America is back — but for how long?

Shortly after the Democratic Party won back the House and Senate in the US midterm elections, House Democratic Leader (and likely the next Speaker of the House) Hakeem Jeffries announced, “America is back.” After an election that saw the Democrats not only retake the two chambers of Congress by wide margins but also win in states long considered Republican strongholds — including Kansas, Texas, and South Carolina — Jeffries can credibly declare that his party is back. But for the country’s allies, the question isn’t whether America is back. It’s back to what — and for how long?

I’ve written extensively about the rise of a G-Zero world, where the US has stepped back from the international order it created, with no nation or group of nations willing and able to take its place. It’s a dynamic that’s also been fuelled by Russia’s behaviour as a rogue state, and China’s refusal to liberalise its political and economic systems, as many in the West hoped it would after it was integrated into global markets. But the American retrenchment has been central to the breakdown in the international system, and accelerating it was a deliberate policy choice across Trump’s two terms.

The MAGA movement drew on increasing public scepticism of US involvement in foreign affairs. As key segments of the American population were left behind by the unequal tides of globalisation and angered by failed wars in the Middle East, the bedrock political belief that the US should lead the international order was shaken. Yet the erosion of American leadership abroad has not only been a conscious political decision prompted by electoral dynamics but also a breakdown of policy consistency due to a period of dramatic political swings.

With the Democrats winning these midterms, 12 out of the 14 elections in the past 26 years have seen part of the legislative or executive branches of government flip parties — a marked difference from the 7 out of 20 elections that did so in the previous 40 years. Paired with rising polarisation between the parties and the unravelling of the historically bipartisan American approach to foreign policy, this has led to sharp reversals in policy, from the US’s repeated joining and leaving of the Paris Climate Accords and UN Human Rights Council to President Trump’s decision to rip up President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran.

Impact on foreign policy

The consequence is whiplash for American allies, especially in Europe. President Biden encountered this dynamic as he worked to rebuild US relationships after the fraying of transatlantic ties during the first Trump term — repeatedly citing conversations in which he told world leaders, “America is back”, only for them to ask: “But for how long?” With President Trump’s return to the White House after the 2024 election and subsequent questioning of the value of NATO, threatening to seize Greenland, and dealmaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin, European countries saw the writing on the wall for their inconsistent American ally and hedged accordingly.

The goal was not to decouple from the US, but instead to derisk. For European countries growing distrustful of American security guarantees, that meant reinvesting in defence, such as Germany changing its debt rules to rebuild its military. The same dynamic manifested in the Middle East as countries searched for security in the wake of the US’s destabilising war in Iran, with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan forming the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement.

No will, no capacity

Many American allies are now relieved to see the Democratic resurgence in the midterms since the Democratic Party is more committed to international institutions, despite isolationist tendencies in its far-left wing. The reinstatement of legislative checks on Trump’s power through Democratic leadership in the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees will be welcome news to many foreign observers, even if it will be unlikely to halt the administration’s hawkish policies toward Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. For American allies hoping for a more multilateral approach to policymaking, that change will have to wait until after 2028, if a less unilateral Republican or Democratic candidate wins the presidency.

But even if that happens, the US does not possess the political will or capacity to return to its role as the undisputed global leader, amid continued political division, rising fiscal constraints, and the influence of an ascendant China. And whatever role it does play won’t be durable, as the immediate aftermath of the midterms has already shown.

The day after the elections, Vice-President JD Vance released a long X post in which he blamed the Iran war for his party’s losses, prompting speculation that the US could curtail future strikes in favour of negotiations. Decisions of war and diplomacy are being made at an increasingly rapid and unpredictable pace in the US.

That is why even if the Democrats’ victories in these elections mark the beginning of the end of the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to foreign affairs, they do not mark the return of a consistent, reliable US foreign policy. That’s a problem for American allies, and a key reason why — for now at least — the G-Zero world is here to stay.

The article was distributed by the Eurasia Group.

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