Last week, I wrote about the coming debt ceiling crisis and some of the effects that might play out on the global stage should such a crisis occur. Gideon Rachman at the FT has done a better job at that than I could hope to – yesterday’s column is well worth a read. This week, I want to continue talking about how politics in Washington are damaging America’s position abroad, mainly in the context of the Obama administration’s foreign policy framework.
The administration has, since the close of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, made no secret of its desire to turn its foreign policy ambitions eastward. Such an Asian “pivot,” which we have discussed here at BPR previously, hopes to achieve a number of things, among them a subtle retreat from the quagmire that is the Middle East and a forging of connections in a region increasingly tightening economic and political ties to China.
The government shutdown has brought to a halt such a foreign policy shift, if only for the time being. This week, President Obama was scheduled to visit Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, and Indonesia, attending two conferences, the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) meeting in Bali and an ASEAN summit in Darussalam. In response to the shutdown, President Obama has decided to stay in Washington. Secretary of State Kerry has gone in his place.
The implications of this recent change do appear to be trivial. The cancellation of a Presidential diplomatic mission certainly seems to mean little in the scope of dire domestic trouble. As Congress fast approaches next week’s debt-ceiling showdown, one would hope that President Obama stays close on hand – and the American public should expect nothing else. Regardless, the absence of the chief executive (or the fact that he was forced to be absent) this week in Asia does hold meaning, if nothing else raising questions about the strength of executive foreign policy in the face of trouble at home. Reports out of the APEC summit, which was held yesterday, note that Chinese president Xi Jinping has held court, promising closer ties with emerging Asian nations.
It also dents the ability of the administration to forge through with the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement that has been called the largest such pact since the creation of the WTO in 1995. Whether one is critical of the agreement or not, the inclusion of the United States in the partnership has long been a goal of the administration. This week was designed to further the administration’s inroads into negotiations, and yet with the President gone, they will flutter in the face of a year-end deadline set by the administration.
The term “spillover” has been used to label the consequences of what is going on in Washington, and, as I noted last week, no domestic problem is ever only domestic. The shutdown and the looming debt ceiling fight bode ill for the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda. What seems clear is that if progress is to be made in that regard, progress must first be made at home, in Congress, where political gridlock is taking on a whole new meaning, importance, and, ultimately, threat.