Domestic Division

A National Security Risk

What this is: A citizen-written white paper arguing that outrage-driven politics is creating strategic harm for the United States.

Key points:

    •    Division has become a political incentive: outrage mobilizes voters and donations.

    •    Domestic dysfunction signals instability to allies and opportunity to adversaries.

    •    Foreign influence campaigns exploit our fractures by amplifying anger and mistrust.

    •    Credibility is national power. When it drops, deterrence and alliance strength erode.

    •    This is not partisan. It’s pro-America: reduce the temperature, restore trust, strengthen resilience.

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Domestic Division as a National Security Risk

How Polarization Erodes U.S. Credibility, Deterrence, and Alliance Strength

Author: Christopher “Chris” Cochran

Date: January 23, 2026

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Author bio

Christopher “Chris” Cochran is a Silicon Valley small-business owner and longtime professional in the music and piano industry. He writes as a concerned American citizen focused on civic stability, national resilience, and the long-term strength of the United States and its alliances.

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Executive summary

America’s strength has never come only from military capability. It also comes from credibility (the belief that the U.S. will keep commitments), institutional stability (the ability to govern predictably), and alliances (trusted partners who magnify U.S. power). A growing style of domestic politics—built around constant outrage, identity sorting, and “enemy” narratives—puts these assets at risk.

This paper advances four core findings:

    1.    Polarization reduces foreign confidence in U.S. reliability. Research shows that perceptions of U.S. domestic polarization can directly degrade foreign evaluations of U.S. security commitments and long-term partnership value.  

    2.    Foreign adversaries exploit U.S. division as strategy, not accident. U.S. intelligence assessments describe foreign influence operations designed to intensify domestic division and weaken U.S. global influence.  

    3.    The information ecosystem rewards conflict. Experimental evidence indicates that algorithmic ranking choices can meaningfully shift affective polarization (how much people dislike the other side).  

    4.    Self-inflicted governance crises damage credibility. Debt-ceiling brinkmanship and similar standoffs increase costs and signal instability to markets and partners.  

The paper concludes with practical recommendations for citizens, platforms, media, civil society, and government to reduce strategic vulnerability while preserving free speech and robust democratic disagreement.

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Purpose and audience

Purpose: To explain—clearly and nonpartisanly—how “divide-and-mobilize” politics can weaken the United States domestically and internationally, and to outline steps to reduce harm.

Audience: U.S. citizens, elected officials, civil servants, journalists, educators, and civic organizations.

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Scope and limitations

This paper does not claim that any political party uniquely “caused” polarization or that leaders secretly intend national harm. Instead, it focuses on observable incentives and measurable effects—how division spreads, how it is exploited, and how it impacts U.S. strength.

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Key definitions

To avoid confusion, this paper uses established definitions:

    •    Disinformation: false or misleading information deliberately created or spread to deceive.  

    •    Foreign disinformation (as a national security issue): disinformation conducted by foreign actors, which can increase instability and conflict within targeted societies.  

    •    Foreign malign influence: subversive, coercive, or deceptive activity by foreign actors (or proxies) to shape another nation’s perceptions and behavior for strategic advantage.  

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Background: Why unity is a strategic asset

The U.S. gains power when it can:

    •    make credible long-term commitments,

    •    respond coherently in crises,

    •    mobilize alliances quickly,

    •    and sustain public trust in legitimate outcomes.

Allies amplify U.S. power through interoperability, basing, intelligence sharing, logistics, sanctions coordination, and collective defense commitments—especially in NATO, where Article 5 codifies the collective-defense principle.  

Polarization threatens these advantages by making the U.S. appear less stable, less predictable, and more prone to policy whiplash.

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Finding 1: Polarization weakens allied assurance and U.S. credibility

A growing research literature connects domestic polarization to declining foreign confidence in U.S. reliability.

    •    A survey experiment in the United Kingdom found that priming respondents about U.S. polarization reduced evaluations of the U.S.–UK relationship, with especially strong effects on long-term reputational assessments.  

    •    Broader scholarship on “Domestic Polarization and U.S. Foreign Policy” argues polarization can make U.S. foreign policy less reliable and more vulnerable to harmful external influence.  

    •    Policy analysis explicitly warns that U.S. domestic polarization can undermine allied perceptions of U.S. credibility and assurance.  

Why this matters: Deterrence depends not only on capability but on belief—belief by adversaries that the U.S. will respond, and belief by allies that the U.S. will stand with them. When polarization makes U.S. commitments look reversible or politically fragile, allies begin to hedge (quietly reducing dependence, building independent capacity, or seeking alternative arrangements).

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Finding 2: Governance brinkmanship signals instability and imposes real costs

Domestic governance crises project weakness externally and damage confidence internally.

Debt-ceiling brinkmanship is one clear example. Brookings documents that brinkmanship can raise borrowing costs and that negative effects may persist beyond the immediate standoff.  

