Britain’s Inertia Is a Warning to America

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, September 24, 2026

 

In recent years, I have been privy to the curious trend of Europeans who, having been assiduously fed all manner of nonsense about life in the United States, have come to understand that their presumptions were all wrong. In yesterday’s London Telegraph, Allister Heath describes this phenomenon rather well. Beneath the pull-no-punches headline, “I saw a breathtaking glimpse of what Britain could have become,” Heath offers a blunt challenge to the smug among his fellow countrymen:

 

If you want to comprehend the scale of Britain’s decline, our economic, geopolitical and technological humiliation, the magnitude of the self-sabotage inflicted upon our nation by our incompetent political class, head to one of America’s booming Republican-run Red States.

 

It will guarantee a shock to your system, and jolt you out of any residual complacency. It will simultaneously energise you and plunge you into depression. You will be blown away by the growth, the clatter of construction, the siege of cranes across the skyline, the massive cars, the energy, drive and ambition, the wealth, abundance and cheap energy, the entrepreneurial go-getting, the ostentatious celebration of success.

 

I was born in Britain, and I live in Florida (the state that Heath visited), so I have seen this from both sides. And I can tell you, unequivocally, that the author’s assessment is correct. The juxtaposition of the two places is increasingly stark, and yet, because distance serves as a shroud, this is obvious only to those of us who have visited both regularly over time. Most British people have not, and because of this, Heath concludes, it has become possible for them to lie “to [themselves] about the depth of the hole [they] have jumped into,” and to remain unaware that, irrespective of their healthy self-conception, they are actually “poor and increasingly backwards.”

 

I take no pleasure in confirming this. I am the only member of my family who emigrated to the United States, and while I am indeed an unreconstructed Americaphile, I bear no ill will toward my country of birth, nor toward my parents, my sister, or the rest of my kin that still lives there. It’s just that . . . well, Britain has got it wrong.

 

Heath contends that Britain never truly recovered from Covid, but I’d put the decline a little earlier: Britain, like the rest of Europe, never truly recovered from the 2008 financial crash. In that year, the economies of Europe and the economy of the United States were the same size. Now, the economy of the United States is about 150 percent the size of the economies of Europe. And why wouldn’t it be, given that the countries of Europe haven’t actually done anything useful. Britain is a welfare state. That’s what it exists to be. That is its purpose, its role, its ambition. Neither its bureaucrats nor its people care about growth, innovation, or success — except insofar as they can use those things to pay for more welfare. Its National Health Service — which is awful — is seen not as a system that exists to serve people but as a political end in its own right. (If the British government wants the public to do something, it insists that it is necessary to “save the NHS.”) Its unbelievably lavish social spending is, bizarrely, widely described as “austerity.” Its vaunted attacks on “inequality” have stagnated wages and made everyone poorer. Its refusal to use its energy reserves — or abandon its ridiculous “net zero” aims — has made the price of energy a permanent crisis. The whiny are lauded; the useless are celebrated; and the handful of aspirational figures who are left are regarded as too pushy, too aggressive, too American to be trusted. The result is that Britain has become drab, lazy, inert, and, worst of all, fatally complacent.

 

As an American, do you feel good reading Heath’s description of the United States? I do. I also feel alarmed. There’s nothing written in the stars that guarantees that our country must be this way. On the contrary: America’s position in the world is the product of choices it has made. America, The Telegraph notes, values “success.” If it ceases to, it will get less of it. Relative to Britain, America has low taxes and no VAT. If that changes, so will the dynamism of its economy. America has no single-payer health-care system to permanently corrupt its politics and devour the energy and treasure of the middle class. If it introduces one, it will decline inexorably. America has a constitutional order that features a strong separation of powers, encourages gridlock, and entrenches protections of individual rights. If it deconstructs that system, it will collapse into dysfunction, infighting, and mediocrity. Like Britain, America faces the demographic trend of an aging population relying on a relatively smaller share of workers for the payment of government benefits; but unlike Britain, it has not yet enshrined the “triple lock” guarantee that ineluctably increases pension payouts and makes other reform impossible. If it does, it will fatally harm the group that is pulling the wagon.

