The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism's Revival

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The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism’s Revival The Illusion of Liberal Charles A. Kupchan and Internationalism’s Peter L. Trubowitz Revival

The grand strategy of the United States has been in ºux for the past two decades. External events—the end of the Cold War, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—have been primary drivers of shifts in strategy. But domestic developments have also been shaping the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, political polarization has been shaking the domestic foundations of U.S. grand strategy, sorely testing bipartisan support for liberal internationalism—the grand strategy that guided the United States from World War II through the end of the Cold War. Stephen Chaudoin, Helen Milner, and Dustin Tingley take issue with this in- terpretation, contending that support for liberal internationalism in the United States is alive and well. They claim that we, along with many other scholars and analysts writing about U.S. grand strategy, are mistaken in arguing that the domestic foundations of liberal internationalism have eroded. They accept our position, laid out in “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” that a combination of external threats and domestic conditions favoring centrism led to the consolidation of bipartisan support for liberal internationalism after World War II.1 They contend, however, that we signiªcantly overstate the decline in such support after the end of the Cold War. The liberal internationalist consensus, they argue, is as vibrant today as it was during the Cold War. When we published “Dead Center” in 2007, the conventional wisdom paral- leled the views of Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley. Many foreign policy analysts believed that bipartisan support for liberal internationalism remained strong, and that U.S. statecraft had only temporarily veered off course as a conse-

Charles A. Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton University Press, 2010). Peter L. Trubowitz is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin and Senior Fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. He is the author of Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft (Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

The authors would like to thank Catherine Boone and Nicole Mellow for comments and Conor Savoy and Florian Kern for research assistance.

1. Stephen Chaudoin, Helen V. Milner, and Dustin H. Tingley, “The Center Still Holds: Liberal In- ternationalism Survives,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 75–94; and Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal International- ism in the United States,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 7–44.

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quence of George W. Bush’s polarizing presidency. This perspective was strengthened by the election of Barack Obama, which many analysts heralded as the beginning of a “post-partisan” era and an unmistakable sign that the liberal internationalist compact between power and partnership would be re- vived.2 Few analysts, save perhaps Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, would make this argument today. Indeed, thus far the Obama presidency has been a sobering one for observers and practitioners of U.S. foreign policy. George W. Bush is back in Texas, but the anticipated surge in bipartisan support for liberal internationalism has not materialized. Instead, as we predicted in 2007, Democrats and Republicans remain miles apart on most matters of domestic and foreign policy, setting the stage for intractable partisanship—and wide oscillations in policy as power changes hands between Republicans and Democrats. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley do not address the actual conduct of U.S. foreign policy in making their case for the continued vitality of liberal internationalism. Rather, they introduce new data on congressional voting and public opinion, and additional ways of analyzing the data, to claim that the center still holds and that we substantially overestimate the decline in bipartisanship. With respect to Congress, they argue that partisan gridlock has not increased and thereby fault us for claiming that ideological polarization has affected the conduct of foreign policy. Although they agree that examining public opinion is helpful for gauging the vitality of liberal internationalism, they take issue with how we measure change in public attitudes over time. On congressional voting, they challenge our results by claiming that we inappropriately include “procedural” as well as “substantive” roll call votes in our analysis. They also claim that bipartisan cosponsorship of legislation remains the norm—a further indicator of the strength of the center. In the following section, we rebut each of Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s arguments. Thereafter, we provide a preliminary assessment of Obama’s foreign policy. If liberal internationalism is as robust as they contend, then it should be evident in the Obama administration’s foreign policies and in the support those policies command domestically. Yet as we show, the partisan gap we described in “Dead Center” has persisted during Obama’s presidency, conªrming our argument that bipartisan support for liberal internationalism has declined and that the United States has experienced a structural change in the domestic sources of its foreign policy.

2. Jonathan Tepperman, “Fighting Wars of Peace,” Newsweek, December 22, 2008, p. 19; Gideon Rose, “Why the Election Mattered,” Newsweek, December 31, 2008, pp. 12–15; Joe Klein, “A New Destiny,” Time, February 2, 2009, p. 23; and James Kitªeld, “Obama Ends the Post-9/11 Era,” Na- tional Journal, April 11, 2009, p. 21.

