Politics Can’t Stop at the Water’s Edge

American politicians and analysts have long argued that it is dangerous to politicize U.S. foreign policy and national security. “U.S. foreign policy is stronger when it enjoys bipartisan support,” wrote Democratic Senator Chris Coons in a 2020 Foreign Affairs article. “For the United States to play a steady, stabilizing role in world affairs, its allies and adversaries must know that its government speaks with one voice and that its policies won’t shift dramatically with changing domestic political winds.” Following the 2016 election, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and Nancy Lindborg, the president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, argued that a “bipartisan approach to foreign policy is achievable and remains essential for our security.” Such statements invoke the words of U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, who shaped the 1948 Republican Party platform with a call for Democrats to “join us under the next Republican Administration in stopping partisan politics at the water’s edge.”

But it would be a mistake to yearn for a foreign policy devoid of politics. After all, national security has always been political. George Washington’s administration engaged in spirited debates at home about how the United States should conduct itself in the world. Republicans and Democrats sparred over whether the United States should enter World War I and whether it should join the League of Nations afterward. Before 1941, the parties debated whether the United States ought to aid the United Kingdom in its fight against the Nazis. And during the Cold War, politicians argued intensely over how best to contain the Soviet Union. As in any democracy, politics is a natural part of how the U.S. government makes foreign policy choices.

Most of this politicking happens at the elite level, and it includes what Americans might consider unseemly behavior when applied to national security—bargaining, horse-trading, and careerism. In fact, elected officials frequently accuse their opponents of playing politics with national security. But these political tools are simply how policy gets made. When the Red Scare engulfed the State Department’s China specialists in the early 1950s, for example, the Truman administration asked Vandenberg for help in appointing a Republican adviser to provide cover for the administration’s embattled Asia policy. Truman also knew he would need Republican votes for his military rearmament program in Europe. Recognizing his leverage, Vandenberg pushed the administration to hire John Foster Dulles, his ambitious protégé, with the understanding that Dulles would advance certain GOP priorities in Asia. Truman reluctantly agreed. Dulles became a special adviser in the State Department, and Truman continued to receive internationalist Republican support for his Europe policies. Once in office, Dulles successfully pressed the administration to be more supportive of Taiwan.

Americans cannot change, and thus should not lament, the fact that their leaders look beyond the water’s edge through a political lens. But they should expect the politics of foreign policy to be healthy, and today, the core elements of a hardy foreign policy are either missing or endangered. The United States has fewer and fewer debates that are shaped by good information and expertise. Both elected and unelected officials lack incentives to take appropriate risks in the name of the wider national interest, or even to develop the policy expertise and political power essential to unearthing and acting on good information. And many of the seasoned officials from one of the United States’ two main parties—the Republicans—have been out of power for over 15 years, including during U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, badly damaging the party’s pipeline of talent.

Those problems need to be addressed, but they must be addressed on their own terms—not by imagining a time before politics entered national security. That means analysts must also be clear-eyed about the very real problems and pathologies foreign policy faced in the past. Partisan political incentives to appear tough, for example, have long pushed elites toward overly hawkish behavior. Careerist goals can lead officials to help implement controversial policies. And U.S. leaders have a long track record of making mistakes, from their intervention in the Vietnam War to the protracted war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

It is tempting to look at the history of American foreign policy and conclude, as many populists do, that elites are doomed to fail as stewards of national security. Yet such thinking is both incorrect and self-defeating. Elites—elected politicians, bureaucratic officials, military leaders—are an inescapable part of crafting and managing foreign policy, and they succeed more frequently than critics think. But to help them make smart choices more often than not, these elites need to function within a system that incentivizes them to develop expertise, to expend personal or political resources on what they believe to be the right policies, and to participate in real political bargaining over the direction of U.S. national security. And today, the link between making good policy and reaping career or political benefits has eroded because of partisan polarization, the centralization of power in the White House and in the leadership in Congress, and the widespread demonization of elites.