International consequence: Partners and rivals absorb a simple message—America may struggle to execute baseline governance. Over time, repeated self-inflicted crises can degrade the perception that U.S. commitments (financial, military, diplomatic) are dependable.

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Finding 3: The information environment amplifies “us vs. them”

Polarization is not merely the result of different opinions; it is increasingly driven by systems that reward anger and identity conflict.

A Science study (2025) on algorithmic feed ranking found that changes in ranking partisan-hostile content measurably altered affective polarization.  

Implication: Even when no content is censored, the way content is ranked and distributed can shift the emotional temperature of a society. When platforms elevate hostile partisan content (because it drives engagement), they can unintentionally increase mass resentment—creating fertile ground for manipulation.

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Finding 4: Foreign adversaries exploit U.S. division as an explicit strategy

Foreign influence is not speculation; it is repeatedly assessed in official U.S. intelligence products and major reporting:

    •    The ODNI declassified assessment on threats to the 2020 U.S. federal elections describes foreign influence operations—especially Russia’s—aimed at weakening U.S. cohesion and shaping U.S. perceptions.  

    •    The Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment (2025) outlines a broad landscape of adversarial threats (including information influence, cyber, and geopolitical competition).  

    •    U.S. intelligence leaders have warned that Russia, China, and Iran seek to influence U.S. politics and intensify domestic divisions, leveraging low-cost tools and modern platforms.  

    •    GAO emphasizes foreign disinformation as a national security threat that can weaken democracies and increase domestic conflict.  

Mechanism: Foreign actors typically do not need to invent new divisions. They amplify existing social fractures by boosting extreme narratives, impersonating groups, laundering content through local influencers, and exploiting moments of crisis.

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Strategic risk: How division increases vulnerability in a conflict

When domestic division becomes severe, it can create at least five conflict-relevant vulnerabilities:

    1.    Deterrence uncertainty: Adversaries may gamble that U.S. leaders cannot sustain a clear response due to internal political fracture.

    2.    Alliance hesitation: Allies may delay cooperation or impose constraints if they doubt U.S. continuity.  

    3.    Slower coalition-building: Sanctions, basing permissions, and coordinated messaging become harder when trust is lower.

    4.    Information chaos in crises: Disinformation can hinder decision-making and public unity at the precise moment coherence matters most.  

    5.    Self-inflicted credibility damage: repeated governance breakdowns signal instability to partners and markets.  

Bottom line: Even if the U.S. remains militarily powerful, unnecessary domestic division can raise the probability of miscalculation, opportunistic aggression, and alliance drift—making conflict more likely and more costly.

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Recommendations

These recommendations are designed to reduce vulnerability while protecting civil liberties and democratic debate.

For citizens

    •    Adopt “verification discipline.” Treat viral political content—especially rage content—as unverified until corroborated.

    •    Reduce algorithmic capture. Use tools/settings that lower exposure to hostile partisan ranking; diversify information sources. (The evidence base suggests ranking choices matter.)  

    •    Refuse dehumanization. Disagree strongly without treating fellow citizens as enemies.

For media organizations

    •    Separate outrage from evidence. Label speculation as speculation; prioritize primary documents in breaking-news cycles.

    •    Elevate cross-partisan facts. Build trust by demonstrating what is known, unknown, and contested.

For platforms and tech companies

    •    Enable meaningful user control over ranking and feed composition; increase transparency around recommender impacts.

    •    Harden against foreign manipulation (authenticity signals, provenance, network disruption), consistent with security warnings about foreign influence.  

For government (both parties)

    •    Treat civic stability as national security infrastructure.

    •    Reduce governance-by-crisis patterns (debt limit standoffs, shutdown brinkmanship) that impose costs and broadcast instability.  

    •    Invest in resilience against foreign malign influence with clear civil-liberties guardrails; prioritize transparency and public education on manipulation tactics.  

    •    Protect alliance credibility through durable, bipartisan signals on core defense commitments (especially collective defense).  

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Conclusion

America can survive disagreement. The danger is when disagreement becomes systematically weaponized into contempt, when governance becomes crisis-driven, and when foreign adversaries can reliably turn U.S. citizens against one another with cheap and scalable information tactics.

Domestic unity does not mean uniformity. It means maintaining enough shared reality, legitimacy, and institutional trust to act coherently in the world. That coherence is strategic power—and it is worth defending.

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Selected references

    •    ODNI. Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections (declassified).  

    •    ODNI. 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.  

    •    U.S. GAO. Foreign Disinformation: Defining and Detecting Threats (GAO-24-107600).  

    •    Piccardi et al. Science (2025). “Reranking partisan animosity…”  

    •    Myrick (2022). “The reputational consequences of polarization…”  

    •    Friedrichs (2022). “Polarization and US foreign policy…”  

    •    Brookings (2023). “Debt ceiling brinksmanship has clear negative effects…”  

    •    NATO. “Collective defence and Article 5” / North Atlantic Treaty text.  

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Download the PDF: [LINK TO PDF]

Read the full page below (same content, web formatted).