Connexion
Conversations in Copenhagen revealed what a life without financial terror would be like.
I was sitting in a coffee shop in Copenhagen, Denmark ruining my vacation. For about the hundredth time I found myself calculating how much the trip was costing, and whether, as a retiree, I had saved enough not to outlive my money. At the end of life, I was likely to face tens of thousands of nursing home expenses, with years of increasing medical expenses on the way down. Then there was inflation and the tottering Social Security and Medicare situations to worry about. My expensive coffee was getting cold.
I looked around the room full of Danes and realized something. No matter what else, not a single one of them could be worrying about anything close to what I was thinking about. Every Dane gets free universal health care, free public schools and universities, pensions, generous unemployment insurance, and more or less cost-free elder care. The mom looking at pastries enjoys heavily subsidized child care. The things that shadowed my life—such as paying for child care and then trying to figure out how to pay for my kids’ college without leaving them burdened with life-long student loans—were not a factor here. Was I going to doom myself to tax hell by withdrawing from the Roth IRA and traditional IRA in the wrong order? Do I have to pay someone to advise me on how to access my own money saved over a lifetime, decades in which I denied myself and my family so there would be something left over at the end? I was not a happy guy.
I approached the mom for someone to talk to. She was curious to meet a tourist, and like most people I met, friendly and open. The presumptions that govern a stranger approaching you in a big American city did not apply. I asked her if she was happy, and she replied that indeed she, and most Danes, were. I looked it up later; four of the five happiest nations on earth are Nordic countries, with Denmark at number two. (The U.S. is down at 24th, with Afghanistan understandably ranking globally as the unhappiest place.)
I wanted to know why Danes might be so happy. I turned the topic to one of my biggest worries, healthcare, attracting the attention of an older man nearby. (Of course everyone spoke English: Denmark consistently ranks among the world’s best non-native English-speaking countries, the product of an excellent public school system that starts foreign-language training in first grade). I practically had them in tears laughing as I tried to explain how healthcare works in America, with its HMOs, PPOs, Obamacare, Medicare, copays, deductibles, in- and out-of-network, and more. I told them that, after paying Medicare taxes all my working life, I still had to pay several hundred dollars more each month in retirement (plus a new form of income tax called IRMAA) for a health insurance system that covers most Americans so incompletely that those who can afford it have to buy private supplemental insurance, as well as paying copays for most doctor visits. And this is after you figure out the Medicare system itself, a complex mess that requires you to choose among Parts A–D. And if you don’t sign up for Medicare “on time,” you will have a penalty attached to your premiums for the rest of your life.
Then I tried to explain retirement. It starts with choosing when to start collecting your Social Security in America; if you take it at age 62 you get less money each month for more months, versus age 70 when you get more money but for fewer months, because you die. The cut-off age to balance the choices is somewhere around 80-something, so you have to make an irrevocable decision estimating your own death. There was a similar ghoulish calculation for my meager pension: I agreed to take less money each month betting I’ll die before my wife, leaving some for her as a widow.
In Denmark every person gets healthcare. They usually pay nothing. Some do buy supplemental insurance for faster access to specialists, but it is generally through a nonprofit organization. Old-age pensions are supported by a combination of taxes and mandatory occupational pension contributions. Together the entire multilevel retirement system typically replaces over 70 percent of former wages. In the U.S., the average worker sees roughly 40 percent replaced by Social Security, higher lifetime earners much lower. There are low rates of elderly poverty in Denmark. Significant retirement income comes from pre-funded, government-held occupational pension funds that you pay directly into while working, alleviating the burden on future taxpayers. This is wholly unlike the American system, which may soon run out of money or reduce benefits to stay solvent.
