The nation is turning inward. The American public is in no mood for wars of choice, interventions in foreign conflicts, and casual displays of military might. Our foreign policy goals are becoming less ambitious, and Americans are more focused on domestic issues than global affairs.
This is not the first time in our history when Americans have been inclined to retreat from the world stage, nor will it be the last. What political leaders, strategists, and analysts must understand is that this new skepticism represents a medium-term development – neither a short-term swing in the polls, nor a permanent shift in public opinion. Nonetheless, it will constrain the actions of foreign policymakers for years to come.
Before addressing the specific causes of America’s shrinking global ambitions, it’s worth acknowledging that generational theorists predicted this inward turn. Modern generational theory was developed by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their seminal work The Fourth Turning. Echoing the writings of scholar Frank L. Klingberg, Strauss and Howe describe alternating periods of “introversion†and “extroversion†in American foreign affairs that correspond closely with their generational turnings. Indeed, Klingberg himself predicted a new introverting, inwardly-focused era in American foreign policy would begin around the year 2014.
America will eventually return to a more ambitious global agenda. The cooperative, optimistic, and internationalist Millennials will probably inaugurate the next extroverted era in American foreign policy. But Millennials won’t take power in Washington until the 2030s, as a recent report from First Person Politics demonstrated.
Of course, if the United States is attacked by another country or by a terrorist group, the public would probably support retaliatory strikes – and perhaps more, depending on the situation. But unless and until this occurs, voters will be quite reluctant to get involved in foreign conflicts. We turn now to the specific reasons for the new reluctance in American foreign policy.
Economic Strain at Home
The 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession reset the political agenda, in no small part because of the economic wreckage they left in their wake. Like the 1929 Wall Street crash, the financial crisis that began in the fall of 2008 took the country by surprise. Home values plummeted, the stock market crashed, and several large financial institutions collapsed. Trillions of dollars of wealth evaporated almost overnight and unemployment skyrocketed.
Thanks to the bank bailouts from Washington, Wall Street bounced back quickly. But middle class and working Americans have continued to flounder due to the over-accumulation of personal and household debt, the lack of good-paying jobs, and increasing concentrations of wealth among the hyper-rich.
Whatever the statistics purport to tell us about the national unemployment rate and our quarterly economic performance, most Americans don’t feel like there has been a recovery. Subjectively, it feels like the economy has been limping along — dragging short-term and long-term expectations down with it.
In this context, it is no surprise that pocketbook issues like jobs and wages, taxes and debt, health care and education costs have dominated the national political agenda. Broad public concerns about terrorism and national security have given way to a new set of debates over America’s skyrocketing inequality, the power of big money, and our broken government. Gone are the internationalism and exuberance of the 1990s along with the militarism and evangelism of the 2000s. The current decade has turned into an era of austerity and mistrust.
Since 2008, there have been no shortage of foreign policy crises worthy of panic and alarm; yet none of them have gripped the public imagination with the sense of urgency that has accompanied the economic and domestic policy debates over the past few years. Not once during the Obama administration has a foreign policy issue topped the list of voter concerns. Foreign policy issues haven’t even reached the top three.
Perhaps that is because during times of great economic distress, the nation tends to turn inward to focus on problems within our own borders. Note that the number of Americans saying the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally†peaked in the mid 1970s, the early to mid 1990s, and again in the early 2010s – periods marked by significant economic distress.
In part, this is about conserving the nation’s attention and resources for more urgent domestic priorities. But it also reflects the reactionary tendency to blame outsiders for one’s problems, manifesting as isolationism, protectionism, racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment during hard times. Indeed, recent psychology studies have demonstrated the link between racism and financial hardship.
Regardless of whether the motivations behind it are ignoble or irreproachable, scaled-back ambitions on the global stage go hand in hand with economic strife.
Veterans, Iraq, and Afghanistan
In the wake of our wars in the Middle East, the health care system for veterans has been completely overwhelmed with requests for treatment and care. In May, the Veterans Affairs scandal made national headlines with stories of endless delays, secret waiting lists, and out-of-touch managers. While the initial scandal focused on mismanagement at a facility in Phoenix, subsequent reporting has shown the problems to be widespread. The exact numbers are disputed, but it has been suggested that some veterans may have even died while waiting for care.
During the height of the scandal, polling showed that fixing the VA system became the top priority for nearly 9 out of 10 Americans. Indeed, the revelations of dysfunction came with a palpable sense that America hasn’t been keeping its promises to those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before we create a new generation of veterans, we need to honor our obligations to the current one.
There can be little doubt the war fatigue is playing a role in how Americans view military intervention. Today, most Americans believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mistakes, and two different polls show that a majority of Americans have no desire to return to Iraq. Consider that President Obama’s decision to send just a few hundred military advisers to Iraq has already reached the outer limits of public tolerance.
There also seems to be a growing public realization that the major conflicts across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia do not have clear “good guys†for us to support nor “bad guys†for us to defeat – and there is a growing recognition that military interventions in unstable regions of the world can sometimes make things worse despite the best intentions. Americans don’t want to get involved in conflicts where our interests aren’t clear, and where our goals are subject to the whims of unreliable local allies.
This is about more than just having a hypothetical exit strategy: when it comes to military interventions, Americans expect a round trip ticket with firm departure date. Unless we’re attacked, the public will tolerate neither the adventurism of the Bush years nor the expeditions of the Clinton years. As far as the public is concerned, the era of open-ended military commitments is over.
Brave New World
Thanks to the rapid evolution of military, surveillance, and information technology over the past twenty years, a Brave New World in national security politics has finally arrived. This futuristic sci-fi landscape of automated weapons systems, mass surveillance and data collection, cyber warfare, and drone strikes makes many Americans anxious, and not just because the technology is unfamiliar.
