A Doctrine Out of Bounds

A curious new theme has crept into our foreign-policy apparatus. Officials now speak, in anxious tones, of Europe “losing its identity” and warn of demographic threats from the Global South. One hears the language of ethno-nationalism, not from fringe pamphlets, but from those charged with representing the United States abroad.

This is an odd turn for a nation that has long insisted that alliances are grounded in shared values, not shared skin tone. We have spent years deriding NATO as costly and obsolete, yet suddenly find ourselves fretting that Europe is no longer white enough to serve American interests. It is a distortion of strategy into cultural panic.

The deeper issue is constitutional. Foreign policy, especially when it touches questions of immigration, sovereignty, and national security, requires the oversight and participation of Congress. Instead, we are watching a small cadre of ideologues smuggle racist domestic anxieties into the architecture of international relations, while the president busies himself with commercial entanglements overseas.

Right-wing populism has every right to contest elections. It has no right to redefine the Western alliance in its own demographic image, absent legislative debate or democratic consent, which I hope would not come.

We should restore the basic premise that the United States leads not by policing the genealogy of its allies, but by upholding the principles that once made those alliances worth having.