We pivoted to the big question of taxes. I’d read that if the U.S. tax code were made into an audiobook, it would take roughly 19 days of continuous listening to finish. The entire code and associated regulations is over 4 million words long. Americans spend hours doing their taxes themselves, usually with the aid of expensive software, or spend hundreds of dollars or more paying CPAs and tax professionals to do the task for them. For Danes, the tax agency prepares an annual tax assessment using the information it has already received from banks, mortgage companies, investment firms, and the like. Taxpayers log into the government’s online system and review the return, approving it electronically or, in rare cases, making changes. For most, the process takes only a few minutes and is stress-free. People, my tablemates told me, tend to trust their government, perhaps the most shocking thing I learned this day. Americans often don’t appreciate that trust itself can be an economic asset.
Like most Americans, I assumed the taxes must be crushing. I had to look up later how much Danes pay in taxes and try to compare it to the U.S. It is a complex question. But to try and bring some clarity to all this, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calculations set the average tax wedge Americans pay at about 30 percent. For Denmark, the same OECD study shows a single worker earning an average wage faces a tax wedge of 36 percent. But in return, Danes receive all the benefits mentioned above and more. By contrast, Americans pay for all of those things after taxes—in addition to the anxiety of not knowing if things will work out. Most Danes also get five or more weeks of paid vacation per year. I think the Danes are getting a better deal, and that helps make them happy.
I was left angry about our system, our way of life actually, which places so much emphasis in the private sphere on making the right choices or personally suffering the consequences, and in the public sphere on paying much for the comparatively little that we get. It is easy to see why Americans carry such a high psychological burden, especially financial stress, right until our deaths relieve us. Most every financial decision seems to come with the possibility of ruining my future. That simply does not exist in the same way in places like Denmark, or the other Scandinavian countries, or to a lesser degree even in Canada or Japan. As our informal coffee club broke up, I wondered, why can’t we Americans live this way?
Walking back through rainy Copenhagen, I realized something. I hadn’t spent the afternoon envying Denmark’s architecture or museums or bicycle culture, all quite lovely. I envied something much simpler: the absence of constant financial fear. And one more thing: As I insisted on paying for my own coffee, I learned that tipping isn’t expected in Denmark. What a way to live.
The post America Can Learn from Denmark on Good Government appeared first on The American Conservative.
The administration promised clear priorities but delivered global interventionism.
In his preface to the 2026 National Defense Strategy, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth promised a decisive break from the past: an American approach to the world that set clear priorities. “We recognize that it is neither America’s duty nor in our nation’s interest to act everywhere on our own,” he wrote. “Instead, the Department will prioritize the most important, consequential, and dangerous threats to Americans’ interests.”
The Trump administration has failed to deliver on this promise. In fact, it has delivered the opposite, expanding the U.S. military footprint in Latin America, starting a disastrous war in the Middle East, and remaining deeply involved in the ongoing war in Ukraine, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Now, the bill has come due, as reports surface that four top military commanders have raised concerns about whether they can resource their own expansive missions with military operations in Iran ongoing.
If accurate, this assessment suggests a deep readiness crisis that could present a much more urgent threat to American interests than anything happening in the Middle East. Talk of “conserving resources” to prepare for war with China or Russia misses the point: On its current course, the Trump administration risks leaving the homeland exposed for years to come. This reality leaves Washington with no choice. It must recommit to its prioritization promise, shedding military commitments until means match ends, even as this requires some retreat from the world stage.
That the U.S. military faces widespread exhaustion should surprise no one. The proximate and most obvious cause is the unnecessary war with Iran, which just passed its six-month mark. That war has kept at least 50,000 U.S. service members deployed overseas, many beyond the end of their scheduled tours, along with dozens of naval vessels and aircraft. Losses experienced during Operation Epic Fury and its aftermath have included 25 percent of the U.S. fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones, numerous aircraft, and significant portions of the air defense network based in the Middle East. Though the intense kinetic phase of this operation seems to have subsided, President Donald Trump has shifted to an economic pressure campaign that relies in part on an open-ended blockade, a manpower- and resource-intensive approach that will grind down the force.