These challenges are serious, and fixing them will not be easy. But politicians and commentators can start by not vilifying officials for serving in government or seeking positions outside it when their party leaves power. The political system can once again reward candidates for engaging with foreign policy elites and demonstrating interest or experience in international affairs—a former hallmark of the Republican Party that has all but vanished. It can create partisan and career incentives that ensure there are diverse views in national security. And it can make space for people with differing perspectives to share and exercise power.

These shifts cannot guarantee good decisions in foreign policy; nothing can. But they can, at least, make bad decisions less likely, helping the United States as it navigates an uncertain future.

DIVIDED WE STAND

U.S. foreign policy has been political since the founding. During Washington’s administration, officials were divided over their fledgling nation’s stance in the war between France and Great Britain. In the late 1800s, Democrats and Republicans in Congress pressured a reluctant President William McKinley to go to war with Spain on behalf of Cuban independence.

Even the emergence of the so-called Cold War consensus—a bipartisan commitment to build and use American military power to contain communism—was the product of intense political bargaining. To get the European rearmament program he deemed necessary to counter the Soviet Union, President Harry Truman had to negotiate with isolationist Asia-first Republicans, who opposed new international commitments in Europe; internationalist Europe-first Republicans such as Vandenberg, who generally supported Truman’s national security agenda but wanted to use their political leverage; and southern Democrats, who opposed his domestic agenda. Truman largely succeeded, but only by bolstering Taiwan, making concessions on military strategy in the Korean War, and jettisoning his efforts to expand civil rights and the social welfare system.

Even after Truman set this basic direction for national security, the Cold War continued to involve fierce political disagreements. Some of these policy fights reflected real differences of opinion on policy, such as the merits of arms control. But personal ambition and electoral motivations also shaped foreign policy. During the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy and his advisers feared Republican political attacks if he did not follow through on his promise to keep offensive weapons out of Cuba. President Richard Nixon wanted the Senate to overwhelmingly ratify the agreements that resulted from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, not only because he deemed it good policy but also so that he could look statesmanlike.

Both parties exhibited internal cleavages. The Democratic Party was home to a cohort of defense hawks who championed a strong military, as well as a more diplomacy-minded wing. Former Republican President Ronald Reagan railed against the détente prized by Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Each party also had more extreme factions, including far-left Democrats who opposed almost any foreign intervention and, relatedly, isolationist Republicans who wanted Washington to focus its attention at home. Yet the parties made room for their various factions, and the debates both within and between them served as a form of checks and balances. Hawks and doves disagreed but also bargained, creating deals that survived from administration to administration. The stability of American Cold War policy was no utopia of bipartisan consensus. It was the result of hard-won, cross-party compromises.

The system that produced a relatively durable foreign policy also enabled foreign policy disasters that left terrible stains on the records of the various factions. Democrats initiated U.S. military intervention in the Vietnam War. Nixon and Kissinger supported a coup d’état in Chile. Reagan backed a brutal counterinsurgency campaign by El Salvador’s military. The politics of national security has always carried the risk of tragic errors.

TOP DOWN

To understand why the politics of national security is both necessary and deeply flawed, analysts must look to elites: the presidents and appointees who shape the bureaucracy, the military leaders who advise on and implement decisions, and members of Congress. Although the democratic process can help keep foreign policy on an even keel, the role of voters is limited. The general public cannot judge every policy issue closely, and people pay closer attention to issues that affect them directly, such as health care or tax policy, than to international relations. Even voters who do care deeply about international affairs have only the blunt tool of infrequent elections to try to shape policy.

When it comes to international affairs, voters tend to be led by their parties instead of the other way around. As the political scientists Adam Berinsky and John Zaller have shown, people look to elites on matters of national security, trusting those with whom they share a partisan affiliation. They often take their cues from major politicians, choosing their preferred leaders and then adopting those politicians’ views as their own. Trump’s rise to power in 2016 dramatically illustrated this phenomenon. Republicans have traditionally been more hawkish than Democrats, but as Trump won the GOP nomination and presidency, Republican opposition to foreign interventions rose sharply. As the political scientist Michael Tesler has shown, Trump voters were hawkish in their opinions of U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Syria before 2015, but they completely reversed their views after Trump won the presidency. The party’s voters were sharply critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Trump’s praise led Republican voters to view Putin and Russia more favorably.

