What to Expect from Republicans in Congress on Foreign Policy
The party is internal disarray, and a prominent faction is not a reliable defender of democracy at home or abroad
Several indicators now point to Republicans taking control of the House and standing a chance to seize control of the Senate in this year’s midterm elections. This has prompted some people to ask what those outcomes might mean for policy on several fronts, including foreign policy.
Much depends on the actual outcomes of the elections, and a lot can happen in two weeks. But one episode this past week highlighted the potential for continued incoherence and internal divisions among the GOP on foreign policy.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, the person viewed most likely to become the next Speaker of the House, warned this past week that the GOP might put limits on the amount of support the United States provides to Ukraine in its fight to defend itself against Russia. This remark set off an intra-party skirmish over foreign policy, with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell putting out a separate statement calling on the Biden administration and allies to provide more support to Ukraine.
Making the debate more complicated was another Republican whose last name begins with “Mc,” Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the person most likely to run that committee if the House shifts hands, who has voiced strong support for U.S. aid to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression. The GOP divisions on Ukraine were on full display earlier this year, when 57 Republicans voted against additional funds to support Ukraine.
These intra-party scuffles might not mean much in practice now, but they could be a sign of things to come in the fight over what the GOP stands for in its foreign policy in the coming years. The debate between traditional internationalist Republicans, more Trumpist leaning conservative nationalists, and small government libertarian isolationists will continue to play out in politics and policy.
But the most worrisome indicator within the GOP about the future direction of its overall foreign policy approach actually may come from how the party talks about America’s own democracy and elections. How can a party that actively works to undermine Americans’ faith in their own democratic system articulate a vision that can compete with the likes of China and Russia in the world?
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Here’s the interesting thing about the Republican party divisions on foreign policy: it’s actually nothing new when measured up against the past twelve years and the disarray that has existed within Republican Party ranks on foreign policy. In the immediate aftermath of the George W. Bush administration and during the early years of the Obama administration, sharp divisions among conservatives began to emerge on a range of national security questions, including defense spending, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and arms control policy. Some of this was driven by the political impact of the Tea Party and a push to cut spending, and other aspects of this were linked to the nativist, anti-immigrant, and isolationist voices on the far right that existed for decades within the conservative coalition.
When Mitt Romney challenged President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race, Romney’s approach to national security leaned heavily on rhetoric but ran short on actual details, and the vagueness itself may have been core to the strategy, given the sharp divisions that remained within the party.
Donald Trump ran and mowed down the rest of the GOP field in the 2015-2016 primaries, and his erratic and divisive style of politics that he brought with him into government set the terms of the debate within the GOP on foreign policy. Internationalists served in his administration and tried to serve like guardrails against Trump’s approach, especially early. They helped write Trump’s national security strategy and national defense strategy, documents likely to have an enduring imprint, as witnessed in the recent release of Biden’s national security strategy. But Trump never really ran his administration in a way that led to a coherent and steady implementation of any policy whatsoever, and his own foreign policy instincts ran directly against the grain of the strategies his administration put out.
Will the real GOP please stand up?
For now, though, it seems likely the internationalist wing within the GOP is likely to outnumber the more inward-looking populist and isolationist strands that lean towards Trumpism – especially on the Ukraine war, where a strong majority of Americans support the current course. Some Republican candidates may pay somne cost for their isolationism with parts of the electorate, such as Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio J.D. Vance because of his stance on Ukraine.
Among conservatives, there remains a fairly cohesive group of internationalists mostly ensconced in think tanks and academia, and some have formed national security groups in exile. These groups do what is typically done by those in a career hold pattern pining for their job in a new Republican administration: networking, drafting white papers, and offering talking points aimed at shaping political discourse on foreign policy in a way that’s usually critical of the current U.S. administration.
But the real battle for the soul of the Republican Party on foreign policy will come in the political fights playing out in the midterm elections and within conservative media circles. Here the Fox News effect remains strong. A number of prominent voices including Tucker Carlson on Fox News are essentially promoting Russian propaganda about Ukraine and serving as echo chambers for Putin. Several GOP candidates running for office lean more isolationist, including several veterans, and that stance fits well with the sort of world China and Russia would like to see. The bottom line: there's a sizeable constituency for Trump-style isolationism in the GOP that's not going away and that GOP leaders have to contend with, no matter what people write at think tanks.
If Republicans take control of the House and perhaps the Senate, the party is likely to adopt a similar template to what it did during the final two years of the Obama administration: it will offer President Biden support on bigger items like competing with China and countering Russia in much the same way that most Republicans supported Obama’s war against the Islamic State.
Still, the GOP will likely mount a more aggressive stance on Biden administration policies on a range of security issues where it perceives Democrats and Biden to be vulnerable, including immigration, Iran, and Biden’s handling of the 2021 Afghanistan pullout. Expect more investigations on tangential topics like the Hunter Biden’s laptop as well – after all, a party that used the Benghazi hearings to its own partisan advantage seems quite likely to turn back to scandalmongering for political gains.
Weak on democracy at home, weak abroad
The recent turbulence this month in U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia pointed to a notable weakness America has today, and it’s not just the lack of a coherent energy security policy.
As the Economist magazine points out this week, this particular episode points to a new strategic vulnerability for America:
“If the adversary of one party can so easily become the other party’s friend, America has developed a new strategic weakness, one that will ensure its future unreliability on the world stage…
Endless head-snapping oscillation of that kind will be one price of a foreign policy captive to America’s tribal politics. That is in the interests of no one, except democracy’s real enemies.”
If Republicans take back control of one or both houses of Congress in the midterms, they will face many strategic choices on key fronts, including foreign policy. If they get the opportunity to use power in a way that builds stronger and broader coalitions within America on a range of foreign policy questions like China and Russia rather than fragment trust and confidence, this could help position America overall to achieve big things in the world.
But the biggest test will come in how the Republican Party itself responds to the results of America’s own elections and whether it does things to build greater public trust and confidence in America’s own electoral system and democracy. The Republican Party’s performance during past two years and the fact that a majority of GOP nominees for the midterm elections deny or question the 2020 election results are not good signs of things to come on this score.
In today’s America, a powerful faction in the Republican Party views election victories by its main political opponent as illegitimate in one way or another. If you literally believe that your political opponents can't ever legitimately win elections (the GOP candidate for Nevada secretary of state recently claimed Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff couldn't possibly have won their Congressional seats legitimately), then it is not likely that the GOP will be a party that can build coalitions with Democrats on any issue, including foreign policy.
The biggest challenge GOP party leaders will face is the same question Republicans have been facing for more than a decade now: what the party’s core principles are when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, and are those principles are still grounded in a belief in America’s democracy?