The National Interest - How Political Polarization Is Killing Grand Strategy July 20, 2025 By: Andrew Latham

The National Interest 

How Political Polarization Is Killing Grand Strategy

July 20, 2025

By: Andrew Latham

A United States that abruptly changes its strategy every four years is not one other countries will trust or respect.

One of the most common political phrases in modern America is that the country has never been more divided. Whether it appears in the news, throughout government, or even at family gatherings, the term “political polarization” has become a defining feature of the national conversation. Yet, this polarization reflects more than just dividing domestic partisan disagreement. It represents dramatic national shifts across American culture, ideals, and perspectives, and this division does not stay confined within the national borders. It ripples outward, actively shaping how the United States interacts with the world. As politics at home splinter, American grand strategy is also beginning to crack.

The United States, since its inception, has always been a more politically polarized country than most. Its two-party system has stood in some form or other since the late eighteenth century, and most internal questions, from slavery to tariffs, have always been home to fierce ideological battlegrounds. Yet, when it comes to grand strategy abroad, the United States has often retained a greater bipartisan consensus on foreign policy and national interests abroad. 

Whether it be Westward expansion in the nineteenth century, isolationism in the early 20th century, or internationalist interventionism after the Second World War, American grand strategy has historically reflected a relatively unified vision of the nation’s role in the world. Today, however, that consensus is fracturing. Political polarization has begun to directly erode the foundations of bipartisan American grand strategy, making it more volatile, inconsistent, and reactive. As administrations alternate between competing ideological extremes, long-term planning gives way to short-term political maneuvering, weakening America’s credibility and coherence abroad.

The most notable example of this can be seen in the divide over US involvement in international agreements. Over the late 1900s, the United States played a founding role in dozens of global agreements, including the United Nations, NATO, NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization. At home, support for these decisions was relatively high on both sides of the political aisle. Yet today, modern Democrats and Republicans are split more than ever over the United States’ further role in such agreements.

In 2016, President Barack Obama enrolled the United States in the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty to mitigate climate change. After President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2017, President Joe Biden reinstated the United States’ participation in it upon taking office in 2021. Four years later, Donald Trump immediately withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Within a decade, the United States has floundered in and out of a major international agreement four times.

In recent years, political polarization has also profoundly influenced American grand strategy toward key allies, such as Europe, NATO, and Israel, transforming previously stable relationships into partisan flashpoints. Traditionally, bipartisan support underpinned US commitments to European security and NATO, reflecting a shared understanding of their strategic value during and after the Cold War. 

However, the first Trump administration, with its skepticism toward multilateral institutions and European allies, marked a sharp departure from long-standing policy. With these divides more or less along party lines, political polarization at home has started to sprout internal rifts about America’s role in global security. Simultaneously, support for Israel, once a bipartisan norm, has become increasingly polarized.

Republican leaders have embraced an uncritical, hardline pro-Israel stance, symbolized by the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2019. Segments of the Democratic Party, however, have voiced growing concerns over human rights and US complicity in Israeli military actions, leading to new movements to change the current American-Israeli grand strategy.

This greater inconsistency in American foreign policy, due to domestic polarization, significantly undermines American grand strategy as a whole by weakening international trust, reliability, and credibility. When other nations witness abrupt reversals in major American policy areas, such as NATO commitments, climate agreements, or Middle East diplomacy, they begin to question the stability and longevity of US positions.

Strategic partners who once relied on American leadership for security, economic coordination, and global governance can become increasingly hesitant to enter into long-term agreements, knowing that a future administration might abruptly change course in just a few years. 

This erosion of trust diminishes the United States’ ability to build and sustain coalitions, deters smaller nations from aligning with US interests, and emboldens rival powers like China and Russia to fill the leadership void. As America becomes seen less as a steady global anchor and more as a volatile actor, its grand strategy suffers—not from a lack of power, but a lack of perceived credibility and stability.

Yet these concerns are not just theoretical; they have played out in real time throughout both Trump administrations. The initial withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement signaled to the world that the US was no longer committed to leading the fight against climate change, prompting other countries to question America’s environmental leadership. Similarly, Trump’s repeated criticisms of NATO, particularly his suggestions that the US might not honor Article 5 commitments unless allies increased defense spending, sent shockwaves through Europe and raised doubts about the alliance’s long-term viability.

In the Middle East, the abrupt withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria in 2019 left Kurdish allies vulnerable and signaled to partners that American security guarantees could be revoked without warning. Further waffling over American guarantees of Taiwanese defense and back-and-forth support between Russia and Ukraine has only spurred more uncertainty.

As Americans become more divided on how to manage domestic economics, cultural changes, and identity fissures, the purpose and effectiveness of our foreign policy diminishes. From this, a growing sense emerges among allies and adversaries alike that American commitments are conditional, inconsistent, and subject to reversal.

Countries—and even Americans themselves—can no longer point to the current American grand strategy with clarity or confidence. What once guided US actions abroad has become a shifting, unstable reflection of internal discord. In this uncertainty, American grand strategy is no longer evolving—it is dying. And when grand strategy dies, what remains is the prospect of oblivion: a nation too divided to chart its own course, too reactive to lead, and too inconsistent to be trusted. 

When no one knows where America’s grand strategy is headed, it ceases to be strategic at all, becoming weak, ineffective, and ultimately unfit for a world that increasingly demands clarity, speed, and conviction.

About the Authors: Andrew Latham and Liam Athas

Andrew Latham is a Senior Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, where he focuses on military strategy, great power politics, and the future of warfare. His work has appeared in The National Interest, RealClearDefense, 19FortyFive, The Hill, and The Diplomat. He is also a tenured full professor of International Relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN.

Liam Athas is a researcher at Macalester College.