One may wonder what prompted the US government to become so heavily involved in the war in Ukraine after the defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a geopolitical explanation that I have echoed in other articles, the conflict arose from the expansion of NATO to ex-communist countries, contrary to initial promises, with the aim of blocking any attempt by Russia to return to being a major world power. The list of new NATO members after the cold war includes the former East Germany, three former members of the Soviet Union and five former members of the Warsaw Pact.
It is also well known that some powers that be in the US have a private financial interest in the war industry. President and General Dwight Eisenhower, who knew what he was talking about, warned citizens in his farewell address in 1961 to “guard against gaining undue influence, whether sought or not, by the military-industrial complex” and predicted that “the potential for a disastrous rise to inappropriate power exists and will persist.”
I already mentioned in another article my modest testimony of how some warmongering think tanks in Washington pushed to arm Ukraine after the Russian occupation of Crimea. The lesson of the defeats in the Middle East is that the business is to sell arms without sending soldiers. They didn’t make it then, but they have made it now.
In any case, private geopolitical and economic interests for the foreign conflict need a favorable internal political situation, as I analyze in my book Political Polarization in the United States, which we will present shortly in Madrid and Barcelona. In a large and powerful country like the United States, domestic policy and foreign policy are negatively related.
When the country was under internal construction during the 19th century, it had no foreign policy. The themes at that time were territorial expansion from the thirteen independent colonies, the structure of new territories and states, and the layout of their boundaries. Only since the early 20th century, when the US established fixed continental borders and became internally organized as a more stable federation, has it been able to pursue an independent foreign policy.
However, American foreign policy is heavily clouded by the ineffectiveness of the domestic political system. The constitutional formula for the separation of powers between a legislative Congress and an executive president, with only two political parties, tends to produce deadlocks between the two institutions, leading to legislative paralysis, frequent government shutdowns, and presidential impeachments.
Bipartisan cooperation and the consequent working together of the White House and Capitol Hill only flourish when an existential threat from an outside enemy is felt, as was the case during World War II and the Cold War. The call for war in the 1940s, the Red Scare in the 1950s and its second edition in the 1980s were accompanied by popular feelings of fear and national unity, as well as low electoral participation and widespread political apathy.
On the contrary, during the last thirty years of relative peace abroad, unresolved internal political issues and new demands have emerged in health, climate, immigration, race, religion, gender, sex, family, education, gun control and voting rights. , which have generated mobilizations, protests and a harsh confrontation and partisan polarization. External fear has been replaced by internal anger.
When President Bill Clinton was under siege from Republicans on all sides, he confessed, “I would have preferred to be president during World War II” and “I was envious that Kennedy had an enemy.” President George W. Bush also longed for the past when he launched the fight against a new axis of evil and Islamist terrorism that, according to his nonsense, “followed the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism.”
President Barack Obama was paralyzed by the suspicion that ending those wars might open up too many divisive domestic issues. It was Trump who started the withdrawal of troops from the Middle East and the first president in many years who did not start a new war; as a result, he faced an inner hell.
Joe Biden and the Democrats know that now the Republicans can again block any initiative on economic, social and cultural issues in the House of Representatives. To attract their cooperation in this new context of divided government, they can once again shift the emphasis to foreign policy with a belligerent orientation. A bipartisan foreign policy could satisfy the geopolitical interest in expanding NATO to the limits of Russia and private economic interests in the military industry.
Russia is the welcome common foreign enemy. The dilemma between internal anger and external fear once again creates political tension. But we are not living the nationalist hysteria of the cold war, but a flimsy bad copy.
Security and military chiefs, including former Moscow ambassador and current CIA director William Burns and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, recall Eisenhower’s warning, are more aware of the human costs. of the war, have no overriding interest in another long-running conflict and are pressing for peace negotiations.
