While conservatives may have hoped to attain an even larger majority in the nationwide series of votes that took place Tuesday, securing enough to take control of the lower chamber of Congress would give Republicans added influence in affecting the administration’s outlook on key hotspots across the globe. Key among these are a strained bilateral relationship with China, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, and uncertainties over Iran, with whom resurrecting a nuclear deal seemed perhaps more unlikely than at any time during Biden’s presidency.
Newsweek spoke with experts on all three foreign policy fronts. They predicted a push for a more aggressive approach on China, increased scrutiny on aid to Ukraine, and greater pressure to abandon nuclear talks with Iran in favor of a tougher strategy.
Whether the midterms would prove enough of a rebuke of Democratic leadership to float a rematch with former President Donald Trump remains to be seen, but what’s certain is that the influence of Biden’s predecessor and principal foe remains, including in some of the United States’ most pressing rivalries abroad.
China
In many ways, Trump’s legacy on China was among the most consequential influences on Biden’s foreign policy. While the administration has sought to pursue a degree of cooperation with the People’s Republic, the president has channeled his predecessor’s rigor in a number of areas, including human rights, competition over technology and the disputed island of Taiwan.
“If the Republicans regain control of the House and possibly the Senate, Biden’s options on China will narrow, whether he likes it or not,” Chris Li, director of the Asia-Pacific Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told Newsweek.
“First, the Admin will be consumed by the daily stuff of partisan infighting to a much greater extent than before, limiting the time and focus it can dedicate to managing U.S.-China relations,” Li said. “But second, there’s an adage in American politics never to let an opponent get to the right of you on a national security issue.”
“Although the Biden Administration may be reluctant to acknowledge it,” he explained, “a powerful factor implicitly motivating its calculus on China policy has been a desire to avoid looking ‘soft on China’ domestically, and therefore to adopt a more hawkish stance aligned more closely with Republican approaches.”
Li recalled how under Biden’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, the State Department has retained a number of policy points produced under his predecessor, Mike Pompeo. Calls for even more severe measure have emerged most openly in Republican circles, but also among Democrats, leaving less room for a potential detente.
“If the Republicans regain control of one or both chambers of Congress, expect domestic political pressures on the Biden administration to increase,” Li added, “and any effort to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship or to construct ‘guardrails’ around the current competition — as the Admin claims it seeks to do — to be scrutinized heavily by the Republicans, who will aggressively exploit any perceived weaknesses.”
For both Beijing and Washington, Li said, “the uncomfortable truth is that domestic political dynamics — rather than a clear-eyed assessment of national interests — are increasingly driving foreign policy decision-making in both countries.”
But in the U.S., in particular, this domestic pressure has translated into developments that have a left a serious impression on what both governments consider to be the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Lawmakers have taken matters into their own hands, both in a deluge of bills featuring increasingly harsh language against China, as well as travel to Taiwan.
As the likely end of her tenure approached in the leadup to Tuesday’s election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the first in her position to visit the contested island in a quarter of a century, outraging China, which conducted massive military exercises around Taiwan and suspended cooperation with the U.S. on a number of key issues.
“President Biden has argued that in relations with China, a mix of competition and cooperation is necessary,” Li said. “But as the overall health of the relationship continues to deteriorate, competition will become the dominant paradigm, while any space for cooperation will shrink.
“Unfortunately,” Li added, “because both countries share certain vital national interests — such as avoiding a conflict that could escalate into a general war — the bilateral relationship will grow more dangerous day by day.”
Russia
Biden’s support for Ukraine against the war launched by Russia in February has been a largely bipartisan issue, but blowback has begun to emerge. In a highly publicized criticism of the current administration’s approach to rolling out aid to Kyiv, Representative Kevin McCarthy, poised to replace fellow Californian Pelosi as House Speaker, has repeatedly stated that a Republican-led House of Representatives would not approve a “blank check” for Ukraine as the conflict raged on.
While he and other influential conservatives have walked back those comments somewhat, emphasizing that they do support Ukraine, calls for greater oversight on the billions of dollars in military and economic support being sent to the embattled Eastern European nation have risen on both sides of the aisle.
Mark Cancian, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps who previously worked at the Office of Management and Budget, and now serves as senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program, told Newsweek that one oversight mechanism being proposed is to establish a congressionally mandated watchdog, similar to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
“I don’t think there will be cuts to the military aid,” Cancian said. “I think that the economic aid will be more vulnerable, because people will argue that money is needed at home and it’s less directly involved with the defense of Ukraine.”
But as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sought additional, farther-reaching weapons such as the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), Cancian said that “the new Congress is likely to be a little more cautious,” especially if the administration itself has not pushed for such measures.