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Measure for Measure: Gauging Support for Liberal Internationalism

We offer four main responses to Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s critique. First, measuring congressional gridlock is an inadequate method of assessing the potential impact of partisanship on liberal internationalism. Even in the absence of gridlock, ideological polarization has a consequential effect on the conduct of foreign policy by shaping the president’s willingness and ability to pursue liberal internationalism. Second, they mistakenly equate public support for liberal internationalism with public support for international engagement. In setting the measurement bar so low, they erroneously give liberal internationalism a clean bill of health among the public. Third, Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley fault our analysis of bipartisanship in Congress for meth- odological “sins” it does not commit, and they depart from standard practice in the analysis of congressional voting by deªning “substance” in roll call votes too narrowly. Finally, we show that legislative cosponsorship is a thin reed for supporting the sweeping claims that Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley make about the strength of the bipartisan center and liberal internationalism’s continued vitality.

the decline of the moderates In “Dead Center,” we show that the percentage of moderates in Congress has declined steadily since the height of the Cold War.3 Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley do not take issue with this ªnding; the rise of polarization in Congress since the 1970s is widely accepted.4 Rather, they question whether the steady decline of moderates on Capitol Hill has made it more difªcult for Congress to get its work done. They present data showing that the rise in ideological polarization since the Vietnam War has not appreciably hindered the ability of Congress to pass foreign policy legislation. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s ªnding is interesting, but it has no direct bearing on the argument we make in “Dead Center.” They err in contending that ideological polarization is consequential only if it impedes Congress’s ability to produce legislation. Indeed, polarization can facilitate sweeping legislative initiative in foreign policy, especially when one party controls both the executive and the legislative branches. For example, the 1890s was a time of intense ideological division—and also programmatic change in U.S. strat-

3. See ªgure 5 in Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center,” p. 36. For all data used in Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center,” see https://webspace.utexas.edu/ptrubo/www/Home.html. 4. For a review of the literature on polarization in Congress and the electorate at-large, see Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Party Polarization in American Politics: Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences,” Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 9 (June 2006), pp. 83–110.

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egy.5 Polarization did not preclude ambitious shifts in foreign policy during William McKinley’s presidency, because Republicans, who championed a more assertive foreign policy, controlled the levers of power. The same was true of George W. Bush’s presidency. Bush was a polarizing president who governed to his party’s base, but he was able to dramatically shift U.S. foreign policy partly because the Republicans held both the House and the Senate for much of his presidency.6 Congress was often divided along partisan lines, but gridlock did not ensue because Republicans, when necessary, ran roughshod over Democrats. In contrast, the era of liberal internationalism in U.S. foreign policy de- pended on the existence of a bipartisan and moderate center in Congress. The unusually centrist character of U.S. politics after World War II was an essential reason that presidents, Democrats as well as Republicans, did not stray from the liberal internationalist compact. Following a substantial literature on this topic, we deªne the liberal internationalist compact as the combination of heavy investment in military force with a commitment to international institu- tions.7 Presidents invested in this compact in no small part because it paid div- idends domestically; the White House aligned itself with Congress’s center of gravity. Today, the decline of the moderate center has a direct impact on the conduct of foreign policy (even in the absence of gridlock) by making it less likely that the president will pursue a liberal internationalist agenda. Republican and Democratic presidents alike face strong pressures to gravitate to the partisan extremes. It follows that in a post-bipartisan era, U.S. foreign policy should os- cillate between ideological alternatives when power changes hands. When Republicans are in ofªce, U.S. foreign policy should favor military power over international partnership. When a Democrat occupies the White House, the administration should be more inclined to invest in partnership. To be sure, how strongly presidents favor one side of the liberal internationalist compact over the other will depend on how much room for geopolitical maneuver the United States enjoys internationally, and the ideological composition and level of political dominance of the party in power. In short, Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley misconstrue the causal relation-

5. See Peter Trubowitz, Deªning the National Interest: Conºict and Change in American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 31–95. 6. Even after the 2006 midterms, the Republicans had sufªcient strength in the Senate to block Democratic efforts to oppose President Bush’s decision to increase troop levels in Iraq. On Febru- ary 17, 2007, Senate Republicans prevented advance of a nonbinding resolution opposing the surge. 7. See Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center,” pp. 10–20.

