10/19/23
10/19/2023Not surprisingly, America’s uncertain political situation fosters anxiety among its citizens. And it does the same for citizens of other nations, friend and adversary alike. It unsettles an already fraught future for the planet.
Rarely has the United States government been both so deeply and so evenly divided. We’ve experienced deep divides and political standoffs before, but hardly ever at the same time. Given that we choose our leadership every few years, this toxic compound invites unpredictability in every aspect of both domestic and foreign policy.
The potential domestic results are evident: congressional paralysis, inability to reach compromise, threats of personal danger (and some actual violence), spates of political dirty tricks, take-no-prisoners policies, all in search of political dominance, if only for the short term.
The effects on other nations don’t reveal themselves so readily, but they’re just as real and just as dangerous, for them as well as for us.
It’s the uncertainty that creates the problem, for developed nations as well as those undergoing major transitions in the 21st Century. How can a foreign government accurately predict how unpredictable American policies will affect them, and therefore what their safest courses of action would be?
Examples abound. For Ukraine, it’s whether the United States will continue to keep the munitions stream flowing so that the counteroffensive against the Russian aggressors has a chance of success. A significant bloc of congressional Republicans wants to ramp down Ukrainian aid or even shut it off altogether.
With American political parties so equal in strength, and with House of Representatives elections every two years, should Ukraine put some of its precious munitions in escrow on the chance that no more might be forthcoming? That could be a decision of life or death for Ukrainian independence.
For developing nations, particularly those in the “global South,” a few changes to congressional personnel could mean the difference between continued crucial American financial aid and an end to those funds. In that case, should emerging nations think about shifting their focus to China for the assistance they so desperately need?
For Western Europe, the turnover of a few congressional seats, not to mention the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, could drastically alter America’s role in NATO. Some American political leaders have declared their desire to downgrade the U.S. role in European security arrangements and/or to reduce America’s NATO financial commitment. What wager should European nations make on their defense system’s future and their own financial commitment to it, given the precarious balance of power in the United States?
For America’s adversaries, America’s unpredictability could induce them, for their own protection, to take unilateral action against potentially antagonistic American policies. If America’s political parties both still subscribed to the proposition that “politics ends at the water’s edge,” then unfriendly nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea would have some idea of how the United States would likely continue to conduct itself.
But that’s not how things stack up today. And elections are held here, between two evenly balanced parties with significant philosophical and practical differences, with potentially dangerous frequency. The balance of power here today can swing wildly every two or four years—how can our adversaries rationally plan their policies vis-à-vis the United States?
To be on the safe side, they may be tempted to take unilateral initiatives against possibly threatening American policy shifts. Those decisions could carry enormous implications for American security.
The situation is of our own making, and it’s baked into our constitutionally protected democratic system. But we need to be aware of its potential for harm, to ourselves and others around the ever-shrinking globe.