That elites make national security decisions is not, by itself, bad. Given how much of foreign policy is hidden, elites make prudent choices more often than the public might realize. They can also make decisions quickly and efficiently in crises. Elites who are knowledgeable or care intensely about an issue or a country can also provide valuable insights, monitor events, and process information more effectively than both ordinary people and practitioners with a different set of interests. Elites who have a strong affinity or bias can play a particularly important role in the policy process: for example, scholars have found that high-stakes diplomacy can be more effective when ambassadors are political appointees with the president’s ear or when they are biased toward their host country and thus elicit more trust from that country’s leaders.

National security has always been political.

Elites can also hold politicians accountable in ways that ordinary voters cannot. They can pass information on to other elites or the media, criticize policy in front of audiences that matter to policymakers, and resign in protest. The information unearthed and publicized by the January 6 committee—whose very existence resulted from partisan political maneuvering—is a good example. The insurrection threatened U.S. foreign policy and national security by undermining the peaceful transition of power, straining civil-military relations to the near-breaking point, shaking global leaders’ confidence in the stability of core U.S. institutions, and exposing deep fissures that Washington’s adversaries might exploit. But the committee helped create some accountability for this disaster. By getting testimony from people in Trump’s inner circle, the committee’s work helped facilitate some of the legal cases now proceeding against the former president.

Sometimes, elites give each other cover to break from consensus, as did John Murtha, the former Democratic congressman, when he publicly turned against the Iraq war. Such pressure, however, tends to be most powerful when applied by elites who are typically aligned with the president or who are arguing against their known instincts. When Senate Foreign Relations Chairman J. William Fulbright began holding hearings and publicly opposing the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, he helped give voice to dovish sentiments and loosened the grip that President Lyndon Johnson then had on his fellow Democrats in Congress. Fulbright’s opposition eventually helped force Johnson to reconsider his Vietnam policy, especially after the shocking North Vietnamese Tet Offensive. Fulbright was an influential critic precisely because he had been Johnson’s longtime ally.

Such intra-elite accountability rarely stops bad decisions before they are made. But it is an important source of constraint afterward. In fact, it is usually elites who convince presidents to change course. It was concern inside his own administration and among Republicans in Congress that persuaded Reagan to withdraw U.S. marines from Lebanon in 1984.

HAWKS AND DOVES

So what motivates elites? The answer can involve many factors, including policy views, patriotism, and the desire to do what is right. But it surely also includes political and career incentives—even for those who are not elected by voters. They want to do what is right, but they also want to better their own prospects. Career bureaucrats or military leaders take actions to protect their future ambitions, whether that means speaking out or, more often, keeping quiet and trying to make the best of policies they might not support.

Such motivations are not necessarily detrimental to the policymaking process. During the Cold War, for example, some members of Congress were incentivized to acquire deep, specialized knowledge so they could wield the power this knowledge afforded them in the political arena. Elites vary in how much importance they assign to different issues, but some elites must care enough about a foreign policy to make bargains that give others something of value in return, and there must be some political or career benefit to furthering policy goals even if voters are not paying attention. Partisan political or career incentives can also be healthy for national security if they lead opposition parties to unearth bad ideas, poor policy choices, or incompetent implementation.

But there is no free lunch in national security politics, and the political forces that help foreign policymaking also push it in a hawkish direction. It is not that elites share a warmonger mindset—there are often plenty of powerful dovish voices that go along with or even choose hawkish policies. Instead, it is that the “insiders’ game” elites must play can lead to wars the public might not choose and prolong ones that voters want to end sooner.