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ship between polarization and policy outcomes. Their ªndings on the absence of gridlock in the making of U.S. foreign policy in no way disconªrm our argument linking polarization to the decline of liberal internationalism.

liberal internationalism and public opinion Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley agree that public opinion data are useful for measuring support for liberal internationalism, but they call into question our claim that partisanship has been on the rise by faulting us for comparing public opinion before and after the Vietnam War on the basis of different survey questions. As a corrective, they construct a new opinion index, which mea- sures public support for international “engagement” and relies on a similarly worded question at each measurement. Republicans and Democrats, they show, have consistently favored international engagement, a ªnding consistent with other analyses of public opinion.8 They conclude that public support for liberal internationalism remains bipartisan and undiminished. The problem is that Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s deªnition of liberal internationalism bears little resemblance to ours. They claim that public support for U.S. involvement in world affairs “taps a central element of liberal internationalism, its policy of engagement with world affairs.”9 But as we argue in “Dead Center,” it is “the coupling of U.S. power and international partnership” that makes liberal internationalism a distinctive grand strategy.10 By conceiv- ing of international engagement as a single dimension, running from internationalism to isolationism,11 Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley offer a perfectly acceptable measure of support for international involvement broadly deªned, but not for the particular type of involvement that liberal internationalism entails. Indeed, their deªnition of support for liberal internationalism is so broad that most grand strategies would qualify as “liberal internationalist.” The assertive unilateralism favored by neoconservatives passes their test, as do neo-Wilsonian strategies that rely exclusively on multilateral diplomacy and international organizations. Only a strategy of isolationism, which until re- cently (see below) few Americans have favored, would fall below Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s bar. To avoid this problem, we focus in “Dead Center” on more discerning sur-

8. Ole R. Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). 9. See Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, “The Center Still Holds,” p. 75. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s index of international engagement is based on respondents’ answers to questions about whether they favor more or less U.S. involvement in world affairs. 10. Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center,” p. 8 (emphasis added). 11. See ªgure 2 in Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, “The Center Still Holds,” p. 83.

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vey questions—those that speak directly and unambiguously to one of liberal internationalism’s deªning features: its reliance on power.12 In particular, we select questions that measure the degree to which respondents favored confrontation in dealing with threatening states (e.g., the Soviet Union), and whether they believed that more national resources should be devoted to defense spending. We ªnd a much stronger partisan split on this issue after the Cold War than during it, conªrming our claim that the end of the Cold War contributed to the erosion of the liberal internationalist compact and growing partisanship over foreign policy among the public.13

procedure versus substance Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley assert that we overestimate the level of partisanship on foreign policy voting in Congress because we include procedural votes in our analysis of voting behavior. Procedural votes determine issues related to setting the legislative agenda. They differ from substantive votes, which concern the actual policy content of legislation. Procedural votes, Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley argue, are more prone to partisan gamesmanship—and have become more frequent since the early 1970s. By in- cluding these votes, they contend, our analysis inºates the level of partisanship in congressional voting on foreign policy. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s claim that our analysis includes all procedural votes is mistaken. We excluded roll call votes that were strictly pro-