Almost all of the law and policy governing its use remains shrouded behind a veil of government secrecy. To make matters worse, it appears that senior military and intelligence officials have systematically lied to and manipulated the Congressional committees in charge of oversight. For months, key Members of Congress have been sounding the alarm, warning us that the accountability mechanisms designed to protect Americans from our own government are broken.
The Snowden disclosures have transformed the politics of surveillance and security. The last time these issues were on the table, it was a challenge getting anyone to pay attention, even though the stakes were just as high and the abuses of power just as criminal.
The 2007 and 2008 FISA debates focused on whether or not the telecom giants deserved immunity for illegally participating in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. In a telling reversal, then candidate Barack Obama changed his position on telecom immunity. At the time, this flip-flop was attributed to a tack toward the political center as the 2008 Obama campaign was shifting into general election mode. But subsequent events cast this decision in a different light – it may well have been motivated by sincere conviction.
Contrary to promises of transparency, the Obama administration has been characterized by unprecedented secrecy, foot-dragging on surveillance reform, and a war on whistleblowers that would make Nixon blush. Instead of allowing grievances and concerns to be addressed through the proper channels, the administration has entrapped, prosecuted, and persecuted anyone naïve enough to use them.
When a government hijacks the vehicles for internal dissent and reform, the natural consequence is that whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning will take their disclosures public. While opinion on Snowden himself remains divided, polling shows that a majority of Americans are worried about intrusive government surveillance and were unimpressed with the Obama administration’s proposed reforms.
When even House Republicans feel comfortable voting to ban “backdoor searches†of U.S. communications, the worm has clearly turned in the politics of national security. A few months ago, the idea that Congressional Republicans would put any limits at all on the power of U.S. surveillance agencies would have been unimaginable. The bill may yet die in the Senate, but it’s now clear that Americans in both parties no longer place blind trust in the national security establishment. This distrust translates into a deeper skepticism about America’s foreign policy interests and commitments.
Power, Party, and Politics
In recent decades, the party out of power has displayed much greater skepticism toward foreign interventions – especially those supported by the president. Part of this comes from a sincere desire to offer a counterpoint to the president’s policies; part of it is the result of partisanship and tribalism; though some of it probably reflects sincere, principled opposition.
During George H.W. Bush’s presidency, 179 Democrats in the House and 45 Democrats in the Senate voted against the 1991 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq. While Clinton was in office, Republicans opposed the deployment of troops to Bosnia, and voted overwhelmingly against airstrikes in Kosovo, though they later had a change of heart. And let’s not forget that in 2000, then candidate George W. Bush campaigned on a more humble and modest foreign policy and opposed nation-building in no uncertain terms…a pledge which didn’t survive a mere nine months into his actual presidency.
Knowing this history and cowed into submission by 9/11, many Democrats voted for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – though some of them would later come to regret those votes. Indeed by the mid-2000s, Democrats were leading the opposition to the War in Iraq – which became a major campaign issue in both the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Since the final year of Bush’s presidency, Republicans have vacillated between interventionist and non-interventionist positions on the major hotspots and conflicts of the day: Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Georgia, Libya, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq to name just a few. Republicans seem more interested in opposing President Obama than in the intellectual consistency of their opposition.
The point is that when a party is out of power, non-interventionist positions have been the norm rather than the exception – whether or not those positions continue to define the party once they regain power. Just as the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party has itself subdued since Obama has been in power, the isolationist wing of the Republican Party had very little chance of gaining traction until Bush was out of office. The need to defend or attack an incumbent president drives the agenda. To some extent, this explains the apparent role reversal of the parties now underway.
Looking Ahead to 2016
Given the persistence of public anxiety over the economy, international issues are not likely to top the list of voter concerns in 2016. But to some degree, global affairs are always on the table in presidential elections due to the commander-in-chief’s broad jurisdiction over foreign affairs. For this reason, the subject cannot and must not be ignored.
Will the 2016 Republican presidential primary feature a debate on America’s global military presence? If Sen. Rand Paul decides to run, it is likely that Republicans will have this debate whether or not he wins. Even if the demand for disengagement isn’t big enough to propel Paul to victory, it could alter the foreign policy platform of the eventual winner. Party nominees often adopt major ideas advocated by the first runner-up to help consolidate the party and strengthen their own platform and messaging for the general election.
With no plausible Democratic primary challenger, the problem for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign is not that she is too hawkish in absolute terms or even in comparison to Barack Obama (though by all accounts she appears to be). The real danger is that she could be forced to defend her hawkish views against an anti-interventionist Republican opponent. At a time when most Americans have grown tired of military interventions and are focused on domestic issues, Republicans would have a distinct advantage if they took that position.
In this scenario, the most obvious and expedient way to turn the tables will be for the Clinton campaign to reframe the major foreign policy debates in terms of her own experience. Whoever the Republican nominee is, he won’t have a record of service comparable to that of a former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State. At first glace, the experience debate looks like a slam-dunk for the Clinton campaign. But in fact it begs the question: what has she learned from all her experience? Voters will correctly perceive the pivot to experience as an evasion, not a satisfactory answer.
With any luck, Republicans will nominate another neoconservative, in which case Hillary will be able to argue for caution and multilateralism. But the strategists in Clintonland need to think long and hard about how they’re going to respond if Republicans argue for foreign policy restraint, as they did in the 2000 election. Their position may be insincere and short-lived, but it’s going to be popular.
Categorized in: Generational Theory, Political Analysis, Political Psychology