The source of hawkish bias lies in the credibility gap that dovish leaders face when making foreign and security policies. For better or for worse, voters trust hawks more than doves on national security issues, so hawks have more leeway on matters of war and peace. Research by the political scientists Michaela Mattes and Jessica Weeks suggests leaders want to signal that they are moderate, giving hawkish leaders who want to avoid the “warmonger” label an advantage in peace initiatives compared with doves—the famous idea that only a hawk like Nixon could normalize relations with China. Yet the incentive to act against type also applies to dovish leaders, who can reap political benefits or avoid political costs when they use force. In fact, that “against type” incentive is much stronger for doves than it is for hawks. Hawks are given greater deference on matters of war and peace, and so they can play to type—choosing to use military force—and benefit by reinforcing their image as strong and tough leaders. Dovish leaders, by contrast, have a hard time convincing a domestic audience that their peaceful policies are in the national interest.

Elites are not pushed in a hawkish direction solely because they fear they will face political penalties. Policymakers are also motivated by private benefits—such as promotions—when they consider war and peace. And some elites will gain from using military force when they are charged with preparing, maintaining, and controlling the nation’s military resources—even if they do not support a particular war.

As a result of these dynamics, dovish leaders often feel pushed to embrace aggressive policies rather than expend political capital by calling for diplomacy or restraint—especially if they want to use that political capital for other priorities. The result is the “dove’s curse,” in which dovish leaders become trapped in an inconclusive military conflict, fighting just enough to neutralize the issue but not enough to win. Many Democratic presidents have succumbed to this tendency: Truman in Korea, Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam, and Barack Obama in Afghanistan. Dovish leaders also face pressure to appoint hawkish officials to help close their credibility gap on national security, as illustrated by the frequency with which Democratic presidents appoint Republican secretaries of defense. And when a hawk occupies the Oval Office, dovish officials frequently greenlight their policies—loosening the constraints on aggressive leaders and enabling “hawks’ misadventures.” In 2002 and 2003, for example, many congressional Democrats opposed invading Iraq. But they were afraid of looking weak, and some believed opposing the war would mar their presidential aspirations. As a result, President George W. Bush managed to secure their support by making only procedural concessions, such as seeking congressional authorization.

Sometimes, of course, doves do stick to their positions. Biden pulled all American troops from Afghanistan in 2021 as promised, ending a long-standing and costly war that most voters and elites (including his predecessor) had wanted to conclude long ago. And yet the president incurred political costs for his choice. Biden’s approval ratings dropped after the tragic circumstances of the withdrawal, as the Taliban moved in and Republicans accused Biden of undermining U.S. power. For doves, fighting or supporting a war is often the politically easier path.

PARTY FOUL

These pathologies are not new, and they are important reminders that there is no perfect baseline for national security decision-making. Even a well-run Washington will follow bad processes and make mistakes. But a clear-eyed view of the national security politics of the past, and how it was both flawed and invaluable, is essential to understanding what is really ailing foreign policy today.

Consider the issue of expertise, especially in Congress. In the past, major foreign relations or armed services committee membership was politically valuable and a source of real influence. Committee chairmen, especially, wielded significant power over policy specifics, and so they sweated the details. During the latter stages of the Cold War, for example, nuclear policy had to go through Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, the knowledgeable chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. If Nunn endorsed a defense bill, he could bring along the votes of other members of his party who were skeptical or who simply did not follow defense issues closely. In the post–Cold War years, he used his defense clout to team up with Republican Senator Richard Lugar and push through funding for the Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative, designed to safeguard nuclear material and know-how in the former Soviet Union.

But now, this nexus between power and expertise has melted away. Changes in committee membership rules have disincentivized learning by increasing turnover and weakening the once powerful congressional committees, while presidential and congressional leaders have increased their power since September 11. If committees can no longer influence policy, representatives have far fewer incentives to invest scarce time and political resources in learning about a region or a national security issue.

Voters trust hawks more than doves on national security issues.

Institutional changes are only one reason why elites are now less capable of making foreign policy. The bigger culprit is intense partisan polarization. By pulling elected representatives to extremes, polarization reduces the pool of moderates who can make the kind of bargains that guided Washington through the Cold War. Instead, it incentivizes officials to shoot down ideas tabled by the opposing “team” irrespective of the policy merits. And as the political scientist Rachel Myrick has argued, polarization undermines U.S. credibility by making it harder for Washington to commit to policies that last beyond the current administration.