12. Our analysis of public opinion is based on American National Election (ANES) surveys (http:// www.electionstudies.org/), which included questions about defense spending (whether the United States should increase or decrease the defense budget) for the 1994–2004 time frame but not 1948–68. Because ANES did not ask questions about defense spending in the earlier period, we relied on questions asking respondents whether they favored a policy of confrontation (or cooperation) toward the Soviet Union. Our index includes roll call votes on foreign policy, defense policy, and foreign trade. For further discussion of the roll call votes included in our index, see Peter Trubowitz and Nicole Mellow, “Going Bipartisan: Politics by Other Means,” Political Science Quar- terly, Vol. 120, No. 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 443-453. As Trubowitz and Mellow note on page 447 (n. 38), the index used to track bipartisanship in foreign policy excludes Clausen's sixth category of votes, "miscellaneous policy," which includes “procedural motions.” Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley appear to have based their assumption that we include all procedural votes in our index on Nicole Mellow and Peter Trubowitz, “Red versus Blue: American Electoral Geography and Congressional Bipartisanship, 1898–2002,” Political Geography, Vol. 24, No. 6 (August 2005), p. 662 n. 6. This, however, is not the index we used in “Dead Center,” nor do we even cite this article in “Dead Center.” 13. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley suggest that we underestimate the overall level of partisanship in the 1950s and 1960s because two of the ANES polls during this period show an elevated partisan divide. We acknowledge in “Dead Center,” however, that international events, such as the Ko- rean War, can intensify partisanship (p. 13). The argument we make concerns general patterns and trends. With the exception of the 1952 and 1964 measurements, public attitudes were decidedly more partisan between 1994 and 2004 than they were between 1948 and 1968. Between 1994 and 2004, the partisan gap averaged 29 percent. By contrast, between 1948 and 1968 it averaged 14 percent.

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cedural in nature.14 The reason the authors ªnd less partisanship than we do is because they exclude not only procedural votes but also amendments.15 They err in so doing, however, because amendment votes can have considerable consequence for policy outcomes. Indeed, legislative amendments can often reveal much more about lawmakers’ preferences than the ªnal votes on which Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley base their claims. As E.E. Schattschneider fa- mously observed in The Semisovereign People, substance can often be disguised as form.16 Even scholars cited by Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley to support their argument caution against equating amendments with narrow procedural maneuvers.17 As Keith Krehbiel points out, scholars who deªne substantive votes only as ªnal passage votes exclude votes that signiªcantly shape legislative output.18

cosponsorship and liberal internationalism Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley present data on the cosponsorship of congressional legislation between 1973 and 2005. They argue that cosponsorship is “a useful way to study legislators’ preferences and bipartisanship over time,” and by implication, to track the strength of the bipartisan center needed to sustain liberal internationalism.19 They show that the end of the Cold War did not pro-

14. Our data were culled from roll call votes publicly available at Voteview.com, a widely used source of congressional votes by scholars of American politics. Every vote at Voteview.com is classiªed using three different classiªcation schemes. Two of these schemes identify votes that are narrowly procedural, and we excluded such votes in our index. 15. In the text of their essay, Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley designate “straight amendments” as substantive (p. 75). In the appendix, however, where they describe in detail their coding scheme and identify eight types of votes as amendments, they exclude all amendments from their tally of substantive votes. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley use a different data set than we do, which may contribute to the discrepancy between their ªndings and ours. 16. E.E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York: Wadsworth, 1975). In their classic study of procedure versus substance in congressional voting, Lewis A. Froman Jr. and Randall B. Ripley make the same point. See Froman and Ripley, “Conditions for Party Leadership: The Case of the House Democrats,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 59, No. 1 (March 1965), pp. 52–63. 17. See, for example, Sean M. Theriault, “Procedural Polarization in the U.S. Congress,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 20, 2006, pp. 15 n. 11, 16, 27. 18. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s position on this matter is puzzling because they cite Keith Krehbiel and Jonathan Woon’s work. See Krehbiel and Woon, “Selection Criteria for Roll Call Votes,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 1, 2005, pp. 4–6, 16. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley also rely heavily on Theriault’s unpublished paper, “Procedural Polarization in the U.S. Congress,” to justify the distinction between substantive and procedural votes and to categorize roll calls. Theriault is care- ful not to treat votes on amendments as procedural, however, because amendments cannot be eas- ily distinguished from substantive issues. 19. See Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, “The Center Still Holds,” p. 75.