 

Allister Heath is depressed by contemplating what Britain “could have become.” He is right to be. Americans should thank him for the compliment and then turn to worrying about what America could become, too — if, but only if, it follows the same path.

Russia Is Going to Do Something Really Stupid and Dangerous

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, September 24, 2026

 

Why would the Trump administration invite Vladimir Putin back onto American soil? “We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president, but with other world leaders,” Marco Rubio said of the White House’s offer to host Putin in Miami for this year’s G-20 summit. For its part, the Kremlin remains noncommittal.

 

The offer comes as the administration, at least when it comes to the war in Europe, is once again giving appeasement a try. The president is dispatching his all-purpose negotiating duo, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to Moscow to cajole Putin while its principals, including Trump himself, scold the Ukrainians for so effectively imposing pain and pressure on their invaders’ homeland. If only Ukraine would give up the highly defensible Donbas, Kushner muses publicly. Then we’d have peace in our time.

 

The last time the president welcomed the Russian despot to America, it went about as well as almost all bilateral summitry with Moscow’s representatives typically goes. Which is to say, poorly. Putin presented his unacceptable terms to the president — surely, his final territorial demands in Europe. But Europeans with some historical education, along with Trump’s more sensible advisers, persuaded the president to walk. And to Trump’s credit, he did. But “the spirit of Anchorage” has been invoked by the Russians ever since, mostly to hector America and the West for failing to live down to the Kremlin’s expectations.

 

More curiously, the invitation comes against the backdrop of Russian “grey zone” attacks on NATO members. Indications suggest that Moscow plans to do something even stupider and more reckless in the near future.

 

An alarming report published this week in the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo revealed that, according to what the CIA conveyed to Lithuanian intelligence, Moscow is preparing an ambitious attack on Western Europe. The U.S. has reportedly observed unusual container ship traffic emanating from Russia, and some suspect those containers could be loaded with small explosive suicide drones that would be deployed against targets in Spain, France, or Italy. Russia’s goal would be to destabilize these countries ahead of their respective elections next year, potentially activating indigenous “radical forces” in these countries that would pressure their government to abandon Kyiv.

 

This threat was reportedly relayed to Europe around the time CIA director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow, and the Continent is taking it seriously. “The nature of Russian aggression and threats in Europe is changing,” French President Emmanuel Macron said last week after he convened an emergency meeting of his Defense Council. “No one is safe.” The E.U.’s chief military adviser, General Seán Clancy, warned that Moscow’s “activity is now becoming almost ever-present” in Europe. “There is a low but growing risk that Russia will launch a limited military attack against one or several NATO countries bordering Russia,” the head of Danish intelligence, Thomas Ahrenkiel, said this week. Indeed, even though the threat from Russia probably doesn’t rise to the level of a ground operation inside NATO territory, the prospect cannot be ruled out.

 

That’s the sequence of events that you talk yourself into when little is going your way, and you need to radically revise the status quo, even at the risk of inviting unpredictable consequences. Russia is heedless of the potential for miscalculation — for one of its attacks to require a response from the NATO alliance, hazarding a cascading cycle of violence. Indeed, the Kremlin’s appetite for risk is only growing.

 

Russian forces are executing strikes on passenger trains near the Polish border with the aim of intimidating the high-ranking Western officials who transit into Ukraine via Poland. Acts of sabotage in Europe believed to be directed by Russia have become a near-daily occurrence. Russian assets have penetrated deep into European airspace, likely to test the Atlantic Alliance’s response to a coordinated incursion. The German government believes the Kremlin was behind an attempted explosive drone attack on the Leipzig/Halle Airport last month — an operation nearly as brazen as the 2024 plot in which Russian operatives allegedly attempted to plant explosive devices on U.S.-bound cargo planes designed to explode over the Atlantic Ocean. This month, the Justice Department implicated Russians with connections to Moscow’s domestic and military security services in a scheme to recruit Americans to conduct acts of sabotage and even assassinations on the Kremlin’s behalf.

