I'm sure your first response to the title is "but they just won big in the midterm elections". But those same midterm elections featured campaign spending of roughly $4 billion and featured a turnout of less than half of the eligible citizenry. And, although the ratings of the very institutions the politicians were running for jobs in have popularity ratings of under 10%, more than 90% of incumbents were re-elected. I don't think you can draw any conclusions from the Republican victory.
There is also a strong case for my thesis based on GOP domestic policies. But, in order to constrain the discussion to a manageable scope, I am going to restrict myself to foreign affairs. And my starting point is an article by Richard Haass in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. In "The Unraveling", Mr. Haass takes a broad look at U.S. foreign policy and prescribes what he thinks should be done. For those of you not familiar with him, Mr. Haass is a long time figure in foreign policy circles. He is currently president of The Council on Foreign Relations. Before that he held positions in both the George H. W. Bush administration and that of his son. He is neither a right wing bomb thrower nor a left wing ideolog. He is a right leaning member of the establishment and, therefore, no friend of President Obama. In fact, he would characterize his piece as a critique of Obama's foreign policy. So let's see what he says and how this lines up with the pronouncements and actions of Republican politicians.
Mr. Haass sees the fundamental foreign policy issue as "a perennial tension in the world between the forces of order and the forces of disorder". Not surprisingly, he is in favor of order. He titles one section of his piece "The post-Cold War order is unraveling, and while not perfect, will be missed." He goes on to say "[t]hese days, the balance between order and disorder is shifting toward the latter. Some of the reasons are structural, but some are the result of bad choices made by important players -- and at least some of those can and should be corrected." My thesis in a nutshell is that Republicans are actively supporting these bad choices. So let's take a tour of the places Mr. Haass discusses and what he says should be done. Then let's see what Republicans are saying and doing.
He starts with the middle east. "In the Middle East, for example, order has been undermined by a tradition of top heavy, often corrupt, and illegitimate governments". He then lists their sins. So what's the U.S. contribution? "With more than a decade of hindsight, the decision to oust Saddam and remake Iraq looks even more mistaken than it did at the time." These actions were undertaken by a Republican administration with strong support up and down the party. And President Obama opposed it. So Obamas is on the right side of the argument and Republicans are on the wrong side. And remember, it is Haass who is providing the definition of what is right and what is wrong.
He then chastises the President for supporting the ousters in Libya and Egypt. Yet the governments of both countries fit Haass' definition of governments that have made things worse. So what, according to Haass, was the U.S. supposed to do? Were we to continue to support the old bad governments that were, according to the Haass definition, wrong governments? Yes! Apparently in both cases we should make an exception. So was their a strong argument for continued support of these old regimes by Republican politicians? No. Senator McCain and others were vigorously arguing for intervention, and earlier, and more of it. Elsewhere, Haass criticizes the U.S. "lack of effective follow-up". But it is at this point, when the Obama Administration was trying to impellent effective follow-up, that Republican support for intervention in these countries turned to opposition. The switch effectively sabotaged any chance for success.
Haass has something to say on Syria. He apparently approves of "support for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad" but faults Obama for doing "little to bring it about". Here Republicans were loudly supportive of arming and supporting the "moderate opposition". We now know that the largest component of that opposition was what we now call ISIS/ISIL. Neither Haass nor the Republicans have given Obama any credit for pulling off the extremely tricky and difficult task of extracting large stockpiles of chemical weapons from an active war zone. Nor have they provided any useful help in identifying the "moderate" opposition or encouraging the Turks, Saudis, or other "moderate" Arab nations to participate in Syria in active and helpful ways. Instead, their contribution has consisted primarily of "whatever Obama is doing is wrong".
There was a time when the rule that said "politics stops at the water's edge". (The quotation is attributed to Republican Senator Vanderbilt in 1947.) There was a sound reason for this. As Haass says "[t]he world can see this", namely divisiveness around our foreign policy. This encourages the thinking in our opponents that "if we don't like what the current guys are offering we can just wait until the other guys get in and see if we can get a better deal from them". It also undermines the current administration's ability to make promises in order to secure a deal on some contentious issue. But the Republican party no longer feels bound by this rule. The Republicans may well block the implementation of the promise merely to score domestic political points. With this in mind, it is all the more impressive that Obama was able to bring the chemical weapons deal in Syria to a successful conclusion. No one should be in favor of a regime like Assad's having access to any chemical weapons, let alone the large stockpiles Assad had. Returning to Haass' piece, . . .
