GW professors discussed how current political polarization in the U.S. influences foreign policy by decreasing the country’s international standing at a panel on Wednesday.
Elliott School of International Affairs Middle East Studies Program Director Sina Azodi, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Kimberly Morgan and Visiting Professor of History James Evans said widening ideological splits between Democrats and Republicans have fueled abrupt shifts in foreign strategy, pushed U.S. partners to protect themselves against American volatility and constrained the federal government’s capacity to study and understand the world. BridgeGW — a nonpartisan student organization that creates forums for political dialogue — hosted the event, with the organization’s Co-President Arianna Campi and Director of Communications Jonah Beinart moderating.
Morgan said polarization has accelerated in recent decades as the Republican Party has moved sharply to the right while Democrats have drifted left more slowly — a pattern she said mirrors the rise of populist right-wing parties in Europe that reject international institutions like NATO, the United Nations and the European Union.
“All those kind of structures that really were the underpinning of the global order after 1945 are being challenged, especially by the far right,” Morgan said.
She said polarization has hollowed out congressional cooperation on foreign policy, resulting in legislative gridlock that weakens Congress’ ability to exercise its constitutional authority over war powers and spending. As Congress becomes less willing or able to act, she said, presidents expand their power to fill the vacuum.
“In previous presidencies, there were still a lot of people in Congress who complained about this,” Morgan said. “But the interesting thing, of course, there are some complaints, especially coming from the Democratic side, but the Republican side has been pretty quiet.”
She said presidents expanding their influence in foreign policy has intensified under President Donald Trump, whose administration she said has undone traditional U.S. foreign policy by sidelining career civil servants in foreign policy roles and cutting funding for international programs, like USAID.
Morgan said after the Cold War, the U.S. invested heavily in area studies programs, which historically funded overseas research, study abroad opportunities for college students and foreign language training. She said the Trump administration has made steep cuts to area studies programs, now called Foreign Language and Area Studies programs, which marks a reversal of traditional U.S. foreign relations policy that has existed since the Cold War.
The Department of Education cut over $800,000 in FLAS funding from GW programs in Middle East and East Asian studies in September. Program leaders and students said the cuts threaten the future of certain language classes and eliminate grant-supported language scholarships that some students received for the current academic year.
Azodi said rapid swings between Democratic and Republican foreign policy approaches have left allies uncertain whether U.S. commitments will survive the next election cycle. He said European countries, especially, have become increasingly distrustful of the United States, as it has rapidly withdrawn and reentered dozens of agreements over the last two presidencies, like the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate agreement.
“I think that when you have so many shifts in U.S. foreign policy from one administration to another administration, your allies, your friends, even your adversaries will start looking at you differently,” Azodi said.
Azodi said the rapid policy changes have weakened the United States’ informal influence among its allies and adversaries alike, a trend exacerbated by Trump’s unpredictability. He said the best example of the United States losing its influence over foreign policy came during Trump’s first term in office, when then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley called the Chinese government to reassure them the United States would not attack after he feared Trump could “go rogue.”
“If you don’t know who you’re dealing with, you have a president that his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has to call his Chinese counterpart and say, ‘Hey, guess what? We’re not planning to attack you,’ then it means that you’re not in a good position,” Azodi said.
Evans said as the presence of social media has expanded and more people get their information from short-form video sources, it has become difficult for scholars to explain the complexities of foreign affairs. He said more ordinary people have begun to think of international relations as “zero sum” — anything that one party gains equals a loss for the other — rather than as a way for countries to help each other improve.
“What happened to all of these individuals who five or 10 years ago were very smart and thoughtful about their answers, and now we’re seeing them on the news giving these sound bites that are really sort of undermining the U.S.’s ability to conduct policy?,” Evans said.
Evans, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University focused on China, said despite rising political polarization in the United States, China remains one of the few bipartisan topics on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers across the aisle seeking to learn and engage with the country. He said students often view the U.S.-China relationship as overwhelming because of its scale and complexity, but framing it in terms of individual interactions and personal connections makes it more approachable.
“Actually the U.S.-China relationship is really several billion very small connections between lots of individual people, including everybody in this room,” Evans said. “When you think about it very much in individual terms it becomes much less overwhelming.”