Polarization, however, has not done equal damage to both parties. These dynamics have affected Republicans far more than Democrats, thanks to Trump’s capture of the GOP and his delegitimization of its traditional internationalism, as well as right-wing media pressure to take oppositional stances and avoid policy debates. This toxic combination of forces has changed incentives for Republican presidential and congressional candidates so much that they no longer feel the need to demonstrate their capability on foreign policy. Ironically, even though the Democratic Party has increased its share of the country’s national security professionals in Congress, the GOP retains the advantage in public opinion polls in terms of national security competence.

The GOP has dismantled much of its pipeline of foreign policy talent by becoming actively disdainful of expertise. When Trump campaigned for president in 2016, he did so on an explicitly anti-experience platform, and once in office, he drove many of his party’s most talented officials out of government. Other officials refused to even consider serving. Trump has continued to rail against expertise in his 2024 campaign and has plans to—in the words of the leading pro-Trump think tank—“destroy” parts of the civil service. A second Trump term could prompt even more foreign policy officials to voluntarily leave government.

The Republican Party, of course, still has many experts, and there is sincere internal debate within the GOP about whether some form of isolationism or restraint is preferable to the party’s more traditionally hawkish stance. Although there is nothing wrong with arguing for reducing U.S. commitments around the world, many GOP elected officials are likely most interested in falling in line behind Trump’s positions and in opposing Biden’s. The sight of Republican candidates refusing to take a strong stand against Russia at last September’s presidential primary debate at the Reagan Library underscores this dynamic.

The GOP’s problems will not be easy to solve. Many of the party’s talented national security professionals sat out the Trump years and would likely do so if he wins again. At a minimum, that means a large share of the Republican Party’s experienced officials will have been out of power for two Obama terms, a Trump term, a Biden term, and then, presumably, either a second Biden or Trump term—a total of 20 years. Even if a traditional Republican wins the presidency in 2028, the newly elected leader will have few top-level officials to appoint who both share the president’s views and have recent experience in a presidential administration. This president will have fewer junior officials, too. Because traditional, top-level GOP foreign policy experts have gone so long without power, they have not been able to hire deputies, and those deputies have not had the chance to hire staffers who can then move up the ranks.

Whatever one’s party affiliation, this broken GOP pipeline should be of great concern, and restoring it is in the national interest. As Kori Schake has written in these pages, “The United States needs a strong and vibrant Republican Party.” It helps Democrats to have another party that will bargain, share blame, and subject it to scrutiny and opposition—and whose support can be earned when the United States confronts a crisis. But this process only works if the parties believe they benefit from having and publicly discussing substantive views about foreign policy. It is no indictment of the Biden team or the pipeline of Democratic officials behind him to say that if traditional conservative Republicans continue to remain out of power, the Democratic Party’s ideas are likely to stagnate.

DON’T HATE THE PLAYER

It is never a good time for an unhealthy politics that devalues knowledge and professionalism. But the present moment is especially perilous. Technological developments on which the U.S. economy and military are increasingly reliant, such as high-performance computing, network connectivity, and artificial intelligence, demand a government that welcomes, incentivizes, and seeks out expertise—as well as one that makes difficult policy choices.

Resurrecting such a politics will not be easy. Yet leaders and commentators on both ends of the political spectrum can start by not vilifying national security professionals as corrupt swamp creatures. Elites are not saints: they certainly have self-interested motivations, but so does everyone. The public may like to lionize policymakers who risk their jobs out of conviction, such as the former congresswoman Liz Cheney (who lost her Republican primary election for taking on Trump), but the United States simply cannot depend on elites to always adopt good ideas, sacrifice their careers, or undergo full ideological conversions when they speak out on a particular issue. Attacking elites, particularly for supporting policies or serving in a particular administration that needs professionals to keep the lights on, is self-defeating. The best the country can do is to align incentives so that smart policymaking points in the same direction as career longevity.