Haass makes note of and apparently approves of Obama's tilt toward Asia. His criticism here is "one of omission", that Obama hasn't sufficiently tilted. Have Republicans made a coherent argument, or for that matter any argument at all, that the tilt is a bad idea? No. But they have, as part of their general policy of "whatever Obama's for, we're against" policy, thrown roadblocks in the way where they could. They have tried to reduce the administration's ability to negotiate agreements or do deals. They also yammer incessantly about phony Benghazi conspiracies, block confirmation of cabinet officials, ambassadors, and generally do what they can to make sure Obama lacks the time and energy to pursue Asian initiatives.
On Russia Haass notes that "U.S. and Western policy has not always encouraged more constructive choices on [Putin's] part". Republican Senator McCain is famous for suggesting that the U.S. get involved in a war between Georgia (the country, not the state) and Russia. This is typical of Republican opposition to "more constructive choices" that do not involve arming Russia's enemies.
More generally Haass laments that "attempts to construct new global arrangements to foster trade and frustrate climate change have foundered". The Republican party is home of (a) the "black helicopter" theory of the United Nations, (b) a legal theory that treaties signed by the President of the United States and ratified by the U.S. Senate do not have the force of law, (c) climate change denialism, (d) trilateral commission conspiracies, etc.
Then there is the list of Haass don'ts. "The gap between U.S. ambitions and U.S. actions needs to be narrowed." The home of the theory that U.S. power was unlimited as long as we were willing to put enough boots on the ground was the George W. Bush administration. President Obama strongly believes we can't do everything and is loudly and consistently criticized by Republicans for saying so. "Democratic transformations of other societies are often beyond the means of outsiders to achieve." Again, this is a lesson the Bush Administration never quite learned. They were the people that tried nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. The war hawk wing of the Republican party seems to be impervious to this information. Haass criticizes Obama for his failure to achieve "a residual force" in Iraq. The deal that resulted in the withdrawal of forces from Iraq was a Bush deal. All Obama did was implement it. You can blame Obama for no residual forces in Afghanistan. But the primary reason seems to parallel Iraq, the locals want us out. And Obama has snuck 1,500 (with an additional 1,500 or more to likely follow) "advisors" back into Iraq, all with no congressional approval so far. If you like troops all over the place then Obama has done a much better job than the Republicans.
Generally speaking, Haass recommends that the goal of the U.S. should be "integration, trying to bring others into arrangements to manage global challenges such as climate change, terrorism, proliferation, trade, public health, and maintaining a secure and open commons". That sounds like a pretty good summary of the Obama foreign policy. I have highlighted Republican opposition to pretty much every item on this list above. Haass then moves on to a domestic perspective.
"The U.S. needs to put its domestic house in order". Specifically, "U.S. energy security has improved dramatically" and most of this improvement has happened on Obama's watch. On the other hand, oil imports grew under president Reagan and both presidents Bush. And now for the bad news, "the same cannot be said about other problems, such as the country's aging public infrastructure, its inadequate immigration policy, and its long term public finances". The Obama administration has proposed or implemented initiatives in all these areas. The Republicans do what they can to block or reduce them. They demonized the "stimulus", which contained substantial infrastructure spending. They have held up the highway bill and blocked or forced cutbacks other types of infrastructure spending. The Republicans in the House have blocked an Immigration Reform bill that had substantial Republican Senate support. Republicans have manufactured multiple crises around debt ceiling legislation and the budget. For several years now it has not been possible to proceed in the regular order on budget bills. Instead after a lot of grandstanding we end up with omnibus spending bills. This has been a long term embarrassment and has weakened the U.S. position in the world markedly.
Haass summarizes thusly: "In fact, sensible foreign and domestic policies are mutually reinforcing: a stable world is good for the home front, and a successful home front provides the resources needed for American global leadership." If we did this "[t]he good news is that the United States can afford both guns and butter". Unfortunately, Republicans seem hell bent on making sure we can afford neither. What can be more Anti-American than that.
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