Why Biden Should Build New Coalitions to Support America’s Foreign Policy
America’s global engagement offers the best option to make Americans more secure and prosperous
President Biden headed to the U.S.-Mexico border this weekend for the first time in his presidency, a visit that put a spotlight on the major challenges America faces in crafting a sensible immigration policy that reflects the country’s unique values and interests.
Immigration is an issue that sits at the crossroads of domestic and foreign policy, and it’s also one where for years there’s been no apparent political pathway forward in America. But like all tough issues in open democracies, the most effective leaders show the way ahead by bringing people of different views together on the most complicated issues that produce sharp divisions. It’s especially important to do so on issues like immigration that directly impact the security, economic well-being, and values of ordinary Americans.
Leaders need to lead, and not just follow the latest social media trends or populist political fads. Biden’s greatest political successes in the first two years of his presidency came when he built new coalitions and pushed the more extreme voices in America’s caustic policy fights to the margins.
The center outnumbers the fringes in the national security politics of today
House Republicans treated America to a preview of coming attractions of the divisions within their own ranks in a protracted fight over Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s ultimately successful bid to become Speaker. The small but organized and noisy Freedom Caucus faction extracted numerous concessions from McCarthy, compromises that will likely weaken him and increase the chances of a short tenure as Speaker.
Some of these concessions to a fringe right-wing minority will have possible major implications for America’s position and role in the world, including new questions about the U.S. government budget and debt ceiling. Reports surfaced that McCarthy discussed things like a $75 billion cut in the Pentagon’s budget in the final stages of the talks.
A number of advocacy voices in elite Beltway bubbles will undoubtedly continue to cheer on such budget cuts without strategic thinking. They’re part of a small cottage industry of voices that’s emerged to slap the label of “restraint” on what’s essentially a repackaged version of long- outmoded isolationism.
But when it comes to keeping Americans safe, most Americans support a steady, balanced engagement, as demonstrated by the vast majority of Americans who supported Biden’s steps to help Ukraine, Taiwan, and other countries defend themselves from aggression and backed measure to help give America’s workers and businesses an edge in global economic competition.
2022 showed that the American public is not isolationist and there is no strong demand for restraint in America. But that won’t stop academic elites or well-funded but fringe political movements from trying to push agendas that oftentimes align with those of Russia, Iran, and China. That’s something we saw last year when self-styled progressives jumped the shark on foreign policy by offering a set of impractical ideas that many of them almost immediately disowned.
The 2022 midterm elections demonstrated that the center lane for U.S. foreign policy is wide – and wide-open. It also has fairly broad and deep support with the American public, despite the energetic but boutique efforts to use foreign policy as partisan and intra-party wedge issues.
America needs to build a new liberal patriot internationalist caucus at home as it takes steps to build on 2022 foreign policy successes in the world
Moderate voices supporting a more balanced patriotic internationalism may outnumber the smaller camps lobbying for isolationism, but there’s much work to be done to build coalitions to support an internationalist agenda. As the GOP’s fight over the Speaker of the House demonstrates, loud political elements can punch far above their weight through organization and the use of various tools to put their opponents back on their heels.
That’s why it’s important to build new coalitions and caucuses that cut across party and ideological lines in support of a steady U.S. foreign policy. The Biden administration should take a page from its first two years, when it saw major successes on infrastructure and high technology investment measures, and build a new internationalist caucus, a coalition that seeks to build on the gains made last year at home and abroad.
2022 was the year that the world wobbled but it didn’t fall down or splinter. Despite more aggressive challenges from authoritarian countries like Russia, China, and Iran, the international system bent but did not break. The international coalition that the Biden administration started to reconstruct when it came into office in Europe and Asia came together to respond to aggression and intimidation, but the work is incomplete. The United States could take a step further to expand this coalition to draw in more countries from the Middle East, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. But in order to do that, this new type of balanced U.S. foreign policy needs organized political support that cuts across party lines at home.
Three places where a coalition of internationalists in America can start in 2023:
Continue to back Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s aggression and build alliances across the world to deter threats and intimidation from China and other countries undermining global security.
Build on the bipartisan successes of investing in America’s infrastructure and creating a new industrial policy for the 21st century by deepening economic cooperation with partners in ways that enhance shared supply chain security and measures to jointly compete with China.
Look for ways to build bipartisan support for a solid immigration policy that takes border security seriously while also balancing economic and humanitarian considerations.
Just as Biden’s visit to the southern border this weekend and trip to Mexico won’t provide an instant solution to thorny, long-standing immigration policy problems, this idea of constructing a new coalition to support a balanced and engaged U.S. foreign policy won’t provide quick solutions.
But building a new caucus across party lines to support the investments to make Americans safe and prosperous by staying engaged in the world is the best alternative among the others on offer.