How the 2022 midterms could change US foreign policy — from Ukraine to China and beyond

Joshua Keating

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If Republicans retake control of either or both houses of Congress in November, an outcome that polls currently suggest is likely, the biggest impact will be felt in terms of domestic policy. U.S. presidents have a lot more room to maneuver without Congress’ input in the international sphere, which is one reason why, historically, they’ve tended to focus more on foreign issues later in their terms, after their political capital in Washington has been expended.

But the president is hardly a free agent in the global arena. Whatever happens on Nov. 8, President Joe Biden will still need Congress to pass his budgets, approve his nominees for key positions, and in the most serious cases, approve the use of military force. And there are several current and potential global flashpoints for which a flip to Republican control would have consequences.

All of which means that these elections may be watched almost as closely in Brussels, Moscow and Beijing as they are in Washington.

The war in Ukraine

It’s not an exaggeration to say this midterm election could have major strategic implications in the war between Russia and Ukraine, though these may not become clear for some time.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who would become speaker of the House if Republicans take over, made waves last week when he told Punchbowl News, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. … Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check.”

Through a series of three supplemental funding packages, Congress has allocated more than $65 billion in military, economic and food aid to Ukraine this year. To put that figure in perspective, the last time the U.S. spent that much on one country in a single year was during the Vietnam War. Support for Ukraine has, for the most part, been a rare point of bipartisan agreement in Washington. Back in March, McCarthy’s line of attack was that Biden wasn’t providing Ukraine enough firepower, namely aircraft. But there is something of a partisan divide opening on the issue. Fifty-seven House members and 11 senators, all Republicans, voted against the last $12 billion Ukraine allocation in September. A recent Reuters poll found that while 81 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should continue providing support to Ukraine despite Russia’s nuclear threats, only 66 percent of Republicans agreed. Sixty-six percent support for any policy is unusually high, but the Ukraine skepticism of influential conservative media figures including Fox News host Tucker Carlson — not to mention former president Donald Trump, who has called for immediate ceasefire negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin — may be having an impact. Some Trump-aligned Republicans this year are campaigning on their opposition to further aid for Ukraine. Senate candidate J.D. Vance of Ohio said in a recent interview, “I think we’re at the point where we’ve given enough money in Ukraine, I really do. … The Europeans need to step up.”

Arguments like these are likely to face pushback from traditional Republican foreign policy hawks. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney slammed McCarthy, saying he was competing to lead the “pro-Putin wing of my party.” Cheney, who lost her primary, won’t be in Congress next year, but hawkish views on Russia are still the majority view in her party. McCarthy’s position could put him at odds with his Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has vowed to push for more Ukraine aid, not less, if he becomes majority leader next year. Other influential House members, including Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, currently the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, appear to be trying to thread the needle between the two positions. McCaul vowed in a recent interview to introduce “more oversight and accountability” into Ukraine funding, while noting of the Ukrainians that “when we give them what they need, they win.”

For his part, Biden has declared himself “worried” that U.S. support for Ukraine could be undermined if the Republicans win. And Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), told Grid, “even if we don’t see Republicans overtly threaten to pull Ukraine aid, what we almost certainly will see is efforts to extract all kinds of goodies and favors in exchange for not blocking the aid.”

But if McCarthy’s “blank check” remarks drew attention, there were also questions this week as to whether Ukraine fatigue was growing within Biden’s own party.

On Monday, the House Progressive Caucus published a letter urging the Biden administration to pair its military support for Ukraine with “efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.” The extent to which the letter was actually urging a shift in U.S. policy was somewhat buried by the controversy that followed.

Biden himself has recently acknowledged trying to find a diplomatic “off-ramp” for Putin. But the progressives’ letter was withdrawn just a day after its release amid widespread criticism, including from caucus members themselves, who had reportedly signed it months ago. They said they were unaware it was being released in the wake of McCarthy’s comments, and just two weeks before the election. If this marked the start of a left-wing insurgency against Biden’s Ukraine policy, it wasn’t an auspicious beginning. And if the letter accomplished anything, it was to undermine Democrats’ campaign message that a vote for Republicans is a vote for appeasing Putin.

Where does this leave support for Ukraine?

It’s now looking increasingly likely that lawmakers in both parties will use the December lame duck period to pass a massive new Ukraine aid package that, in the words of one Republican senator, will make “$12 billion look like pocket change.” If they can do this before the new Congress is seated, it will at least postpone a reckoning over this issue for a few months.

China

Want to pass ambitious legislation in today’s gridlocked Congress? Try slapping an anti-China label on it.

