Mitch McConnell's Foreign Policy Wisdom

Sen. Mitch McConnell has performed yet another service to the country with a new article in Foreign Affairs (January-February 2025 issue) entitled “The Price of American Retreat: Why Washington Must Reject Isolationism and Embrace Primacy.” McConnell’s conclusion is blunt:

The United States urgently needs to reach a bipartisan consensus on the centrality of hard power to U.S. foreign policy. This fact must override both left-wing faith in hollow internationalism and right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline. The time to restore American hard power is now.

In 1984, while serving as secretary of state, George Shultz said “The hard reality is that diplomacy not backed by military force is ineffectual.” This is the heart of McConnell’s message as well: American influence in the world, and our ability to protect our ideals, allies, and interests, is at risk now because we have spent years short-changing the military budget. The theories that try to excuse that failure—from isolationism, to reliance on negotiations and accommodation with adversaries, to “pivoting” to one area of the world while ignoring others—will never work. Great power competition is back, and McConnell writes sharply about those who “shirk from investing in the hard power on which such competition is actually based.” He is tough on the Obama and now the Biden policies, but has strong advice for President Trump: “the response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation.”

Here McConnell is wisely rejecting the advice offered by proponents of decline and of “pivots.” For example, Stephen Wertheim argued in February 2024 that “Only by pulling back—by trimming its political objectives and defense obligations, and the military posture that supports them—can Washington plausibly keep Europe and the Middle East crisis-free…. Washington cannot reap the benefits of caring less without actually caring less and downsizing U.S. objectives, commitments, and positions accordingly.” Wertheim concludes that “The United States does not need global military dominance in order to thrive.” Elbridge Colby also argues that “a foreign policy of US primacy is simply not possible” and is “not a serious option.” In an article entitled “America must face reality and prioritise China over Europe,” he calls for “focusing resources and willpower where America’s most important interests are endangered — Asia.”

McConnell’s answer to those who advise that the United States can “pivot to Asia," "trim," and "downsize" is sharp:

To pretend that the United States can focus on just one threat at a time, that its credibility is divisible, or that it can afford to shrug off faraway chaos as irrelevant is to ignore its global interests and its adversaries’ global designs. American will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.

McConnell has much to say about China, Russia, U.S. defense industries and military readiness, and related topics. His essay is well worth reading—and he will, fortunately for the interests of the United States, remain a powerful voice as chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and the Rules Committee.