“Great news for Russia, the suspension of government work in the United States,” writes Richard Fontein, director of the CNAS think tank. After all, the United States authorities “practically did his work for the Kremlin,” states an American political analyst.
The longest government shutdown in American history is making headlines around the world. It will also have global effects, none of them good. U.S. political leaders, so unable to compromise, should understand how their decisions chip away at national security.
First and most obvious are the practical consequences: the State Department employees who have spent weeks on furlough, unable to advocate for U.S.
These effects will end when the government reopens. Not so the increased political polarization that this process engenders, and that provides the kindling on which Russia and others are so keen to throw sparks.
Moscow believes that a divided America is weaker and more inwardly focused, less able to marshal national will or project power—or, to Moscow’s mind, threaten Russia.
The wisest response would be national solidarity and a demonstration that the United States can’t be fractured. The actual response, of course, has been anything but that. America’s newly divided government has kicked off 2019 by closing itself, practically doing the Kremlin’s work for it. Who needs a foreign adversary when there’s an opposing party?
This latest shutdown is, of course, just one episode, and will not on its own puncture the democratic balloon. Nor will populations abroad simply forget all the drawbacks of dictatorship and illiberalism. But combine the shutdown with its previous episodes, add to it fiscal cliffs and battles over raising the debt limit, salt in the effect of sequestration and an inability to pass basic legislation, and you have the makings of a narrative that is bad for America. Brexit chaos, protests on Parisian streets, and the like don’t help.
Today’s government shutdown is unlike North Korean missiles or Iranian proxies or Russian hacking. It is a problem of America’s own making, featuring only Americans against Americans.