It would also be bad for national security if bureaucrats and elected officials resigned in response to every poor policy outcome. Many State Department, Pentagon, and CIA officials are civil servants who are supposed to serve the government regardless of who is in charge, and they provide ballast and institutional memory that help stabilize Washington’s behavior. Not every member of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has the power to make decisions. Many work hard to make the best of bad policies or to make the best of reasonable policies that have gone wrong.

Even a well-run Washington will follow bad processes and make mistakes.

If commentators want to encourage elites to resign on moral grounds—to be principled even at the cost of their government careers—they must stop judging bureaucrats and appointees who take lucrative corporate positions or prestigious think-tank posts when they leave. If officials know they can make money working as lobbyists or consultants, or that they can retain input in the policy process from a perch outside government, they are more likely to protest bad policies or make decisions that carry some risk to their careers. The so-called revolving door, where political officials cycle between government and the private sector, can also help reduce threats to democracy. As the political scientist Adam Przeworski wrote, democracy is “a system in which parties lose elections.” To make this simple proposition work, those who lose must have more to gain by waiting to contest another election than by turning against the system.

Accepting career incentives does not mean that journalists and watchdogs should ignore officials who violate norms or rules. There are lines that elites should not be allowed to cross without paying a cost, such as violating the very institutions and norms that underpin American democracy. No one who helps or cheers on efforts to overturn an election deserves a good post-government position. The careless (or worse) treatment of national security secrets and classified documents also violates important norms and rules. And some policies are so abhorrent that those who craft them should suffer career consequences.

But most of the policy choices made by duly elected administrations are not so clear-cut. Should supporting or merely participating in policymaking related to the Iraq war, for example, mean the end of a foreign policy career? Every administration needs people to maintain basic systems—including those involving nuclear weapons—and to make day-to-day policy decisions. Employers can and should scrutinize records and choose not to hire former officials whose values or performance do not align with their standards. But where reasonable people can disagree, analysts should be cautious about undermining the career prospects of officials who serve.

It is here that the U.S. foreign policy apparatus needs more elite politics. To end the vilification of careerism and expertise and return to a system that values at least some foreign policy fluency or competence, candidates should not be punished for engaging with or giving speeches at “establishment” institutions. They should not be knocked for publicly debating different foreign policies. To have a healthy politics, the United States must tolerate a range of legitimate views in both parties, allowing the parties to better bargain over policy.

Elite politics is the worst way to run things—except for all the others.

Reviving a healthy culture of debate will be difficult because it requires that elites refrain from demonizing government officials for every misstep, or for simply serving in their posts. It will require that elites and commentators distinguish between honest disagreements and attempts to violate democratic norms and rules. It will require that they call out people who do not give officials leeway and who instead engage in wanton, anti-elite attacks. But both parties must engage in such restraint and enforcement if foreign policy is to get back on track.

Fixing the GOP’s dwindling pipeline of talent, and the party’s broader ills, is an even harder task. It will be extremely difficult for anyone to persuade Republican officials to compromise or to build up a new corps of foreign policy officials, or for Democrats to compromise as Republicans become increasingly unwilling to engage in real policy bargaining. But here again, more politics can help. If the GOP again embraces the democratic process and accepts that it will cycle in and out of office, the party is more likely to adopt moderate policies and work in a more cooperative fashion.

Americans should hope that elites can fix these issues and revive a more functional system. The United States confronts a more complex security environment today than in the early Cold War years—perhaps the last time Washington faced such an unsettled world. The present order involves more players than the Cold War, and the two largest powers, the United States and China, have an interdependent economic relationship, whereas the Soviet Union and its allies were largely siloed from Western economic activity. Making decisions about how to prioritize supporting friends under attack (such as Israel and Ukraine), reassure treaty allies, and engage in “de-risking” with China will, necessarily, require the hard, kludgy work of partisan politics. The United States has too many competing ideological, political, and societal interests to operate any other way.

Adding more politics will not guarantee good decisions. Elites made plenty of bad choices even in simpler times. In politics there are rarely easy fixes, only different tradeoffs. But through elite bargaining, both within and across parties, the United States managed to become the most powerful country in the world and to avoid a third world war. In democracies, elite politics is the worst way to run things—except for all the others.