History: The consequences of perceived American weakness
UNITED NATIONS — The Congressional mid-term election defeat of the Republicans can be laid to many factors — voter dissatisfaction over President Bush, the Iraq war, scandals and indeed the historic election cycle where voters often teach the incumbents of either party a lesson. Now that the Democrat Party has captured both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994, it’s time to go beyond the easy blame game in Washington, and assess at what this political development could foreshadow in the international arena.
First a simple arithmetic lesson. The Democrats gain of nearly thirty seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and six in the Senate was a formidable victory but hardly a mandate. Yet if we look back to the political earthquake of 1994, recall that the Republicans gained 53 seats to wrest control of the House from the Democrats for the first time in forty years! Conversely only two years into the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Republicans lost 26 seats. After Richard Nixon’s self-inflicted Watergate fiasco in 1974, the backlash lost Republicans 43 seats. In other words the 2006 election outcome is cyclical and not as novel as many pundits presume. It was what the pundits describe as a “repudiation election.”
President George W. Bush rightly called the setbacks a “thumping at the polls.” Now ominously many of America’s enemies may look to the President’s defeats as a First and foremost, a loss of the political willpower to pursue the war on terror and a lessening of American military commitments. Second, the results may send an isolationist and “hands off” message to different parts of the world; Third, the outcome may give the impression that the President is politically paralyzed from effective action. While this is hopefully not true, the perception as seen by the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, Al Qaida may be surprisingly different, given that the Democrats are seen by many as weak–kneed on security issues.
Now a little history. Following the Presidential election of 1948 when Harry Truman won famously and unexpectedly, the Republicans lost 74 Congressional seats. The international scene witnessed an aggressive Soviet Union under Stalin threatening Europe, the closing year of the Chinese civil war with the communist conquest of the Mainland, and the countdown to the Korean War. Though President Truman acted decisively to stop the communist aggression in Korea in 1950, there’s little doubt that Stalin and Kim Il-sung’s attack on the South was largely dictated by a wide range of mis-perceptions as to what Washington’s strategic reaction would be.
In the off year Congressional election of 1958, Dwight Eisenhower in the sixth year of his Presidency, lost 42 seats. In that period Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, and classic Cold War confrontation characterized the global scene.
During 1974 the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon, President Gerry Ford, faced a drubbing at the polls and a loss of 43 seats. The perception of a politically paralyzed American policy combined with the rapid ascendancy of Soviet military power brought about a series of stunning geopolitical setbacks for the Free World. During 1975 the North Vietnamese communists invaded and forcibly reunited Vietnam, Cambodia fell to Pol Pot, and the collapse of Portuguese rule in Africa saw the creation of Marxist regimes in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea- Bissau. Cuban troops were supporting revolutionary regimes in a dozen countries.
By 1982 President Ronald Reagan after wining an epic political landslide two years earlier, took a bloody nose at the polls when the Republicans lost 26 seats in the Mid-term elections. Soviet power was at its height and through proxy states like Cuba was probing throughout Central America and the Caribbean. A covert “peace movement” in Western Europe opposed NATO. Through the Soviets massively misjudged Ronald Reagan, the era saw global political confrontation with the communists.
Fast forward to Autumn 2006. Regimes in Teheran, Pyongyang, Khartoum among others may gleefully interpret the Bush Administration’s electoral setbacks as their golden opportunity to pursue policies which may presumably entail less risk. In the immediate aftermath of the election, American and European moves to curb Iran’s ongoing nuclear program were stalled in the UN Security Council by Russia and China. Equally both Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza may provoke the Israelis into wider conflict.
North Korea may misread the Congressional shift as an opportunity to pursue its nuclear proliferation and /or try to force the United States into direct face to face talks (something supported by many liberal Democrats) bypassing the current multilateral Six Party negotiations.
The perception that Bush is a politically neutralized lame duck President could encourage some unexpected geopolitical probes on the international scene. Needed bi-partisan cooperation and partnership in Washington would go a long way to dispel such myths.
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