How Sun Belt Politics Took Over US Foreign Policy
Military power and liberal economics were an effective double act in US foreign policy. The forthright display of sovereign power, sometimes violent and nasty, was complemented by the bilateral and multilateral trade for mutual benefit within a community of nations.
But the double act has been pushed aside by a "Sun Belt" approach. Now American political culture entails a suspicion of others, even allies, as it deals with them. Militaristic patriotism is a prized social value. "Security" demands more military spending and cuts to social welfare. Unilateral righteousness is preferred over permanent multilateral institutions and alliances.
"Militarization of Economics"
From the 1950s the Sun Belt, from California through Texas to South Carolina and Florida, re-centered American political culture away from the urbane liberal internationalism of the East Coast. The fastest-growing area of the country was resolutely anti-Communist, sceptical of UN initiatives, and suspicious that civil rights might go too far and social liberalism would upend the social order of nuclear families and individual self-reliance.
The views were supported by the economics of military bases and the defense industry; companies extracting oil, gas, and minerals; technology firms; and huge agri-businesses. The military was both the apex of patriotism and a vital national economic actor. The US dollar became not a neutral device to grease the wheels of globalization, but a blunt tool to promote American interests, help allies, and hurt enemies. Traditionalism, militarism, and capitalism became welded into US foreign policy.
In the 21st-century integration of patriotism, the military, and liberal economics, US free trade agreements are with countries that have connections with the Pentagon: Israel, Australia, Bahrain, Colombia, Peru, Jordan, Korea, and Singapore. The US made Morocco a major non-NATO ally in 2004; two years later, the FTA was signed.
These bilateral negotiations, pull those countries into the orbit of the US military and defense industry. They import American-made weapons systems and pay for the US to train their militaries. They need the US more than the US needs them.
The US Trade Representative's office and Treasury have synthesized coercion, neoliberal economics and global trade. The USTR issues an annual Special 301 Report that puts countries on a watchlist if their intellectual property protection is not sufficient, opening up more markets for American companies and exporting US standards.
Countries on the list face penalties and US pressure in rewriting their criminal code. They have to subordinate themselves in talks with the USTR and significantly change their laws to remove themselves.
The US Treasury has built up a bureaucratic structure to apply pressure through sanctions. The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the Treasury’s in-house intelligence arm, has a budget of $166 million. Its former head, Sigal Mandelker, used the national security rationale to expand punishments, particularly against Iran, in a "militarization" of neoliberal economics.
Militaristic Patriotism
With militaristic patriotism, the Department of Defense’s budget dwarfs that of the State Department. That budget in turn fosters the use of coercive power.
Since the 1980s the Persian Gulf, and particularly Iraq and Iran, have been the arena for this power as the Carter Doctrine sought to reposition the US on a dominant footing. Ronald Reagan vastly increased military spending and deepened America's forward presence in the Gulf by establishing Central Command in 1983. A huge multilateral coalition fought the 1991 Gulf War, and Bill Clinton continued to enforce no-fly zones in Iraq alongside the UK.
Obama continued George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq War until 2011, and expanded a covert drone program including targeted killing. In 2019, Trump sent 14,000 troops to the Middle East and formed the International Maritime Security Construct with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UK, and Australia to contain Iranian naval ambitions.
Trump also carried out a campaign promise of "maximum pressure", including military measures, against Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper set out the purpose to raise the costs of Iranian activity and bring Tehran to the negotiating table under greater stress. Brian Hook, head of the Iran Action Group at the State Department, formalized this into coherent tactics which played on two American strengths: controlling currency flows and military superiority.
While framed by Trump as a contrast to the multilateralism of Obama, the latter employed aggressive sanctions and cyber-attacks that crippled Iran’s infrastructure before the Islamic Republic signed the 2015 nuclear deal. Trump wants to squeeze it into more concessions to achieve an electoral promise before 2020.
US action against Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s also demonstrated power through manipulation of currency and military might. After the 1991 Gulf War, the CIA and Saudi Arabia spurred hyperinflation in Iraq with counterfeit currency to cripple Saddam’s regime. Even now, the US threatens to close Iraq’s dollar account with the New York Federal Reserve to hurt Baghdad's oil revenue and the value of the Iraqi dinar.
"Sun Belt" Power
Historically, Sun Belt politics is reminiscent of the South before the Civil War. The region’s penchant for slavery and agarianism made it seem detached from modernity, particularly when compared to the industrialized Northern states. Yet the South had a large role in national politics and foreign policy as it moved towards urban centers and sought economic and technological advance.
The region's Janus-faced politics promoted state’s rights and a strong central government; slavery and a quasi-aristocratic leisure class; internal repression and economic freedom. It justified high military spending for protection, defending the fellow slave-holding states of Texas and Brazil from slave insurrection and the Royal Navy’s abolitionist policing of the Atlantic. The Southern economy relied on selling cash crops to the international market. Unlike the protectionist-inclined North, the South favored more free trade.
There isn't a direct genealogy from the Antebellum South to the Sun Belt. However, there is a correlation between their pronounced ideological contradictions that combine racism and oppression, a notion of individual liberty and self-reliance, and a conformist patriotism coated in nationalist militarism and global free trade.
Trump is a New York billionaire, but his deregulation, tax cuts and militarization has deepened the Sun Belt’s domestic power. He even favors his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida over Fifth Avenue. His promotion of racism, violent police measures, restrictions on immigration, economic deregulation, and violent coercion abroad are mutually reinforcing. The police use military surplus equipment, societal racism encourages immigration restrictions, economic deregulation encourages coercion for access to more global markets.
America’s future might be like Texas: low regulations mingled with patriotic militarism and deeply embedded in the global economy, white conservative voters dominating to disrupt progressive policies, and court rulings mirroring the conservatism of the Supreme Court. The State is a microcosm of the right wing of the Republican Party intensifying patriotism, stripping social protections, and consolidating the power of big business.
For the time being, the Republican right and many "moderate Democrats" march with their technocratic partners in the US Treasury and the Defense Department into larger budgets to bolster the nation’s coercive abilities. Both sides think that march is a vote winner, and presidents can cloak themselves in "decisive leadership".
This is the ascendancy of the Sun Belt political culture that will try to shape not only America's future, but that of the world.
Thomas Furse is a PhD student at City, University of London. He is researching American foreign policy, specifically the history of strategic thought.