“The American capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro as an alleged fugitive from U.S. justice – while an impressive military feat – has opened a vigorous, global debate about its legality. Is unilateral foreign intervention justified when a failing authoritarian state commits atrocities at home and exports drugs and migrants? Yet for millions of Venezuelans – joyful over a dictator’s exit – the question is less about international law than about their quest for the very basis of law: the freedom of sovereign individuals to choose their government and maintain a shared civic identity. ‘The time has come for popular sovereignty and national sovereignty to prevail in our country,’ Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado declared in a weekend social media post.” (01/04/25)
“The Declaration of Independence has a special place in American public discourse. Its stirring rhetoric and ringing message inspire even the most cynical and make it a suitable primer on American political ideals. That said, for many decades, there has been significant, even acrimonious disagreement concerning the Declaration’s nature and role in shaping our public life. Radicals like those behind the 1619 Project dismiss all such documents as mere cover for race-, sex-, or class-based oppression. Those more well-disposed to our constitutional order still debate its basic meaning and influence. Matthew Spalding’s new book, The Making of the American Mind, provides an excellent and admirably disciplined entrée into continuing interpretive issues and the possibility for common ground on such fundamental issues.” (01/05/26)
“As 2026 begins, what a strange planet we find ourselves on. The two great empires of my youth, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and my own country, are clearly experiencing some version of imperial decline, even if Vladimir Putin is acting otherwise in Ukraine (as is Donald Trump in his own strange fashion in the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela). No less curiously, the country visibly on the rise, China, is distinctly not acting like a typical imperial power of history (at least the history I’ve known). In a world where the United States still has 750 or so military bases around the world, China, as far as I can tell, has at most just one (in Djibouti, Africa).” (01/05/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Luke Nicastro
“When it comes to defense industrial policy, the Trump administration contains multitudes. On the one hand, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has embarked upon a crusade to remake the defense acquisition system (now rechristened the warfighting acquisition system) on more market-friendly lines. … But at the same time, the state’s role in defense production is massively expanding. … One way to interpret the administration’s Janus-faced posture is as simple incoherence, the result of different principals pursuing different policies with different aims. A deeper read, however, suggests an essential compatibility between these two tendencies. Consciously or not, the White House is executing an ambitious double movement, simultaneously blasting open an arena for market competition while anchoring strategically critical production against the vicissitudes of fortune.” (01/05/26)
“The ratifiers of the 14th Amendment could not have contemplated excluding the children of unlawful entrants, because the concept did not yet exist in 1868. There were no visas or standardized passports, or other official travel documents, and thus no defined legal categories of immigrants. The first general entry restriction — a blatantly racist law that applied only to Asians — was not enacted until 1882. There were, however, many temporary residents, the other group subject to Trump’s executive order. Naturally, some of them produced children. As Professor Amanda Frost and her student coauthor, Emily Eason, brilliantly determined, at least a dozen members of Congress in the years 1865 to 1871 may have been the American-born children of temporary residents, whose citizenship would therefore have been ‘suspect under President Trump’s interpretation’ of the 14th Amendment. And yet, there were no challenges to their qualifications to sit in Congress, for which citizenship is a constitutional requirement.” (01/05/26)
“Until policymakers accept that financial regulation shifts risk rather than eliminates it, we will keep cycling through crisis, overreaction, unintended consequences, and the next crisis.” (01/05/26)
“For three years, the Washington foreign policy establishment has insisted that there is only one acceptable outcome in Ukraine: total victory over Russia achieved through relentless military aid, indefinite financial support and escalation readiness regardless of the risks. But strategy and morality are not always the same thing — and real leadership demands confronting reality as it exists, not as we wish it to be. I write this not as an academic or pundit, but as someone who worked at the center of this conflict. As U.S. ambassador to the European Union during the first Trump administration, President Donald Trump tasked me with bringing Europe into alignment — truly into alignment — behind Ukraine. That meant ending the EU’s habitual double-game: proclaiming solidarity with Kyiv while enriching Moscow through energy purchases and dragging its feet on serious sanctions.” (01/05/25)
“The stunning U.S. raid on Venezuela that removed President and socialist thug Nicolás Maduro from power to face trial in the U.S. raises questions: What’s next for long-suffering but hopeful Venezuelans, what is the legal basis for snatching a country’s head of state without congressional authorization, and where do Americans stand on the Trump administration’s nation-building project? We’ll have to wait and see on the first point, and the answer to the second is that there is no legal basis for unilateral presidential missions to depose foreign leaders. But while the public will need some time to digest these events, we know Americans — especially young ones — are increasingly dubious about foreign adventures.” (01/05/26)
“Let’s be clear about the claims made. The president is asserting that the U.S. can detain a sitting foreign president and his spouse under U.S. criminal law, that the U.S. can administer another sovereign country without an international mandate. That Venezuela’s political future can be decided from Washington. That control over oil and ‘rebuilding’ is a legitimate byproduct of intervention. That all of this can happen without congressional authorization and without evidence of imminent threat. We have heard this language before.” (01/05/26)