 

In response to all this, the White House is extending a hand of friendship in Putin’s direction. Clearly, the Trump administration is as bereft of innovative solutions to the crisis in Europe as Putin seems to be. But Moscow is likely to interpret the administration’s overture as a signal that its pressure campaign is working. That will only embolden the Kremlin, which should be the opposite of the West’s intentions.

 

Perhaps the administration wants to talk while the time for talking isn’t yet behind us. It seems, however, that they’re mostly talking to themselves. Vladimir Putin isn’t listening.

Ireland Is in the Grip of “Paddystinian” Tyranny

By John McGuirk & Sarah Ryan

Saturday, September 19, 2026

 

On this week’s podcast – and thanks to all of you pushing it towards being one of our biggest yet – Sarah and I discussed something that we both feel and have felt for a while: That talking about Ireland, Israel, and Palestine in this country is just not worth it.

 

This is now, after all, a country where the President’s own sister can be quoted on CNN saying that the White House should be “flattened” - an explicit call for violence - and not one Irish politician or media outlet can even dare comment on the propriety of it, for fear of the backlash they would get.

 

There is no room for reasoned discussion. It does not exist. Express dissent from the RTE/Irish Times/Siptu/Simon Harris view of the world, and you will not, I promise, get a reasoned argument as to why the Palestinian leadership repeatedly failed to turn the extraordinary concessions on offer during the Clinton peace process into a lasting settlement; or a convincing explanation of why Israel would be safer if it just tore down the border and let the Palestinians wander around Israel proper, at will.

 

What you will get is roared at. If it’s online, you’ll get a hundred tweets from the same, endless anonymous accounts, calling you a Zionist or a bootlicker or, in some of the more honest cases, a Jew-lover. If it’s in person, you’ll get the horrified how-could-you-think-that, replete with the performative gasp, that is not actually a question at all, but an indictment. (They rarely want, it turns out, to hear how, or why, you could think that).

 

Paddystinianism (worth remembering, that was a term invented by “Paddystinians” themselves, not a term of abuse) is not a set of political beliefs. It is an identity. It cannot be reasoned with. It does not want to discuss, or debate, or persuade. What it wants to do, like all identities, is to express itself, endlessly, and at any cost.

 

It has become intertwined with something that has always been a feature of Irish identity since independence – a desire to express moral superiority over the rest of the world, but particularly over the British, Americans, and Europeans. And it shares much with the former expression of that instinct; the 1950s and 60s uber-Catholicism of John Charles McQuaid’s Ireland, which loved to ban books and films, denounce pornography and communism, and make sure that RTE never showed anything of which it disapproved.

 

Ironically enough, the last time there were widespread calls for the Irish national team not to play a game, it was in 1955, when McQuaid demanded that the FAI withdraw from a match against Yugoslavia over its communism and hostility to the Church.

 

That match, like the Israel games, went ahead anyway – because the FAI, to its considerable credit, refused to submit to the pressure.

 

McQuaid urged Catholics to boycott the game. Radio Éireann did not broadcast it. The Army band stayed away. The state withheld official representation. Players were pressured not to take part. FAI secretary Joe Wickham was reportedly denounced from the pulpit in his own parish as “a Judas who had sold Christ the King for a mere game of football.” (Lots of things change in Ireland, but some little undertones always remain.)

 

And 22,000 supporters attended the game anyway, in Dalymount Park, defying McQuaid.

 

In today’s Ireland, by contrast, the FAI cannot stage its nominal home game against Israel in Dublin. Whatever euphemisms are employed about “operational challenges”, the authorities clearly do not believe this fixture can safely and normally be staged in the capital.