Notably, the 2026 war in Iran is only the latest of several U.S. military operations in the region since Trump took office last January. First, there was the campaign against the Houthi rebels which burned through years’ worth of munitions. Then there was Operation Midnight Hammer and U.S. support for Israel in the 12-Day War. Previous administrations are not blameless, having doubled down on involvement in the region at many points, but it is undeniable that Trump has expanded U.S. military entanglement in the Middle East, despite the lack of clear threat to the United States coming from Iran or its proxies.
It would be a mistake, however, to blame U.S. overextension only on the war in Iran, as some have tried to do. Indeed, the most surprising change in U.S. posture over the past 18 months has not been in the Gulf region, but in Latin America, where the United States is building new permanent infrastructure and now keeps naval and air assets deployed on a nearly constant basis, adding a fourth major theater (in addition to the Middle East, Europe, and Asia) to an already long list of ongoing military commitments.
Resources allocated to Latin America have decreased somewhat since the U.S. operation to seize Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, but several thousand personnel and half a dozen maritime assets remain deployed in the region. Many of these personnel and assets are involved in the ongoing U.S. campaign of air and drone strikes against alleged drug smugglers, and counter-drug operations conducted with partners. And, of course, there are 8,000 or so military personnel deployed in areas along the U.S. southern border, supporting immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration is right to invest more in the security of America’s near abroad. But there are two problems with the way the Trump administration has gone about this. First, it has relied primarily on already stretched military power for a range of tasks, including border security, that should be conducted by law enforcement personnel. Second, the Pentagon has not dropped any other missions to create space for these new commitments. Involvement in the Middle East has increased and operations in Europe and Asia remain largely unchanged.
In Europe, for example, U.S. military presence remains essentially the same as when Trump arrived in office in January 2025. European allies are spending more, to be sure, but the United States has given up precious few obligations. It turned over several command positions and cut commitments to the NATO force model—what it would provide to support a contingency in Europe—but at the same time, personnel in Europe assumed additional responsibilities associated with the Iran war. And their intelligence and logistical assistance to Ukraine actually increased, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Ironically, it is in Asia, the theater long described as being the most important region for the defense of U.S. interests, that the Trump administration has pulled back most, though even here changes remain mostly on the margins. Some assets, including warships and air defense systems, that were typically deployed in the Pacific have been moved to the Middle East, and the Pentagon has canceled some military exercises. But while some have bemoaned the “pivot from Asia,” the United States remains very active in the region, conducting its usual series of military exercises and live-fire drills and expanding integration and cooperation with partners like Taiwan and Japan.
The signal coming from military commanders now, however, seems to be that the military has reached a breaking point and cannot keep going at its current pace. This admission, coming from a group of men trained for decades in a “can-do” military culture, should be a wake-up call for the White House.
For months, the national security commentariat has worked itself into a frenzy over U.S. munitions shortages. In response, the Pentagon has denied any serious problem and argued that the massive $1.5 trillion dollar defense budget will address any limitations that do exist, leaving the U.S. military stronger than ever.
Warnings from combatant commanders, service chiefs, and even outgoing Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, who reportedly resigned in part over force readiness concerns, suggest a much more serious situation. The shortfall in military resources is not just a munitions problem, but rather a systemic erosion and degradation of U.S. military strength and preparedness that pervades the force across domains and includes both personnel and assets.
To be clear, the Trump administration is not solely responsible for the military’s weakened position. Consecutive presidents stretching back decades have expanded the military’s responsibilities while rarely removing tasks from its to-do list. But Trump’s decision to dramatically increase military operations globally after acknowledging the need for rebalancing deserves criticism.
The predicament facing the military today is worrisome because it cannot be fixed by simply throwing more money at the industrial base or by deploying fancy new systems like the Golden Dome. Repairing equipment, resting personnel, and resetting training and deployment schedules can take years, not weeks or months. Instead, a strategic adjustment and downsizing of missions and objectives is required. Notably, just ending the war in Iran will not be enough. With a substantial portion of the Navy now undeployable and many Army units facing an unsustainable deployment tempo, the Pentagon will have to scale back operations elsewhere as well.
