Every country has its domestic politics, and its foreign policy. Sometimes they are in sync. Other times they are not. Either way, it can be hard for outsiders to understand messages crafted for those on the inside. In the US, the results of the midterm elections, while not the “red tsunami” of Trumpism that many had feared, will nonetheless make the divide between politics and real policy even harder for non-Americans to either fathom or stomach.
Republicans appear to have won the House of Representatives, while Democrats have just taken the Senate (thankfully things won’t come down to a runoff in Georgia between the incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock in Georgia and his opponent, Trump-backed former American football running-back Herschel Walker). But the unusually tight elections have put Democrats back in the 2024 presidential game in a way that will make it hard for them to cater to both domestic and foreign interests at once.
Republicans will now turn even more of their vitriol on Joe Biden, aiming to make him look weak, criticising his handling of the economy, critiquing the chaos of his pullout from Afghanistan (which was, let’s be honest, never going to be easy for whichever president had to do it), and perhaps also refusing to sign off on more support for Ukraine. This will in turn upset European allies, who are already miffed about things like not being included in the US electric vehicle subsidies enjoyed by Canadians.