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duce a decline in bipartisan cosponsorship of foreign policy legislation— further proof, they contend, that the vital center still holds. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley exaggerate cosponsorship’s import as a barometer of bipartisanship. As many scholars of U.S. politics note, cosponsorship amounts to “cheap talk.” It is a relatively costless way for members of Congress to signal voters, committee members, and other audiences.20 Cosponsorship requires few resources and, more importantly, entails few of the electoral risks that casting roll call votes do. Moreover, cosponsorship appears to have little effect on policy. As one well-known study puts it, “At best, bills with substantial numbers of co-sponsors are somewhat more likely to make it to the ºoor, but once there, cosponsorship matters little.”21 It is also the case that Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s measure of bill cosponsorship is in- consistent with their analysis of roll call votes. In tallying bipartisan votes, they exclude amendments because they do not consider them substantive.22 In their measure of cosponsorship, however, they include amendments.23 One can exclude amendments, or one can include amendments (as we and most other scholars do), but one cannot do both.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Another Swing of the Pendulum

Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley conclude that liberal internationalism “has not fallen victim to increasing partisan divisions and has the potential to remain a powerful guiding framework for U.S. policy.”24 If so, then an Obama administration committed to the restoration of bipartisanship should experience few problems reconstituting the political center and reclaiming liberal internationalism from the aberrant excesses of the George W. Bush administration. Nonetheless, expectations of a return to liberal internationalism have proved illusory. In three telling respects, Obama’s presidency has conªrmed our pre- diction that the secular decline in bipartisan support for liberal internationalism would shape the conduct of U.S. foreign policy regardless of which party controls the White House. First, the arrival of the Obama administration produced a marked shift in strategic emphasis in line with our expectations. Whereas Bush’s Republican

20. Daniel Kessler and Keith Krehbiel, “Dynamics of Cosponsorship,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 3 (September 1996), pp. 555–566; and Rick K. Wilson and Cheryl D. Young, “Cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress,” Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1 (February 1997), pp. 25–43. 21. Wilson and Young, “Cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress,” p. 41. 22. See ªgure 3 in Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, “The Center Still Holds,” p. 86. 23. See ªgure 6 in ibid., p. 91. 24. Ibid., p. 91.

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administration pursued a foreign policy that decidedly favored power over partnership, Obama and the Democrats have decidedly favored partnership over power. Second, try as he might to reach across the aisle, Obama has been frustrated in his attempt to restore bipartisan consensus; Congress remains deeply divided over matters of statecraft. Third, opinion surveys reveal strik- ing gaps between Republican and Democratic voters on foreign policy.

from power to partnership The George W. Bush administration emphasized the assertive use of U.S. power and the maintenance of order through U.S. primacy, giving short shrift to cooperative multilateralism. It shunned the Kyoto Protocol, avoided treaty- based arms control with Russia, opposed the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), rejected U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC), and appointed an ambassador to the United Nations—John Bolton— who was dismissive of the global body. In contrast, the Obama administration has emphasized the centrality of international cooperation and acknowledged the emergence of a more level global playing ªeld, meanwhile seeking to rein in the country’s military commitments.25 Obama has sought an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emis- sions; he signed a new START treaty with Russia; he issued a Nuclear Posture Review that narrows the conditions under which the United States might use nuclear weapons, committed his administration to push for Senate ratiªcation of the CTBT, and outlined a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons; and he approved U.S. participation as an observer in meetings at the ICC. Obama supports transforming the Group of Eight (G-8) into the G-20 and told the United Nations General Assembly last September, “The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation.”26 Another sign of the switch from power to partnership is Obama’s approach to adversaries. Whereas the Bush administration shunned engagement with belligerent regimes, Obama has reached out to Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria. Coercion is still an option in dealing with these countries, but U.S.

25. In a telling sign of the scope of ideological divergence even among Democrats, liberal support- ers of Obama complain that he has not gone far enough in breaking with his predecessor. For example, they express discontent with Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the limited nature of the changes in nuclear strategy contained in the Nuclear Posture Review, and the contin- uation of secrecy on detainee issues and domestic surveillance programs. See Eugene Robinson, “Down the Wrong Path in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, December 4, 2009; Mary Beth Sheridan and Walter Pincus, “Obama to Take Middle Course in Nuclear Policy,” Washington Post, April 6, 2010; and Dahlia Lithwick, “Obama, Bush Secret-Keeper,” Slate.com, March 6, 2009, http://www .slate.com/id/2213027/pagenum/all/. 26. Barack Obama, “Speech to the United Nations’ General Assembly,” September 23, 2009, http:// www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/us/politics/24prexy.text.html.