Here, U.S. officials have some choices. They could reduce the U.S. military presence at the southern border, bring home Marines based in Latin America, or cut rotational Army deployments and Navy assets in Europe. They could also downsize the military footprint in Asia, perhaps by withdrawing some Army personnel from South Korea or returning some naval and air assets to U.S. bases.
It will be tempting for policymakers to frame retrenchment in some areas as creating room for expanded operations in others, for example, by suggesting that giving up some responsibilities in the Middle East or Europe ensures the U.S. military will be prepared for future war with China. But such statements suggest deep denial of the state of American military power today. It should be obvious to observers inside and outside of the United States (even without leaks to the media) that the Pentagon is not prepared for a peer or near-peer conflict. The U.S. military could probably still do damage to a major adversary, but its staying power would be limited, its chances of strategic success low, and its margin for error very narrow.
American military and political leaders will need to stop talking about the “what-ifs” of a conflict with Russia or China and instead start focusing on a much narrower set of objectives, specifically those absolutely required to protect the vital physical and economic security interests of the United States.
Accomplishing this will require hard decisions. It will mean distinguishing between the interests of allies and those of America (which are not the same) and giving up what remains of efforts to protect U.S. hegemony. It will also require adopting a truly defensive posture that emphasizes avoidance of escalation over deterrence and accommodates the core security interests of competitors where necessary to prevent unaffordable wars.
These compromises will be uncomfortable for those who still lust after global dominance, but they are inevitable. The United States had a one-war military, chose to fight a war with Iran, and will now face the consequences.
The post Trump’s Wars Have Created a Disturbing Military Readiness Crisis appeared first on The American Conservative.
Antifa and drug trafficking are hardly existential threats to the American way of life.
The American Empire is the safest country in history. Among other things, we sport more than the 5,000 nuclear warheads shielded from outside inspection; a multitrillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex; nonstop surveillance of the entire population; special forces in 70–80 countries; NATO and defense pacts with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines; a de facto alliance with Israel; and pioneering AI to optimize the lethality of weapons. Nobody goes to bed in the United States fearing an invasion or military attack.
Yet we are poised to hike Pentagon spending to $1.5 trillion annually, excluding the VA budget, which approaches $500 billion. The $2 trillion dwarfs annual defense spending by the American Empire’s only plausible global rival, China. Further, the latter possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads to our more than 5,000. Aircraft carriers show a similar overwhelming imbalance in our favor. The American Empire maintains a fleet of 11 large, nuclear-powered supercarriers. China ranks second globally with three operational carriers dependent on conventional propulsion and focused on regional dominance in the Indo-Pacific.
Since the American Empire confronts zero existential threats, we summon them into being to justify a national security state that crushes liberty and the march of the mind while exalting force of arms. Thus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has decreed that “antifa”—i.e., antifascism—is a global, terrorist threat. The Secretary invited over 70 delegations to meet in Washington, D.C. this week to slay the putative antifa dragon.
We’ve seen this rodeo before. In 2003, the United States employed foreign aid, military assistance, trade pacts, and debt forgiveness to entice or coerce scores of other nations to join the “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq. The foreign delegations attending the antifa event were similarly bribed by the United States to create a politically attractive optic for President Donald Trump and Secretary Rubio.
Antifa has no bank account. It owns no property. It has no chain of command. It has no designated leader. It has no members. At most, antifa is an ideology opposed to fascism—the same fascism the United States opposed in Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.
On September 25, 2025, President Donald Trump designated antifa a domestic terrorist organization through an executive order devoid of legal standing. Among other things, the order declared antifa “explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government…us[ing] illegal means…,” a clear violation of the Smith Act. Yet Trump has been unable to muster a single Smith Act prosecution of Antifa on his watch. None! But he had time to prosecute Sean Dunn, a protestor in the District of Columbia, for throwing an onion sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent. (Dunn was acquitted).
