“Politics stops at the water’s edge,” was the maxim of Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican sponsor of the 1948 Senate resolution that bore his name. The Vandenberg Resolution made possible Harry Truman and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s vision of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was an example of bipartisan comity, enabled by the deliberate separation of America’s domestic politics from its foreign policy.
Make Vladimir Putin Boring Again
Biden’s upcoming meeting with the Russian president is the perfect opportunity to shrink Russia’s outsize significance in American politics.
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“Politics stops at the water’s edge,” was the maxim of Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican sponsor of the 1948 Senate resolution that bore his name. The Vandenberg Resolution made possible Harry Truman and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s vision of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was an example of bipartisan comity, enabled by the deliberate separation of America’s domestic politics from its foreign policy.
Yet within barely a year, as civil war in China tipped to the Communists and the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons, Washington’s political furies were unleashed. For four years, between 1950 and 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy implied that the United States was losing. The international situation could only be so bad, he tacitly argued, because of
Biden leaves Wednesday for England, Brussels and Geneva for summits with G-7 and NATO allies, ahead of meeting Putin next week at a time of high U.S.-Russia tension.