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Thousands of national security workers will continue to work during the shutdown, but there are broader implications...
The US federal government shut down for the first time in nearly seven years on Wednesday after Democratic and Republican lawmakers failed to agree on a spending deal, halting key government services and leaving hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed.
Most of the immediate impact will be felt on the domestic front, with the U.S. jobs report due out today being delayed, visitors to U.S. national parks seeing significantly reduced staffing beyond essential law enforcement and protective functions, flights could be delayed if essential but unpaid air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees choose to stay home or call in sick, and layoffs at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention affecting basic research and disease surveillance.
But there are also significant implications for U.S. foreign policy and geopolitics. While many national security functions are exempt from the shutdown, the Defense and State departments are among those furloughing the most workers. The Pentagon said it will lay off 334,904 employees, nearly half of its current civilian workforce; more than 2 million active-duty military service members will continue to work without pay (though they will be given back pay once the shutdown ends and Congress appropriates the funds). The State Department will lay off more than a third of its directly employed workers, affecting 10,436 people, it said in a plan released Wednesday morning.
The Defense Department listed six priority areas on which it would continue to focus: border security, Middle East operations, depot maintenance, shipbuilding, critical munitions and US President Donald Trump's "Golden Dome for America" missile defense project. Active and contingency military operations will remain unaffected, although some forms of "technical intelligence collection" unrelated to core military functions, such as political intelligence gathering, will be halted.
That could ultimately be problematic, said a former U.S. national security official who served on two government shutdowns during the first Trump administration, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to affect his current role.
“If you’re thinking about geostrategic competition, we definitely want to keep our eyes open at all times, given how quickly things tend to happen,” the official said, adding that potential disruptions to military acquisition capabilities and the cancellation of joint military exercises with allies could also drag things out. “There’s a lot of friction going on,” the official said, and “getting things done at the Department of Defense becomes much more challenging.”
Washington's foreign adversaries could be positioned to take advantage of the inherent dysfunction of a government shutdown (a phenomenon that is unique to the United States), according to Ned Price, who served as State Department spokesman and deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Joe Biden.
One is simply the message. “You never hear about shutting down the Chinese Communist Party or shutting down the Kremlin,” Price said, adding that this allows those adversaries to portray the United States as a “failing country” that allies cannot rely on. “We can’t even keep the lights on, so how can any country depend on a country like the United States? That’s the kind of message this situation allows them to send, whether it’s accurate or not.”
Price, who was a CIA analyst when the government shut down in 2013 during President Barack Obama's second term, also noted the potential consequences for federal employee morale. "This is a workforce that is now being forced largely into the office without pay," Price said. "That would be an inconvenience, that would be a challenge in a place like the Department of Agriculture or the Small Business Administration, but when the functions that these individuals are performing are essential to our national security functions, that has implications for national security. When productivity goes down, when demoralization takes over, that will have an immediate effect, but also a crippling effect that will build over time."
Government shutdowns have the added side effect of many employees simply choosing to leave the federal workforce, especially after the massive layoffs this year during Elon Musk's time at the semi-official Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump administration's threat of further layoffs during this shutdown.
"What concerns me most is that a context like this could be a huge resource for foreign intelligence organizations," Price said.
He added, “I don’t want to suggest that a government shutdown will result in a flood of defections to hostile intelligence services, but think about the possibility that this could happen once as a result of this or that this could contribute to it, and that, as we know from Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen and others, could cause incalculable damage to our national security.”
There is also the impact on allies and partners. The Pentagon said in its contingency planning document that all visits by foreign dignitaries not deemed “essential” for critical functions would be canceled during a shutdown. “It certainly makes things more difficult from a planning perspective for allies who are already questioning our intentions and actions,” the former national security official said, recalling instances during previous shutdowns where U.S. military exercises had to be canceled or curtailed. “It degrades military readiness. It degrades interoperability with our allies and partners, all of which are things we have to worry about,” he added.
A European diplomat, speaking to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, said an official from their country was scheduled to visit Washington in the coming weeks and had requested several meetings at the State Department. They were told Wednesday morning that confirmation of all those meetings would be delayed until at least Friday, and that the U.S. government employee coordinating the meetings would have to turn off his work equipment. “There may not be people to walk us through the door or bring us coffee,” the diplomat said, adding that they plan to wait until the middle of next week before canceling the official’s trip. /Adapted from Foreign Policy/
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