International drug cartels (which would be defunct without willing American customers) have also leapfrogged to the top of the American Empire’s national security agenda. The cartels are an old phenomenon. The “French Connection” was a massive global heroin smuggling network operating from the 1930s to the early 1970s. It moved morphine base from Turkey through France—primarily Marseille—to be processed into high-purity heroin, before smuggling it into the United States and Canada via Corsican and Italian-American mafia syndicates. Moviegoers will remember the 1971 Academy Award-winning film The French Connection starring Gene Hackman.
Panama’s Manuel Noriega and Colombia’s Pablo Escobar followed. Mexican drug cartels have flourished since 1980, nearly 50 years.
Drug trafficking persists because of unflagging demand and money from American consumers. Drug traffickers are not engaged in wars of conquest. They are out for money and all that it can purchase. Buyers are at least in pari delicto, yet none are accused of waging war or providing material assistance to warriors.
Trump, however, has designated multiple drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations allegedly invading the United States. Trump has murdered more than 200 drug trafficking suspects, without evidence, using military force—the Godfather on steroids.
Drug trafficking, like prostitution, is deplorable. But neither is a national security threat. And the cost-free, risk-free cure is in plain view: Consumer boycotts of their goods or services.
The post America’s Manufactured Menaces appeared first on The American Conservative.
President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella says he will crush the narcos and the bureaucracy.
Clad in the Colombian soccer uniform and accompanied by the rattle of drums and the flash of stadium pyrotechnics, President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella approached the podium in Barranquilla last week Sunday and roared, “Colombia, your tiger is here!”
De la Espriella, a right-wing populist lawyer who calls himself “the tiger,” clinched a narrow victory in the second round of the country’s presidential election over left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda. De la Espriella is a return to the right for Colombia, which has struggled with crime and disorder under current President Gustavo Petro’s strategy of “paz total” (“total peace”), which largely consists of negotiating with cartels and narcoterrorists and hoping—so far futilely—that they will voluntarily lay down their arms.
The president-elect is a new kind of leader in Colombia, a fiery, flashy populist who savaged the traditional Colombian right, led by the massively popular former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, arguing that the country needs a political outsider willing to go to greater lengths than the comparatively staid center-right. An adherent to the growing libertarian tendency on the Latin American right, De la Espriella has advocated for reducing the size of the Colombian state by as much as 40 percent, much of which he argues can be done by simply wiping out the corruption and patronage of the Colombian political class.
If this sounds familiar, it’s no accident—De la Espriella is an admirer of Javier Milei, the libertarian president of Argentina. Milei’s monumental accomplishments in pulling Argentina out of an inflationary spiral and balancing the national budget have made him an aspirational figure across the region, and de la Espriella has been quick both to praise Milei’s politics and appropriate his campaign strategy for his own use. Milei spoke incessantly of la casta, the Argentine political caste that fattened itself on the nation’s struggles; de la Espriella’s campaign speeches and literature are littered with references to the dichotomy between los de siempre, “the usual suspects” (literally “the ones who it always is,” i.e. Colombian politicos) and los nunca, the people who have never made their living off the public purse.
Unlike Milei, however, de la Espriella must contend with the perpetual battle between the Colombian government and the various cartels and other criminal organizations that fester in the jungles and wildernesses of the Colombian countryside. The center of his security strategy is a total repudiation of Petro’s diplomatic outreach to the various rebel and criminal groups that now control vast swathes of rural Colombia: de la Espriella insists his government will brook no negotiations with criminals. “Petros’ Paz total is not a failed peace, it is treason against the motherland,” his platform asserts.
Instead, he plans to rebuild the Colombian Army and retake control of the country militarily. This is a tall order. Organized crime in Colombia has expanded rapidly since Petro assumed office in 2022: The number of organized criminals under arms expanded from 15,000 in 2022 to over 27,000 by the beginning of 2026. That expansion has fueled violent turf wars, as various cartels clash and compete for control over coca-producing territories and other opportunities to ply their illicit trades. During the first 3 months of 2026 alone, cartels committed 35 massacres that killed 133 people, making it one of the most violent quarters in a decade.