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policy is now predicated on the assumption that engagement is the preferred course.27 To be sure, Obama is a wartime president and has substantially expanded the size of the U.S. operation in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, he is committed to the steady withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. When he unfurled his new strategy for Afghanistan, which included dispatching an additional 30,000 U.S. troops, he made clear that the mission would be of limited duration, announc- ing that the coalition would begin handing over operations to Afghan forces during the summer of 2011. Moreover, he spoke plainly about the limits of U.S. power and the importance of keeping the U.S. effort proportional to the interests at stake. As he noted in his speech at West Point, “I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces....That’s why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended—because the nation that I’m most inter- ested in building is our own.”28 Finally, Obama has changed course on free trade—another plank of liberal internationalism. The Bush administration sought to conclude the Doha round of global trade talks and negotiated free trade agreements with Colombia, Pan- ama, and South Korea.29 In contrast, the Obama administration has backed away from this agenda. As we predicted in “Dead Center,” growing income inequality and economic troubles at home have curtailed the appetite for further liberalization of U.S. foreign trade, particularly among Democrats sensitive to trade union support.

a house divided In sustaining support for the projection of U.S. military strength abroad while also renewing Washington’s commitment to multilateralism, Obama appears to be reclaiming important elements of the traditional liberal internationalist compact of power plus partnership. This turn in U.S. statecraft should not be surprising; the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, from which Obama hails, represents one of the last bastions of support for liberal internationalism.30 Were Obama to enjoy broad bipartisan support for his foreign

27. Charles A. Kupchan, “Enemies into Friends: How the United States Can Court Its Adver- saries,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 2 (March/April 2010), pp. 120–134. 28. Ofªce of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, December 1, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-ofªce/remarks-president-address -nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan. 29. Bush failed to close any of these deals because Congress denied him fast-track negotiating au- thority in 2007. 30. Centrist Republicans, such as Robert Gates and Richard Lugar, also tend to support liberal internationalism. They are, however, a rapidly disappearing breed. The Republican caucus in the House is virtually devoid of centrists, having suffered considerable losses in the 2006 and 2008

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policy, Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley would indeed have good reason to be optimistic about the prospects for a durable revival of liberal internationalism in the United States. The problem is that Obama does not enjoy such support. Obama came to ofªce pledging to reach across the aisle and restore bipartisanship on foreign and domestic policy. Even before he was ofªcially sworn into ofªce, he began reaching out to congressional Republicans, and he courted George Will, David Brooks, and other conservative commentators.31 Nonetheless, the partisan sniping that was so pervasive during the Bush years continued. It did not take Obama long to realize that the blockage was one of substance, not just style. As the president admitted in late 2009, “What I haven’t been able to do in the midst of this [economic] crisis is bring the country together in a way that we had done in the Inauguration. That’s what’s been lost this year...that whole sense of changing how Washington works.”32 There is plenty of evidence to back up the president’s own assessment. Figure 1 shows bipartisanship on foreign policy votes in Congress from 1947 to 2008 (80th–110th Congress).33 As the data demonstrate, bipartisan voting on foreign policy has plummeted over the past decade. Indeed, by the end of the Bush presidency, bipartisanship on foreign policy had fallen to lows similar to those experienced during the debilitating battles of the 1930s between interna- tionalists and isolationists.34 Congressional bipartisanship on foreign policy increased slightly during Obama’s ªrst year in ofªce, but the level remained far below the norm during the Cold War.35 Politics no longer stops at the water’s edge. Party positions on key foreign policy issues provide further evidence of a wide partisan divide. After Obama announced his plans in December 2009 to send additional forces to Afghanistan, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spoke for many unhappy Democrats: “I don’t think there is a great