And when it came to potentially encouraging Ukraine to pursue talks with Russia to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, Cancian said he felt “you’re going to see more interest in negotiations across the board.”
“I think you’ll see it in Congress; You’ll see it in the public; You might see it in the administration — although I think less so there,” he added. “I think you’re going to see a lot of it in Europe.”
Rising fuel costs linked to the conflict and ensuing Western-led sanctions on Moscow have prompted questions over the longevity of unconditional assistance to Ukraine.
At the same time, Cancian noted that “the problem is that there is no basis for a settlement,” as Kyiv and Moscow remain at severe odds over the conflict. While the two sides pursued early negotiations in the earliest phase of the war, both nations now appear set on pursuing victory, and Zelensky has specifically dismissed the idea as of late, calling first for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.
Even as a desire to end the war diplomatically increased in the West, getting mired on this track could pose its own set of problems for the Biden administration. Recalling the experience of past U.S. conflicts in Afghanistan and Vietnam, Cancian said that “there’s a real impatience in the West,” which he argued “believes that the purpose of negotiation is to find the agreement,” while Russia may “regard this as just another tactic of conflict.”
Cancian argued that ultimately, the level of influence the new Congress may impose on Biden’s strategy on Russia and Ukraine would likely depend on the size of the House majority that Republicans manage to attain in the midterms. He said that, in some ways, a sizable Republican majority may actually prove beneficial for Ukraine, as it could drown out “extreme voices” who are explicitly supportive of Russia.
As a party eying power in 2024, however, the Republicans also have an interest in seeing Biden’s foreign policy flounder. And asked if the party set to take the House of Representatives may actively seek to derail the president’s initiatives on Ukraine and other major issues, Cancian said, “that’s called politics.”
“Will that be the case? Of course,” Cancian said. “That is the job of the opposition party.”
Iran
Though Biden’s efforts to challenge Beijing and Moscow on the world stage have dominated much of his foreign policy, the White House has also struggled to stabilize the tensions left behind by Trump surrounding Iran.
When Biden took office, rather than immediately reversing sanctions and reentering the nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was forged under former President Barack Obama while he served as vice president, the administration opted to pursue a negotiated resolution. But after a year and a half of talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna, no mutually agreed arrangement was reached, and Trump’s “maximum pressure” restrictions against the Islamic Republic remain in place.
The Biden administration’s stance on Iran had already hardened in the leadup to the midterm elections, as Iran faced allegations of supplying drones to back Russia’s war in Ukraine and of committing human rights abuses against citizens, including women, children and students amid nationwide protests sparked by the death of an Iranian woman in police custody in September. And as the JCPOA’s chances of survival dissipate, the impact of a more conservative U.S. Congress could be felt in both capitals.
“I am sure that pressure will increase on Biden administration to abandon the nuclear talks, but I believe that the answer remains in Tehran,” Sina Azodi, scholar and adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs, told Newsweek. “My sense is that Tehran is also waiting to see what happens in the midterm elections to decide about the future of talks and their futility. Given that Republicans have vowed to stop the JCPOA, it further disincentivizes Iran from pursuing the revival of the deal.”
For Washington, he argued, more Republican influence would lead to an intensification of the Trump-style approach that the Biden administration has referred to as a “failed” policy. And such a push would coincide with the anticipated renewal of former Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to take on Iran as he was set to regain office after parliamentary elections held last week.
“I think that the Biden administration will be under more pressure to maximize the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign by trying to interdict Iranian oil sales to China, for example,” he argued. “Netanyahu’s return to power also adds to the complications of the deal (if there is one), and its potential implementation.”
Voices from the Trump administration are still heard in Washington, including that of former White House national security adviser John Bolton, who recently suggested that an armed opposition in neighboring Iraq could use the Iranian demonstrations to topple the government in an interview with BBC Persian.
Azodi disputed the veracity of Bolton’s claims, calling him “irrelevant,” yet said he “still harbors dangerous ideas.”
Ali Vaez, senior advisor director of the Iran project and at the Crisis Group, said that irrespective of congressional politics, any administration would have to face concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, even if Iranian officials have vehemently denied seeking to build a weapon of mass destruction. Also unavoidable would be addressing the detention of U.S. citizens in Iran.
“So the administration will have to keep the door open,” Vaez told Newsweek. “But undoubtedly, diplomacy with Iran will face even more serious political headwinds because of the Democrats’ loss of Congress, and Iran’s drone sales to Russia and its repression against its own people.”
Vaez argued that Biden has so far “managed to strike the right balance” on the protests, neither ignoring them nor actively seeking to put the U.S. at their forefront.
As to how far a new hawkish current in Congress might push the president, Vaez said, “the administration is unlikely to move towards regime change, as it is fully cognizant of the disastrous track record of that U.S. policy in that part of the world.”