One potentially major asset de la Espriella has is strong support from the United States, which has long assisted the Colombian government with antinarcotics enforcement in the region. Colombia has traditionally been one of the United States’ most important allies in Latin America. Its location and geography make it irresistible for cartels looking to produce and transport cocaine and other drugs to the U.S., which means that preserving its strong and competent military and relatively stable political system is vital for American interests in the region. But U.S.–Colombian relations have cooled under Petro, who is less interested in eradicating coca and has a deep personal enmity towards President Donald Trump.
De la Espriella made clear his intention to reposition Colombia firmly within the American sphere of influence. That decision was recognized and rewarded in Washington: In the days leading up to the second round of the election, Trump presented de la Espriella with his gold-leaf seal of approval.
“The results of this Election are very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” he announced on his Truth Social account. “Because of his tremendous accomplishments in life, and his political support for me, personally, it is my Honor to give Abelardo my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
Given the second Trump administration’s heightened focus on the Western Hemisphere and regional security, it’s not unreasonable for de la Espriella to hope for a return to the days of Plan Colombia, which would make fulfilling his pledge to both massively reduce government spending and taxation and rebuild the Colombian military somewhat more feasible.
But money from Washington will not be enough to fix the country’s growing problems, which have long resisted easy solutions. Solving them will require institutional acumen and technical expertise, resources which de la Espriella’s coalition so far does not appear to possess in great abundance. Unlike Javier Milei, de la Espriella is no obsessive technocrat. The president-elect’s technical lead is his running mate, José Manuel Restrepo, an economist who served as the minister of finance under Iván Duque. But Restrepo, who was chosen to add some intellectual heft to the ticket, is a subdued and conservative personality in comparison with de la Espriella, and may struggle to exercise significant influence in government.
Managing the already fragmented Colombian legislature also presents the president-elect with a serious problem. De la Espriella’s party, Salvación Nacional, has just a single deputy in the lower house and four senators in the upper house. He will be entirely reliant on the cooperation of the various right-leaning parties in Colombia’s Congress—most of whom are uribista in orientation—for any legislative achievements, a precarious position. He has pulled in Rodrigo Lara, a veteran senator who was president of the party Cambio Radical, to serve as his interior minister and handle congressional affairs, but even if he manages to maintain good relations with Congress it will be supremely difficult for de la Espriella to push through the massive reductions to the Colombian state his platform proposes.
Colombia is in desperate need of a change of pace. Gustavo Petro has allowed the nation’s security to atrophy by pandering to criminals and terrorists. But de la Espriella, for all his fierce rhetoric, may have a hard time managing that transition. If support from Washington doesn’t appear in sufficient time or with sufficient effect, if he is unable to bend the traditional right to his will in the legislative branch, or if his crackdown on the cartels turns into a shooting war too hot to handle, he may join Daniel Noboa in the ranks of Miami businessmen-turned failed fire-breathing Latin American populists.
The post The Right Returns to Colombia appeared first on The American Conservative.
The former National Security Advisor John Bolton pled guilty Friday to one count of mishandling classified information, information which he used as part of a 2020 book that criticized President Donald Trump. Per a plea deal arranged with federal prosecutors, Bolton will pay a $2.25 million fine and could face up to five years in prison.
Bolton’s indictment followed an investigation beginning under the first Trump administration and continued under the Biden administration. He attempted to frame the Trump administration’s indictment as an attempt to “intimidate his opponents.”
The October 2025 indictment charged him on 18 counts for sharing over 1,000 pages of notes he took related to classified national defense information with relatives, information he would use as a part of his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened.
Bolton pled “not guilty” in October following the indictment, but reports earlier this month revealed a rearraignment that suggested he would be altering his plea.
Bolton is slated to be sentenced on October 28.
The post John Bolton Pleads Guilty in Classified Information Case appeared first on The American Conservative.
Birth tourism offers a foothold to long-term American rivals.
