ABSTRACT
When two Democratic senators can hold the Biden administration hostage, it is easy to start thinking about American decline. Instead, the authors are seeing how the breakdown in domestic politics leads to world disorder. The more political leaders are forced to focus on reconciling domestic divisions, the more they tend to turn away from or even reject the multilateral relationships and institutions that give structure to global politics. The messier reality is that dealing with state governments means dealing with their domestic politics. This was a major reason that Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was intended to reintegrate Iran into the world economy in exchange for its agreement not to develop nuclear weapons. In using these resources, they make it more urgent for Europeans and Americans to work together. Multilateral distortions are having a greater impact on the global balance of power than any early foreign-policy blunders by the Biden administration.