elections, when independents tended to vote for Democrats. Republican moderates are less scarce in the Senate, but also dwindling in number. 31. Michael D. Shear, “Obama Pulls Up a Chair at George Will’s House,” Washington Post, January 13, 2009; and Gabriel Sherman, “The Courtship: The Story behind the Obama-Brooks Bromance,” New Republic, August 31, 2009, p. 7. 32. Larry Hackett, “An Exclusive Interview with the Obamas: Our First Year,” People, January 25, 2010, pp. 60–65. 33. Figure 1 extends the roll-call voting analysis we provided in “Dead Center.” The analysis here includes voting on foreign policy for the 109th (2005–06) and 110th (2007–08) Congresses. Data for these Congresses was not available when we wrote “Dead Center.” Data provided by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal at Voteview.com, http://voteview.ucsd.edu/. On our methodology, see ªgure 1 in “Dead Center,” p. 12. 34. See ªgure 1 in Kupchan and Trubowitz, “Dead Center,” p. 12. 35. The 111th Congress is currently in progress. Roll call votes cast during the ªrst session (Janu- ary 6, 2009 to December 24, 2009) show that bipartisan voting on foreign policy occurred 45 percent of the time. The average during the Cold War (1947–91) was 67 percent.

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Figure 1. Foreign Policy Bipartisanship in Congress, 1947–2008

SOURCE: Voteview.com. NOTE: Only year of first session in each Congress is labeled.

deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in Congress.”36 Many Republicans were also unhappy—but for the opposite reason. They thought the size of the surge was insufªcient and criticized Obama for indicating that Washington would begin winding down the war in the summer of 2011.37 On Cuba, Democrats often take the president to task for not going far enough to scale back sanctions, whereas Republicans complain that Obama’s limited removal of restrictions already constitutes coddling of a dictatorship.38 Although Democrats generally welcomed the administration’s revamping of plans for missile defense, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) claimed that “scrapping the U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic does little more than empower Russia and Iran at the expense of our allies in Europe.”39 On trade, Republicans are pressing

36. Quoted in Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, “Obama Faces Doubts from Democrats on Af- ghanistan,” New York Times, September 10, 2009. 37. Jill Jackson, “House Republicans Criticize Obama Timeline,” CBSNews.com, December 2, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/02/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5865054.shtml. 38. “Obama Eases Cuba Travel Restrictions,” CNN.com, April 13, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/ 2009/POLITICS/04/13/cuba.travel/index.html; and Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Damien Cave, “Obama Opens Door to Cuba, but Only a Crack,” New York Times, April 13, 2009. 39. Quoted in Peter Baker, “White House Scraps Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield,” New York Times, September 17, 2009.

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the administration for market-opening policies, while labor unions are push- ing Democrats in the opposite direction.40 These sharp cleavages tie Obama’s hands; the collapse of the bipartisan center makes it very difªcult for him to bring liberal internationalism back to life. He has already had to scale back his goals on climate change, accepting a ten- tative agreement at Copenhagen in December 2009 partly because Congress was far from ready for a binding agreement.41 Treaty-based arms control is a hallmark of the liberal internationalist agenda, but it is far from clear that such agreements will be able to garner the two-thirds majority needed to win ratiªcation in the Senate. Ironically, the only foreign policies that are likely to garner bipartisan support are those that the extremes in each party ªnd appealing—most notably, getting tough with China. Such “ends against the middle” coalitions, however, are unusual and unstable; they do not constitute the makings of a bipartisan coalition that could revive liberal internationalism.

a polarized public Congress may be leading the way when it comes to partisanship, but the public is not far behind. On key foreign policy issues, opinion surveys reveal a wide gap between Democrats and Republicans. A Gallup poll conducted in February 2010 revealed that 53 percent of Democrats but only 16 percent of Republicans believed that the United States is spending too much on national defense.42 A separate Gallup poll, also from February 2010, indicated that Democrats (45 percent) were twice as likely as Republicans (22 percent) to rate the United Nations positively.43 Partisanship is glaringly apparent in the public’s views of Obama’s foreign policy. In February 2010, public approval of Obama’s handling of foreign policy stood at 78 percent for Democrats but only 26 percent for Republicans.44 The same Gallup poll revealed that the partisan gap on approval of Obama’s policies toward terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, and