 

Another thing has happened: The Irish media have given up any pretence, whatever, of objectivity or fairness or impartiality. Here’s the Journal’s sports department, this morning, plaintively begging their readers not to punish them for covering a sports match:

 

 

 

 

 

RTE, for its part, cannot cover the matches fully because of an impending staff revolt. An Irish Independent report this morning quoted an RTE Union representative saying that “There is no middle ground on this. Silence is treachery”.

 

Consider that statement: “Silence is treachery”. That is the view of a great many of the Paddystinian cult – not that you are permitted to go about your business, keeping your views to yourself, but that you are treasonous if you do not affirm their views loudly, and publicly.

 

Nor are these empty threats. They will, in fact, go after you, regardless of how big you are. Witness what happened to Ed Sheeran this week, when a national newspaper published an article by one of its own senior editors saying that he should never be welcomed in Ireland again. In that context, read this tweet by luvvie and actor and general pain in the arse Liam Cunningham:

 

 

This has moved well beyond the stage of these people simply being loud, annoying, and rather pointless. We’re now at the stage where they are openly attempting to rule the country by fear of consequence, should you differ from them.

 

The great irony of all of this is that none of it – not one iota of it – does a single solitary thing to help the Palestinian cause.

 

Hamas played its cards on October 7th, and the result was a crushing and soul-destroying military defeat, and what appears to be the permanent loss of yet more land, as customarily happens in war (look at a map of Germany in 1913, and the same map today, if you don’t believe me).

 

It is all the culmination, in many ways, of decades of Palestinian political failure. Their leaders have repeatedly chosen maximalism over settlements that might have produced a Palestinian state, and the consequences have repeatedly been borne by ordinary Palestinians.

 

Nothing that Ireland does or can do will change that.

 

What is happening, however, is that Irish people are now being subjected to a campaign of coercion, repression, and tolerated abuse by supporters of that cause, which goes entirely unchallenged in the public domain.

 

And across the country, in offices, schools, workplaces, and in the public domain, a lot of Irish people have internalised the lesson: You do not challenge the Paddystinians. The price is too high. The cost is too great. It’s not worth it.

 

When you hear people “speaking out” on this, you may well be hearing sincere conviction. But increasingly, you’re just hearing people who don’t want to be the next Ed Sheeran, as Liam Cunningham charmingly put it.

 

Say the line. Put your head down. Hope they leave you alone.

 

Of course, they won’t.

 

Why would they?

 

It’s working.

 

 

Canada’s EU Romance Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Last week, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, surprised the world by announcing an offer to make Canada the first “associate member” of the European Union. What makes an “associate member” is not legally defined in any of the EU’s treaties, but there is no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appears determined to embrace the EU as he seeks to reduce his country’s dependence on the North American market. After Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state, Carney’s approach may seem reasonable — and, judging from the PM’s approval ratings, Canadians are, so far, on board.

 

Yet running to Brussels would be as big a mistake for Canada as it was for Britain.

 

Whatever Canada’s new relationship with the EU ends up looking like, it will be a much cozier relationship than before. Whereas Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never missed an opportunity to emphasize Canada as an indigenous land and apologize for the sins of the settlers, Carney seems to have rediscovered his country’s European heritage, going as far as to label it “the most European of non-European countries.”

 

On Canada Day, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the country would compete in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, by far the biggest music competition in the world, with around 160 million viewers. Joining the ESC is not cheap; indeed, several countries decline to participate every year citing the cost. Fortunately, Carney had increased the public broadcaster’s budget for this very purpose.

 

In May, Carney became the first non-European leader ever to attend the semiannual European Political Community summit, an intergovernmental summit attended by leaders of 48 European countries. Last year, he signed a Strategic Partnership of the Future with the EU, covering areas including trade and climate transition, as well as a security and defense partnership. An “associate membership” in the EU — whatever that term ends up meaning — could be seen as a logical next step, fitting with Carney’s ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next ten years.

 

Carney increasingly looks like an insecure high schooler trying to hang with the cool kids. But, much like in high school, the cool kids are not really all that cool.

