Biden's SOTU worked -- sort of
The GOP isn't interested in horse-trading, but isolating foreign policy issues isn't working
The WAPO piece analyzing Biden’s State of the Union address makes a good point: “Biden’s State of the Union made Republicans squirm on Ukraine, immigration.” When you isolate foreign policy issues like those, it’s not hard to make the GOP look flimsy and neglectful and overly politicized in their approaches. In short, you can embarrass them. You can similarly isolate issues like support to Israel or defending Taiwan by just asking the same sort of questions that show there is no good alternative:
Are you in favor of “bowing to” Putin?
Do you not want to fix immigration, however imperfectly?
Are we not in the business of supporting Israel against all comers?
Are we just going to stand by and let China grab Taiwan?
In each instance, you can follow up with, “No? Then what are you proposing as an alternative?”
In the overseas trio of issues (Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan), there really aren’t any alternatives because that is who we are and NOBODY is interested in America being that SIDELINED in regional crises/threats, no matter how “distant” they seem.
The one issue that doesn’t meet that standard is immigration, where the GOP does have alternative answers. It’s just that they’re so extreme and short-term in their thinking (mass deportations) as to seem a more painful and self-destructive “cure” than the “disease.” They also feel like we’re kicking the can down the road in that NOBODY in their right mind sees a future in which immigration pressures dissipate on their own or where our more stringent repellence of those flows somehow tames them.
And frankly, that’s true even BEFORE one factors in the impact of climate change to our hemisphere’s lower latitudes (basically all of Latin America). Any serious examination and projection of those trends yields only more dread about future north-bound migrations by masses too big to imagine from today’s legitimate sense of crisis.
But here’s where it gets politically tricky: the GOP is signaling a horse-trading dynamic by so consistently linking border security to EVERY overseas national security commitment and/or action nowadays. You can write that off as partisan politics — and it most certainly is, but there is an undeniable and growing linkage there that captures our nation’s larger evolution within the world system — one that I’ve described before as shifting from a market-making-heavy role to more of an avowedly market-playing-heavy role.
America stepped up to the market-making role following WWII and, by doing so, essentially set in motion what we now call globalization — the most successful world-order development in human history in terms of reducing poverty, expanding wealth, and birthing a majority global middle class. Combined with nukes/MAD, it also basically killed great-power-on-great-power war (or, more specifically, war among nuclear great powers) and made the world today more peaceful on a per capita basis than at any previous period in human history (a lede consistently buried by MSM).
Thus, America did the world a huge favor by stepping up into that market-making role. We improved the world far more than any other power in human history, and that is the true source of our unrivaled “greatness.”
But that role, in its success, has largely played itself out, the great tipping point being the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession it birthed. That “breather” cleared a lot of America’s thinking by saying to us the following: It’s time to stop obsessing over the system’s economic health and look more to your own. Why? Because you’re no longer the sole great pillar of economic stability, and that’s a good thing because your middle class is feeling squeezed and disrespected, and, when that happens, your global leadership tends to evaporate or worse — turn truly nasty.
Thus, since 2008, coming down from the so-called “forever wars” (which took a solid decade or so to unwind), we have heard great and consistent talk about “nation-building at home” and “make America great again.”
That instinct was pretty much correct/warranted. It’s just that we tend to go overboard on any such macro transition. It wasn’t just that something (our market-making role) had worked wonders for decades but had logically come to its successful conclusion (several risen/rising economic pillars to buttress globalization’s stability and endurance). No, for us to retreat some from that market-making role, we needed to convince ourselves that it was all a lie, a cheat, and a conspiracy!
Nothing of the sort was true. What had happened was simply a natural evolution of our success in building up a multipolar-structured global economic system of tremendous success and resilience — so much so that we processed the Global Financial Crash and Great Recession quite well in historical terms.
But, not only did we turn on ourselves and demean our consummated role and successes, we began viewing all those other risen pillars — but especially China — as inherent threats. We grew so used to being the king of the system that we now view any risers as naturally coming for a crown that we no longer wear — that nobody can wear any more because of that undisputed multipolarity.
We are, however, EXTREMELY uncomfortable with multipolarity. We are stunned to learn that other great powers feel like they can act like we have long acted in terms of invading other countries and enforcing our definition of rules upon them.
Moreover, whenever other powers act like the rule-proposers/definers in the system, we are deeply affronted by those attempts and efforts. We even feel betrayed by them (China! You should be American by now!).
In sum, we are no longer solely in charge of the world system. We sought that outcome through globalization and we succeeded. But it did not turn every other great power in the system into clones of us, and we have to get over that disappointment.
Back to Biden and his speech …
Easy to shame the GOP on Ukraine and immigration, and Biden is right to do so.
But we all need to understand that this linkage instinct (No fixing the world without fixing our security here at home!) is not going away. Climate change will only exacerbate that natural, ongoing shift in our worldview: from obsessing over defense on a nation-state level and caring more and more about security on a sub and transnational level. The crisis of 9/11 drove a lot of that shift, and then we seemed to convince ourselves that great-power war is back with a vengeance because of Russia (check out all the containment/Cold War/World War III articles out there right now from our own trapped-in-the-past [or maybe just in-their-career-tracks] foreign policy establishment!). But the immigration crises reasserts that growing security-trumps-defense mindset (and yes, that pun was entirely intended).
The fact that our political class now instinctively links that homeland security to overseas national defense issues is a sign of those shifts I describe here (from market-making to market-playing, from defense to security), and that linkage is only going to grow more strong.
Both of those shifts got us Trump, who did not arise in a vacuum and thus his movement and what it represents will not disappear with his political defeat. They are now a permanent (and frankly, much-needed) feature of how we balance our mental books (Think more about America’s success than the world’s success; Care more about homeland security over time than subordinating all to national defense.)
Understand: ALL super and great powers are feeling the same shifts and domestic pressures — even the risers with the greatest ambitions like China and India. We just have to find a more balanced and measured approach to adjusting ourselves to our altered state and role within globalization’s ongoing evolution.
As usual, I have little hope or faith in our current aging leadership cohorts (Boomers, Xers) because they are such Cold War babies incapable of escaping from past thought-patterns and mental models (Cold War, I say! Containment! Let loose the dogs of World War III!), even as I harbor great optimism and faith in the ability of upcoming generations (Millennials, Zs, Alphas) to correct course. Why? The latter are all “natives” to the world that now emerges.
Short-term pessimism/realism and long-term optimism/idealism. That is, and always has been, the only way to go as a strategic thinker.
But right now, I must also cite the need for any strategic thinker to realize America’s shifting role within the world order and to respect the natural linkages now emerging and certain to stay with us.