The Supreme Court will soon decide Trump v. Barbara, in which the president seeks by executive order to overturn the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. The amendment as currently interpreted says almost any child born on U.S. soil is automatically and forever an American citizen. The court will most likely reflect long precedent to allow birthright citizenship as it exists today to stand unaltered. But its decision will have profound secondary effects, not the least of which is determining the future of birthright citizenship tourism and its possible effect on national security.
The question of whether most children born in the U.S. are citizens connects back to the deadly omissions of the Founding Fathers when they failed to address slavery in creating the country. The founding documents did not even recognize blacks as full humans, never mind considering granting those born here citizenship. In the lead-up to the Civil War, when the right to vote became crucial as new states entered the Union slave or free, the 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford held that those descended from African slaves could not be citizens of the United States. Some legal scholars drew implications from Scott to mean all children born in the United States to foreign parents were not automatically U.S. citizens.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1868, in the aftermath of the Civil War, as part of reconciling the status of millions of then-freed slaves. The Amendment’s citizenship clause specifically overruled Scott v. Sandford, stating, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Controversy erupted even as the amendment was being drafted. Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania argued states should not be forced to grant citizenship to the children of “Asiatic” immigrants or “Gypsies” who, he said, did not share American values or owe true allegiance to the country. Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan stated the Amendment was written to exclude the children of “foreigners” and “aliens.” Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois went on to successfully clarify that “subject to the jurisdiction” meant completely under the legal authority of U.S. courts.
Because immigrants were required to obey American laws, could be tried in American courts, and paid American taxes, their children born on American soil were included. The only noteworthy groups deliberately excluded were children of foreign diplomats, who were not subject to U.S. law via their diplomatic immunity, and initially Native Americans living on sovereign tribal lands. They answered to tribal governments, not the U.S. government.
The 14th Amendment’s concept of citizenship was fully tested in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion confirmed birth on U.S. soil grants automatic citizenship, even if the parents are both foreigners or barred from ever becoming naturalized citizens themselves. Most mainstream constitutional scholars believe the legislative history as a whole, combined with Wong, supports citizenship for the children of aliens.
Birthright citizenship does leave a problem for America to deal with: Will a foreign power, say China, use the idea to groom an American citizen who also owes allegiance to China into a spy, perhaps taking advantage of his American citizenship and highly-desired Mandarin language skills, to infiltrate him from the earliest stages into the CIA, State Department, NSA or military? Even short of actual spying, secondary allegiances can complicate decision-making in sensitive positions.
The issue is loyalty, not leverage (i.e., relatives for the Ministry of Truth to pressure in the home country, investments abroad to help or harm), which can be screened for. Intelligence officers of all nationalities have long-known that, after money, ideology is the most powerful tool to convince someone to betray his government. Desire for importance, status, or appreciation from the “home” country closely follows. Things like blackmail do exist, just like in the movies, but are crude instruments that lead the target to resent the foreign government, not want to help it.
The presence of a vast birth tourism industry, sending an estimated 50,000 Chinese to the U.S. a year to give birth to American citizens according to some Chinese agencies, sets the stage and raises the level of concern. Most of those Chinese births are economically oriented, but the large number leaves room for bad actors. This all involves a lot of speculation, and it is well-known that foreign spies target Americans of all flavors, native-born or naturalized. But any mechanism that increases long-term Chinese access to the United States deserves scrutiny from a national security perspective.
Most debates over birthright citizenship focus on legal interpretation or immigration policy. The espionage question is one of national security. It asks whether a foreign government could exploit the doctrine for long-term intelligence purposes. While publicly known cases are impossible to locate, the job of intelligence professionals is to evaluate threats based not only on demonstrated harm but also on opportunity and intent.
Birth tourism creates a mechanism by which foreign governments could establish long-term human footholds inside the United States. Whether that possibility is significant enough to justify changing a constitutional understanding that has existed for more than a century remains a central question. One hopes the Supreme Court gives this its due consideration in adjudicating Trump v. Barbara.
The post The National Security Angle to the Birthright Citizenship Case appeared first on The American Conservative.
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