 

First, Europe struggles with economic growth. Since the global financial crisis, the wealth gap between America and the EU — and especially the western EU — has widened, as Europe has struggled with weak and inconsistent growth. Economic shocks like those brought on by the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have contributed, but taxation, an ill-conceived common currency, and regulatory policy in areas such as energy, climate, and tech, bear the brunt of the blame. It would make more sense for Canada to diversify by adding more members and deepening ties with the faster-growing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that has nearly eliminated tariffs among signatory countries following the United States’ withdrawal from the preceding Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

 

Supporters of Carney’s European adventures may counter that there is no need to choose — that Canada can diversify elsewhere while still deepening ties with Europe. But it is not that simple. Brussels rarely gives deep market access without pulling partners toward its rule book. If “associate membership” turns into dynamic alignment, Canada, while still formally able to sign other foreign trade agreements, would find those deals harder to use: Goods and data would still have to clear European process rules, including rules written after the ink is dry.

 

Nowhere is this more dangerous than on climate policy. Whereas Carney has begun the process of rolling back his predecessor’s unrealistic goals, the EU is still charging full steam ahead, even implementing climate tariffs (the “carbon-border adjustment mechanism”) on its trade partners. That the EU climate regime is not exactly suitable for an oil-, gas-, and minerals-producing country should go without saying.

 

It may seem counterintuitive that Europe would ever try to force its environmentalism on Canada, seeing as how Canada’s minerals and natural gas — two sectors that EU rules could devastate, if applied to Canada — are part of what makes the country attractive to the EU. But in Brussels, the link between overregulation and underinvestment is not properly understood. Sure, policymakers want rare earths and natural gas — but since that’s never stopped them from overregulating those industries almost to extinction in Europe, Canada should not assume it will get a free pass. The mere threat of future regulatory alignment with the EU could deter investment into Canada’s extractive industries.

 

For Canada’s tech sector, the EU poses an even bigger threat. The EU prides itself on a “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that has strangled innovation in the union. If Canada is pushed to adapt EU tech regulations, the effect would be even worse than in Europe, since geographical proximity means Canada’s tech sector competes with the U.S. and Silicon Valley more directly than Europe’s does.

 

The same is true for the auto and chemicals industries as well as many other sectors, and geographical proximity makes it easier not just for businesses but also for skilled Canadians in affected sectors to move to the United States, something more and more of them are already doing.

 

Carney may feel emboldened by polls showing that large majorities of Canadians favor closer ties with the EU, with one poll even showing 57 percent would support full membership. But the idea of greater integration with the EU and the reality of such a path are starkly different. Brits once overwhelmingly voted in favor of EU membership, but decades of clashes between Britain’s Anglo-Saxon worldview and Brussels’s continental ways eventually led to a bitter divorce. And more than a European nation, Canada — with apologies to Quebec — is first and foremost a British nation, and that is something Carney ought to consider before he traps his country in a union that neither he nor his voters fully understand.

 

Of course, Trump was wrong to ever suggest that Canada should become America’s 51st state. It would be nothing short of tragic if Canada, in its rush to safeguard its sovereignty, merely ended up giving it away to another foreign bidder.

America’s Allies Are No Longer Waiting for Trump to Leave

By Vivian Salama

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

In 1917, as Canadian troops fought at Vimy Ridge in northern France, Lieutenant Leslie Miller collected acorns from the battlefield and carried them home to Ontario. Saplings from the resulting oaks were sent back to France about a century later, and became a living link between the two countries. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recounted that story in Strasbourg last week to the European Parliament as he proposed an alliance that went far beyond trade to encompass defense, energy, critical minerals, and artificial intelligence.

 

The pitch was part of a broader transformation under way among America’s allies. For years, the strategy among U.S. allies was to wait President Trump out. Now many are preparing for a world in which the United States is no longer indispensable—not simply during Trump’s presidency but afterward as well, regardless of who occupies the White House. They are building military capabilities, diversifying trade, developing new domestic industries, and forging relationships that reduce their dependence on Washington.

