Bipartisan consensus in US on foreign policy

While world affairs become more complicated by the day, leaving an impact that influences each and every country, pressing questions are popping up. One of the eminent academics in the field of strategic studies in the United States, Robert Pfaltzgraff, has taught at Tufts for 50 years and is the Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies Emeritus. He was also made an honorary professor at Panteion University’s School of International Studies on November 3.

Today he talks to Kathimerini about the changing dynamics of the world that seems to be sinking deeper into crisis due to strategic conflicts while financial and economic problems accumulate.

In the US midterm elections, the so called “red wave” hasn’t materialized. But the country continues to be sharply divided while the economy stumbles. Can a superpower marred in internal conflict continue to guarantee the security of the Western Alliance or could the allies be forgiven for assuming that another Trump surprise victory that would create much uncertainty is around the corner again?

To be sure, the United States has deep domestic political divisions and a polarized electorate, as we saw in the midterm election results. Nevertheless, on key foreign policy issues there is bipartisan consensus, especially concerning support for Ukraine and Taiwan, but of course not all issues, such as Iran policy. But Democrats and Republicans agree that China and Russia, in that order, loom as 21st century security challenges and threats. Agreement across political party lines about foreign policy priorities is often obscured by the domestic conflicts of the day. There also is widespread bipartisan agreement that the United States should rely on allies to do more for their own and the common NATO defense. For this reason, the heroic defense efforts of Ukraine resonate in the United States. As for former president Trump, he is capable of surprises, as you suggest, but he reiterated a longstanding US concern about the need for greater defense burden sharing by allies. He also warned NATO members such as Germany that they should reduce their energy independence on Russia several years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

‘We are in a high-tech race with China for artificial intelligence dominance, with both civilian and military applications in this and other technology sectors’ 

There’s little doubt that the war in Ukraine is in fact a proxy war between Russia and NATO led by the US. Do you share this conclusion? Is there a way out or is Russia a grave threat to Europe which should be defeated, as Poland and other former Eastern countries believe? Is there a compromise accepted by all sides or, as Russia probably cannot accept a total defeat in a land considered historically as vital for its security, is the possibility of a nuclear escalation increasing by the day?

The war in Ukraine has provided tragic evidence that Great Power conflict is still possible in Europe. However, Putin grossly miscalculated the determination of the Ukrainian people to resist Russian aggression as well as the will of NATO and the United States to support Ukraine after the collapse of US policy and the disorderly retreat from Afghanistan. Ukraine is a disaster for Putin. He has propelled Finland and Sweden into NATO and demonstrated Russia’s military weaknesses with repeated defeats in Ukraine. Russian regimes, including Tzarist Russia and the Soviet Union, collapsed in the face of international failures. It remains to be seen what will happen to Putin’s Russia of course. Putin’s ultimate instrument is nuclear weapons, but such escalation may yield greater risks and dangers for Russia faced with an unyielding Ukrainian resistance and a vast array of escalatory and retaliatory options available to NATO and the international community.

The consequences of war are being felt across the globe in terms of heightened inflation, the cost-of-living crisis, recession and projected unemployment increases as well as heightened financial instability in economies overburdened with debt (as the UK showed recently). Not to mention the rise of the far right across Europe and the US. Is there any hope of a better, more peaceful future when all the signs are pointing toward more disruption rather than less?

The war in Ukraine accelerated economic forces already at work around the world, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the United States, for example, Covid-19 had devastating effects on productivity, with much of the economy forced to shut down. This was accompanied by vast infusions of liquidity into the financial system, sparking growing inflation. The delayed effects of this injection of money will be felt for some time. Furthermore, the rise in energy prices is the result not only of supply restrictions from the Ukraine war, but also from conscious policy choices in the United States to restrict and discourage drilling and refinery construction and new pipelines. Petroleum products remain important in fertilizers for farming and fuel for supply chains, to mention only the most obvious examples of the inflationary effects of rising fossil fuel prices. The negative trends that you mention will recede, if and when the factors contributing to them subside.

For the past 30 years the West has outsourced labor-intensive production to China but it has ended up not only with increased social instability and squeezed low and lower middle classes – a phenomenon that helped produce the Trump movement – but also with an emboldened China all but ready to strengthen control of Hong King, challenge the US over Taiwan and even on the verge of outperforming the US in key technologies. Should we anticipate the re-industrialization of the West?

The bipartisan foreign policy consensus that I referred to above focuses heavily on China. There is widespread concern that China is on a path to surpass the United States both militarily and economically. You have described accurately the perceived costs incurred in outsourcing labor-intensive manufacturing to China and its political and social effects on the United States. The result of this backlash is growing impetus toward “reshoring” or bringing manufacturing back to the United States to reduce dependence on China across a spectrum of industries from pharmaceutical products to rare earth minerals used in high-tech. We are in a high-tech race with China for artificial intelligence dominance, with both civilian and military applications in this and other technology sectors. This points toward “deglobalization.”

Is it too soon to declare the death of globalization or is the world already too fragmented and filled up with antagonism for us to continue pretending we are still in the 00s?

A high degree of globalization is here to stay. Technologies once developed will be rapidly spread internationally. Think, for example, of artificial intelligence devices for greater driver safety and technologies for electric vehicles, for which there is a global market and global industry. We will see fragmentation alongside globalization.