Two of the Democrats’ biggest successes this year in terms of new domestic spending — the $52 billion Chips and Science Act and the $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act — were sold to a great extent as efforts to help the U.S. compete with China in vital, emerging manufacturing sectors: semiconductors and green tech, respectively. In June, Congress also passed, with rare and overwhelming bipartisan support, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a sweeping measure targeting imports from the region where the U.S. has accused the Chinese government of carrying out a genocide against the local Muslim population. Republican lawmakers, for the most part, strongly backed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) controversial trip to Taiwan in August, and McCarthy has said he will make a similar trip if he becomes speaker. Leading Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are both currently crafting a massive increase in military aid to Taiwan, as well.

A Republican-controlled Congress would likely push the Biden administration, which has already made “strategic competition” with China the centerpiece of its national security strategy, to be even more aggressive. One hint of what’s to come could be the Countering Communist China Act released last year by the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative lawmakers, in response to what they viewed as insufficiently aggressive proposals from Democrats. The act includes a collection of anti-China measures: bans on U.S. companies receiving federal subsidies affiliating with businesses tied to the Chinese military, blocking funding to U.S. universities that affiliate with Chinese government organizations, and mandating a new investigation into the origins of the covid-19 pandemic. House Republicans are also calling for greater oversight of technology exports to China that could potentially benefit the country’s military.

It’s unlikely all these measures will pass, even if Republicans control both houses next year, but they’re the sorts of provisions that could turn up in large, important spending bills.

U.S.-China relations, which are already in a very tense place, are unlikely to change dramatically should control of Congress revert to the Republicans. But as Bates Gill, executive director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, told Grid, “If Republicans were able to gain both houses, then that’s going to put enormous pressure on the president and make it difficult for him to veto actions if the two houses can agree to some tougher policies toward China.”

Saudi Arabia

One foreign leader who will likely be paying close attention on Nov. 8 is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. There’s little love lost between the kingdom’s de facto ruler and the Biden administration. According to a Wall Street Journal account this week, the crown prince frequently mocks the president’s age and verbal gaffes in private and talks about how he “much preferred former President Donald Trump.” While the crown prince defended the recent move by the Saudi-led OPEC+ cartel to cut oil production, thereby raising global energy prices, as a matter of economics, many analysts believe the cut was at least partly an effort to punish Biden’s party at the polls.

The move only deepened antipathy toward the Saudis among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the influential chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the administration to “immediately freeze all aspects” of U.S. cooperation with the kingdom. Menendez has a number of means at his disposal, both formal and informal, to hold up or block U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear to what extent any “freeze” would continue under a Republican Congress. A Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer told Grid in an emailed statement that “despite challenges, our partnership with Saudi Arabia remains important for U.S. national security. The only way we can protect our interests is through engagement — we need to be at the table and incentivize better behavior through engagement and cooperative efforts that serve shared interests, like countering Iran.”

This isn’t a purely partisan issue. During the Trump administration, Republicans at times placed holds on arms sales to the Saudis and their regional allies over various concerns. But it is an area where Trump’s ongoing influence on the party is worth watching. Just this week, the former president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and his former Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, were both in Riyadh for the global conference nicknamed “Davos in the Desert.” No Biden administration officials were in attendance.

Hearings, hearings and more hearings

Another way that Congress is likely to make itself heard on foreign policy — assuming a Republican victory — is via oversight hearings. McCaul recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking for the preservation of documents related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, during which 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed and which led to the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban’s return to power. A Republican committee staffer told Grid that a list has been prepared of administration officials to be brought in for testimony and that the House majority’s subpoena power could be used if necessary.

House Republicans also say they are preparing the groundwork for hearings on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which they allege will show the president’s sons ties to China and other foreign powers.

The Biden administration will likely dismiss these proceedings as time-wasting, grandstanding. But as the Obama administration learned in the aftermath of the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, such hearings may well dominate Washington’s limited attention span for much of the next two years.

Looking ahead to 2024

For many foreign observers, the elections are likely more interesting as harbingers for what’s to come in two years rather than in the coming months. While the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, the scale of that loss, and the sorts of candidates who enter the new Congress, could give indications of Biden’s prospects for reelection in 2024 and the likelihood that Trump — or another candidate in the Trump mold — could return to power.

Uncertainty about America’s political future always has concrete impacts on foreign policy. One reason why the Biden administration has had a difficult time fulfilling its campaign pledge of negotiating a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is that the Iranians are understandably skeptical that any deal they sign won’t be thrown out the next time a Republican is in office. For what it’s worth, congressional Republicans probably couldn’t do much to stop a new nuclear deal if one were reached, just as they were unable to block Barack Obama’s original deal back in 2015; right now, amid the mass protests in Iran, there’s little movement toward a deal anyway.

A defeat for the Democrats in 2024 could well lead to the U.S. once again withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Former national security adviser John Bolton has even suggested that Trump was prepared to pull the U.S. out of NATO had he won a second term.

So there will be short-term impact and long-term concerns, whatever happens on Nov. 8. And regardless of the results, Biden is likely to spend the next two years with global allies looking over his shoulder, wondering who and what might be coming next.