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 strat- egy. 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 con- ditions favoring centrism led to the consolidation of bipartisan support for lib- eral 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. International Security, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 95–109 © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 95 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00004 by guest on 26 September 2021 International Security 35:1 96 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 lib- eral 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 lib- eral 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. for- eign policy in making their case for the continued vitality of liberal interna- tionalism. 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 for- eign 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. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00004 by guest on 26 September 2021 The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism’s Revival 97 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 ab- sence 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 sup- port for liberal internationalism with public support for international engage- ment. 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 polar- ization 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 leg- islative 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. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00004 by guest on 26 September 2021 International Security 35:1 98 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.