40. See, for example, John Harwood, “Obama’s Balancing Act on Trade,” New York Times, http:// thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/obamas-balancing-act-on-trade/. 41. Juliet Eilperin and Anthony Faiola, “Climate Deal Falls Short of Key Goals,” Washington Post, December 19, 2009; and Ben German, “Obama Departs Fractious Copenhagen Talks with Limited Pact,” Hill, December 18, 2009, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/73033-obama- departs-fractious-copenhagen-talks-with-limited-climate-accord. 42. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans More Divided on Strength of National Defense,” February 18, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/126101/Americans-Divided-Strength-National-Defense.aspx. 43. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans’ Rating of United Nations Improved, but Still Low,” Febru- ary 19, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/126134/Americans-Rating-United-Nations-Improved- Low.a spx. 44. Frank Newport, “Obama Approval on Economy Down, on Foreign Affairs Up,” Feb- ruary 8, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/125678/Obama-Approval-Economy-Down-Foreign- Affairs-Up.aspx.

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Iran averaged some 37 percentage points. A Pew poll from December 2009 showed that among Republicans, 72 percent believed that Obama is “not tough enough” in his conduct of foreign policy, compared to 29 percent of Democrats.45 The survey data also reveal that public enthusiasm for free trade is sensitive to downturns in the U.S. economy. In December 2006, for example, 48 percent of the public believed that free trade leads to job losses and 44 percent that it produces lower wages. In April 2008, as the ªnancial crisis was worsening, 61 percent believed that free trade leads to job losses and 56 percent that it produces lower wages.46 These ªndings are particularly noteworthy in light of Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley’s claim that globalization engenders strong bipartisan support for liberal internationalism.47 As Karl Polanyi and many after him have argued, however, electorates that feel dislocated and disadvantaged by globalization may seek to cordon themselves off from the global market- place, not deepen their attachment to it.48 The American public has second thoughts not only about free trade but also about the scope of the country’s global security commitments. The Pew poll from December 2009 revealed that 49 percent of the public believed that the United States “should mind its own business”—the highest response to that question ever recorded, far surpassing the 32 percent expressing that attitude in 1972, during the height of opposition to the Vietnam War. The poll also found that 76 percent of the public think the United States should focus less on international problems and “concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home.”49 The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be taking a toll on public support for the burdens of liberal internationalism.

Conclusion

A structural change has taken place in the politics of U.S. foreign policy; the liberal internationalist consensus has eroded. As we argue in “Dead Center,” restoring domestic consensus will likely require a more selective and discrimi-

45. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “America’s Place in the World 2009: An In- vestigation of Public and Leadership Opinion about International Affairs,” December 3, 2009, p. 42, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/569.pdf. 46. Ibid., p. 55. 47. Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley, “The Center Still Holds,” p. 75. 48. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times (Boston: Beacon, 1971). On the current period, see Kenneth F. Scheve and Matthew J. Slaughter, “A New Deal for Globalization,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 4 (July/August 2007), pp. 34–47. 49. Pew Research Center, “America’s Place in the World 2009,” pp. 3, 12.

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nating grand strategy—one that brings the nation’s external commitments back into line with political and economic means. It is far preferable for the United States to pursue a more modest grand strategy that enjoys domestic support than to pursue an overly ambitious statecraft that further polarizes the nation and leaves an uncertain world without the beneªt of measured and steady U.S. engagement. President Obama appears to appreciate the need to restore political solvency to U.S. foreign policy. He is committed to bringing down U.S. force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been encouraging allies in Europe and else- where to shoulder greater burdens, while looking to diplomacy more than coercion to resolve disputes with unfriendly regimes. To be sure, Obama needs willing partners abroad, and U.S. leverage, from Kabul to Baghdad to Tehran, remains limited. But equally vexing for the White House will be managing the domestic politics of foreign policy. The United States assumed the mantle of global leadership in the 1940s and enjoyed a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy through the balance of the twentieth century. Obama now faces the un- enviable challenge of conducting U.S. statecraft during an era when consensus will be as elusive at home as it is globally.

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