Opinion: Trump or Harris? Whoever wins will lose wars without bipartisan consensus.
In the early days of the Cold War, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg sagely and famously declared that partisan politics must stop at the water’s edge. If there was any doubt that U.S. politicians no longer practice what Vandenberg preached, the past several weeks have provided ample proof.
During the recent visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the two major presidential candidates and parties demonstrated starkly different foreign policy approaches. To ensure America’s security, however, we must reach a bipartisan consensus and address our future challenges, many of which will not be of our choosing.
Against the backdrop of the United Nations General Assembly, Zelenskyy met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 26. The Biden-Harris administration committed an additional $8 billion in military support to Ukraine but failed to agree to Ukraine’s urgently needed request to lift restrictions on the use of long-range missiles, despite growing support from congressional Democrats.
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Meanwhile, the Republican presidential nominee spoke out in highly critical terms about the Ukrainian leader and Ukraine’s struggle with Russia ? but Donald Trump changed his tune after meeting Zelenskyy in New York. At the same time, House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the Ukrainian ambassador of interfering in the U.S. election because she had arranged Zelenskyy’s visit to the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, even though many congressional Republicans support Ukraine’s war effort against the Russians.
This obvious lack of consensus demonstrates clearly just how far we have drifted away from Vandenberg's admonition.
What I saw as CIA chief of the Afghan Task Force
Achieving a bipartisan consensus on important issues is possible, and one relevant example is our successful campaign to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. As CIA chief of the Afghan Task Force later that decade, I observed firsthand the factors that made this policy a success:
There was an American consensus that the Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was a major threat to our national security.
There was bipartisan support, starting with President Ronald Reagan.
It was amply funded by Congress without bickering despite concerns.
There were committed indigenous forces on the ground who were prepared to pay the price of pushing back against the Soviets.
And there were dedicated nonpartisan national security professionals who were deeply committed to the mission.
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Whether it's former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, who wins this presidential election will have to confront significant challenges and threats from the autocratic leaders of Russia, Iran, China and North Korea ? who all view the Unites States as their main enemy and whose key objective is to push the West out of what they consider their respective spheres of influence.
This poses grave risks of violent confrontation. No amount of well-wishing or accommodating will alter this reality, and conciliatory behavior on our part will be seen as weakness. These leaders respect strength and will exploit anything less. It is only through strength that we can forestall confrontations.
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Developing bipartisan support on foreign policy is a tall order, but it isn’t magical. It was the norm throughout the Cold War, with the exception of the late stages of the Vietnam War and the Central America struggle over Nicaragua.
With the reemergence of nation-state conflicts such as Israel vs. Iran and Ukraine vs. Russia, a coherent, bipartisan strategy has been missing, and there isn't a specific formula to forge a consensus.
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It requires leadership and enhanced communication with Congress and the American people.
The next U.S. president must invest the considerable time and determination to build a credible bridge to the opposition. Without this unity, we will be in a much weaker national security position to face down the threats coming from our likely adversaries.
Are we condemned to repeating history?
Many argue we are not in the Cold War of the 20th century, as Russia is no longer a communist country but rather an autocratic jingoist state. However, there are important similarities.
First, the principal antagonists ? Russia, China and North Korea ? are the same core players from the Cold War that share a collective view of the United States as their adversary. And Iran, once a jewel fought over in the Cold War, is now firmly in the other camp.
Further, as in the Cold War, Russia is leading the charge against the West with a land war in Ukraine, while China, a much more powerful military and economic country than Russia, is aggressively eyeballing Taiwan. Iran has also joined the Russian-Chinese alliance against us.
These states are also using their allies and surrogates as pressure points on the West, funding and providing paramilitary support to undemocratic governments and resistance forces in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, much like the destabilizing efforts during the Cold War.
Our national security strategy in recent decades has been largely ad hoc and country-by-country, as dictated by specific crises. But like the Cold War, virtually all our national security threats today are interconnected, and any new version of the Cold War containment strategy must address the linkages among our adversaries and treat the threat as a mosaic rather than isolated puzzle pieces.
As in Afghanistan in the 1980s, there are parallels from recent history that can provide pertinent lessons if and when our core interests are at risk. The challenges we faced in the Cold War remain relevant today, and the failure to address them in a coherent, bipartisan way will leave us remembering Winston Churchill’s well-known quip: "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
Jack Devine, a former acting CIA deputy director of operations, is founder and chairman of The Arkin Group, a New York City-based international intelligence and investigative company. He is the author of “Spymasters’ Prism.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Trump or Harris? China, Russia, Iran are watching who wins