Foreign Policy: Continuity Versus Partisanship

American Thinker. com ^ | June 17, 2021 | William R. Hawkins

[Kaslin]

The hyperpartisanship of the last five years has posed a threat to national security by dividing the American people and distorting how foreign policy is discussed. The “resistance” mounted by the Democrats against President Donald Trump even on issues of longstanding common concern, such as trade policy and infrastructure, was carried into foreign policy even when differences had to be contrived, a case in point being the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Democrats have tried to make the alliance into a partisan issue when in fact it is an example of the kind of continuity needed to keep the U.S. and its western allies in command of world affairs.

resident Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have described the busy European trip that includes a G-7 meeting, a U.S.-EU summit, a NATO conference, and a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin as proof that “America is Back” as if America had disappeared during the Trump administration. This is an absurd example of crass partisanship. It weakens the U.S. posture by calling into question whether the country has fundamental interests to protect and challenges to meet that transcend domestic politics. Anyone who takes a serious look at the world knows that this is true. And it was President Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy that made explicit that we are in an era of great power competition centered on “Revisionist powers, such as China and Russia, that use technology, propaganda, and coercion to shape a world antithetical to our interests and values.”

Democrats tried to make a partisan issue out of President Trump’s use of the term “America First” and his criticism of those NATO members who were not contributing enough to alliance capabilities. They tried to portray it as an isolationist policy.