Just before Christmas, Robert Kagan applauded the ratification of New START, and he claimed that it heralded the emergence of a working “internationalist” majority in the Senate:

The internationalist coalition that passed this treaty will be critical in advancing U.S. interests over the coming years: in dealing with Iran; China; the continuing war in Afghanistan; the stabilization of Iraq; the ratification of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama; and the maintenance of adequate defense and foreign affairs budgets. With the right presidential leadership, this muscular internationalism ought to, as it has in the past, provide the center of gravity for American foreign policy.

According to the Status of Forces Agreement, the direct U.S. role in the “stabilization of Iraq” ends at the end of this year. There is scarcely any time and no inclination on the part of Iraq’s new government to re-negotiate the agreement, and it is likely that trying to re-open the issue of an American military presence beyond the deadline would bring down the government that was put together so slowly and with so much difficulty last year. There will be no need for a working coalition in the Senate on this issue beyond December. Every other issue Kagan lists is far more contentious, and some are quite unpopular.

The passage of New START was misleading in that it created the impression that there was consensus on the direction of U.S. foreign policy among a super-majority of Senators. What we actually saw was a cobbled-together group of thirteen Republicans supporting a specific arms reduction treaty over the strenuous and often ludicrous resistance of most of their leadership. Three of them retired and were replaced by more hawkish Republicans, and five of the Democrats voting for the treaty retired or lost their bids for re-election, which means that Kagan’s “internationalist coalition” from the treaty vote has already been decimated.

What was striking about the difficulty of New START’s ratification is how even an overwhelmingly-supported treaty could meet with such intense opposition. There is nothing like that general consensus for any of the other policies one way or the other, and it would be strange if there were. The free trade agreements in particular are neither popular nor do they command the same kind of broad support that the treaty did. Even after the last round of negotiations produced a slightly improved agreement, the free trade deal with South Korea will meet with significant opposition on the Democratic side, and KORUS opponents have far more support from the public than anti-START Republicans ever had. Ratifying the treat should have been very easy, and instead it was an unnecessarily drawn-out and difficult process. Now that there will be a more evenly-divided Senate faced with a number of more contentious and controversial issues, we should not assume that there is meaningful consensus on any of them.