The Foreign Policy Establishment Has Been Given Another Chance, Will They Take Advantage?
By: Alex Christy
Tags: Politics, Joe Biden, Establishment, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy

From one American perspective, the Cold War was a necessary endeavor to prevent the Eurasian land power — the Soviet Union — from dominating Halford Mackinder’s world island. This was done by being the offshore sea power that could balance Soviet power, while preserving the American economic and trading system, and keeping the threat “over there.”

Another perspective was that after World War I, the United States failed to join the League of Nations, which doomed that organization to impotence and that impotence led to World War II. Therefore, in order to prevent World War III, a strong international system led by a United Nations that is concerned with international order and human rights is necessary.

While these ideas are not the same, they shared the premise that the Soviet Union represented the biggest challenge in the post-war world.

Of course, this is not how most Americans think of the Cold War. This is because politicians and foreign policy experts sold the Cold War to the public, not as land power versus sea power or as one to strengthen international institutions and human rights for it’s own sake but, as communist expansionism threatening freedom and democracy.

Even with the Vietnam War, the debate was mostly over the details. The public bought into this explanation, largely because it had the added benefit of also being true, and therefore it supported politicians who agreed with the idea that it was in the national interest to contain Soviet communism because communism was a threat to the American way of life.

However, a funny thing happened at the end of the Cold War. With the threat gone, most people lost interest in foreign affairs. Foreign policy, was always dominated by experts and think tank nerds, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, it became almost exclusively so.

This allowed for the foreign policy establishment, which was always more concerned about order building, whether of the economic or moral kind, but always found the Cold War politics in the way, to focus on their lofty visions to remake the world. For a time it seemed to work as global prosperity increased, democracy flourished, and there were no major wars.

However, all good things must come to an end. The war in Iraq became to be widely regarded as a mistake, there no longer seemed to be a coherent mission in Afghanistan, China did not become a responsible actor on the world stage, and the value of free trade was questioned more and more. All of this culminated in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump.

Trump’s foreign policy during his campaign focused on deadbeat allies, wars that seemed to be divorced from the national interest, and bad trade deals. His election was taken as an insult in the foreign policy establishment. How dare this interloper threaten to upend everything we’ve built since 1945 just because some guy in western Pennsylvania, who probably couldn’t point to Syria on a map, is upset about our Syria policy.

Now, four years Trump is on his way out and Joe Biden is on his way in and so far, Biden’s foreign policy and national security team is a who’s who of Beltway establishmentarians. The voters have given the establishment another chance, but the question for the incoming Biden Administration is will they take advantage of it?

Fortunately (for lack of a better word) for them, the nation’s adversary’s have presented them an opportunity. Over the past four years, Russia and China have proven themselves to be threats, not just to foreign borders or Western ideals of human rights, but to the American political system directly and to our way of life.

Russia galvanized the American public against it, especially the left, which usually is the more dovish side of the spectrum, when it interfered in the 2016 election in what the left perceived to be a plot to install Trump, whom they, of course, despise.

The Russian dismemberments of Georgia and Ukraine and support for the Assad regime in Syria might be enough to convince foreign policy nerds on the need to take a harder approach to Russia, but for the public who never heard of Crimea before 2014 or thinks Georgia is that state directly north of Florida, election interference is an acceptable answer to how Vladimir Putin’s Russia affects their lives.

The nation’s other principled adversary, China, has conducted itself in such a way that both parties view it as more of a threat than a partner. Indeed, both Biden and Trump campaigned on being the one who could best stand up to China.

It is one thing for the Chinese Communist Party to oppress it’s own people, but when it’s authoritarian ways unleash an economy-wrecking plague on the entire world, then they start making enemies. They use their economic clout to bully foreigners, such as the NBA and Hollywood, into political submission and Confucius Institutes threaten academic freedom at Western universities. The theft of intellectual property make them appear less as international statesmen leading a great power out of centuries of isolation and oppression and more like a roaming band of international thieves.

Americans who are not foreign policy experts may not understand the importance of the South China Sea or the importance of Taiwan in the first island chain, but they can see their local small businesses being closed by a virus that was initially covered by communist apparatchiks who then spent the the ensuing pandemic blaming the U.S. Army for the virus and bullying India, Taiwan, Australia, and Hong Kong.

If the foreign policy establishment can look at the world through their nerdy glasses and then translate that into a popular message that resonates with the American people and answers the question “why should I care?” then a foreign policy consensus will emerge again and Republicans and Democrats will just squabble over the details.

If the FPE, however, takes a more arrogant approach where they congratulate each other on beating Trump and are glad they can drink cocktails with the Europeans again, while bombing more countries for no apparent reason then we will be right back where we started. Which is not good for American foreign policy, for a debate between arrogant experts and ignorant populists is very likely unsustainable.