that the partisan divide over U.S. foreign policy is a real problem for any kind of sustainable grand strategy. As I wrote in “This Time is Different”:

The weak constraints on the executive branch will only make things worse. Congress has evinced little interest in playing a constructive role when it comes to foreign policy. The public is still checked out on world politics. The combination of worn-down guardrails and presidents emerging from the ends of the political spectrum may well whipsaw U.S. foreign policy between “America first” and a new Second International. The very concept of a consistent, durable grand strategy will not be sustainable.

In that event, only the credulous will consider U.S. commitments credible. Alliances will fray, and other countries will find it easier to flout global norms. All the while, the scars of the Trump administration will linger.

A few years into the Biden administration, how well has that claim held up? I was wrong about Trump’s successor reverting to liberal internationalism on trade — the Economist correctly quoted me saying, “The difference between the Biden administration and the Trump administration on protectionism is that the Biden administration is competent [in its protectionism.]" Otherwise, it’s quite clear that Trump remains the GOP’s foreign policy standard-bearer, to the point where other candidates are trying to out-Trump Trump.

Late last week Fareed Zakaria sounded similar themes in his Washington Post column:

For the first time since the World War II era, the basic issue of America’s engagement with the world is becoming a partisan issue. The United States stepped onto the world stage in 1917 to prevent a great power from dominating Europe. In 1945, after World War II, it stayed engaged to ensure peace and stability in Eurasia. But today, as Russia wages a brutal war in Europe that seems a throwback to World War II, there is deep division in America about staunchly opposing that aggression.

This is such a common lament in the 2020s that Simon Lester queried me, “Hasn't it been a partisan issue for much of this time?” Here, however, Zakaria has some receipts:

Consider the numbers: According to a recent Gallup poll, 79 percent of Democrats want to help Ukraine regain lost territory, even if that means prolonging the conflict. By contrast, 49 percent of Republicans would like to end the conflict quickly — even if that means letting the Russians hold on to the territories they have acquired by force.

On NATO, Democrats approve of it by a wide margin, 76 percent to 22 percent, while Republicans are split, with 49 percent approving and the same number disapproving, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. On the broader issue of engagement with the world, 60 percent of Democrats in the same poll said they believe that “it’s best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs,” while only 39 percent agreed that “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home.” For Republicans those numbers are essentially reversed, with 71 percent wanting to focus at home and just 29 percent believing in an active world role for the United States.

Was the American public as polarized on foreign policy issues in the past? Until recently, no, not so much. But for the past 15 years or so scholars have noticed that the political foundations for liberal internationalism were getting shaky.

What matters just as much as shifts in public opinion, however, has been the shift in salience. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: by and large, Americans do not care much about foreign policy. They wanted experienced people to be running things and that was pretty much it. This gave policymaking elites considerable autonomy in crafting foreign policy.

What has changed in recent years is less the polarization of foreign policy and more the polarization of attitudes towards expertise more generally. Republicans will now often rail against mainstream foreign policy views by tying them to the Blob, or tying them to past failures like Iraq, or tying them to the idea that scarce government resources are being allocated overseas rather than to problems at home. This last gambit was available to politicians for decades; only recently, however, has it gained real traction.

So is Zakaria right? Sort of — but even looking at the poll numbers he cites, I kept thinking of a particular scene from The Princess Bride:

There is a gap between Republicans and Democrats on the foreign policy issues Zakaria mentions, but a pretty healthy fraction of Republicans still support NATO and arming Ukraine. When push comes to shove, most GOP congressional leaders continue to express that support. Furthermore, the more that Ukraine succeeds on the battlefield, the more I’m willing to bet that GOP support for NATO and Ukraine will swell.

If Donald Trump or a Trump clone wins in 2024, then everything I predicted in “This Time is Different” will come to pass. If that does not come to pass, however, then everyone will be able to punt on whether Zakaria is really right until 2027.