 

This isn’t a coordinated revolt against America or a wholesale turn toward China. Most U.S. partners see Washington as an essential partner and don’t fully trust Beijing. But nations that were once firmly in the American orbit are concluding that they cannot rely on the U.S. to provide the same leadership, markets, technology, and military protection that it has for decades. And that, foreign officials told me, is true no matter who wins the presidency in 2028.

 

The shift may be the most consequential legacy of Trump’s foreign policy. Since his first term, he has demanded that allies become more self-reliant. In his second term, Trump has accelerated the emergence of a world in which American influence is less central—and China has more room to maneuver. Beijing benefits if Europe, Canada, Japan, or South Korea becomes more willing to engage and less certain that Washington is the power around which all strategic decisions must revolve. And the shift undercuts the delicate strategic balance Washington seeks with Beijing itself—an issue Trump will confront when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

 

The changes are already visible, including in rising European defense spending, Canada’s commercial outreach to China, and Japan’s efforts to become a larger arms supplier. Taken together, these trends point to a reordering of the international system that stretches far beyond Trump. “Trump brought with him an earthquake, but we’d be foolish not to prepare for aftershocks,” a senior European official told me. “The fact is, we’ll be setting ourselves up for failure if we assume that everything will go back to the way it was after Trump leaves office. The world is changing, and we can see very clearly now that America is changing too.”

 

That belief is altering the calculations of governments that spent decades organizing their security and economic policies around the United States. What was once viewed as institutional hedging until the 2028 election has morphed into a longer-term effort to build alternatives. This theme of finding alternatives to Washington has become so prevalent that it’s likely to dominate discussions at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

 

Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, told me that she and other senior officials were sent on an “apology tour” following Trump’s first term to convince allies that the America they knew had returned and that President Biden was committed to protecting the relationships. (The reference was a throwback to the Barack Obama–era “apology tour,” as some later called it when he traveled the world after taking office to apologize for past American actions, military interventions, and foreign-policy decisions.) But the message dissipated over the next few years amid the political divisiveness in the U.S., Tai recalled. Foreign diplomats relayed to her and other top Biden officials a nervousness “that what you kind of hoped was an aberration is actually going to come back,” she told me. With Trump’s second term, “everything is more over the top than even in the first administration,” Tai said. “The insults are more insulting, the jabs are drawing more blood, and my gut is that there is not a second time for America to declare that it’s back.”

 

***

 

Whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican, allies see cause for concern. Officials from countries around the world have told me that they worry that Vice President Vance’s vision of a less interventionist America could become a lasting conservative doctrine. “Our real fear is that after Trump comes J. D. Vance, and he has made clear that he is not a friend of Europe’s,” one senior European official told me. Others see calls from the Democratic Socialists of America to “defund the Department of War” as evidence that skepticism about America’s traditional global role is no longer confined to one side of the political spectrum. Progressive Democrats are also embracing tools championed by Trump, including certain tariffs and other protectionist measures. As president, Biden kept most of the tariffs Trump imposed during his first term, even as his “America Is Back” mantra sought to reassure allies they still had America’s support. A dramatic reset of U.S. relations with allies appears unavoidable.

 

Even more moderate Democrats are moving toward a foreign policy closer to “America First,” reflecting growing skepticism of overseas interventions and a desire to prioritize domestic needs. Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive and a potential 2028 presidential contender, told me that the U.S. needs an economic agenda focused on rebuilding America’s manufacturing base through an industrial investment bank, expanded trade schools, and investment in hollowed-out communities—though, he added, it would be a mistake for allies to discount the U.S. as a partner in the post-Trump era. He favors keeping overseas markets open and using tariffs selectively.

 

But what once appeared to allies like temporary political turbulence is now looking like a more lasting change in Washington’s priorities. Just ask the Canadians. For decades, Washington and Ottawa have been the closest of allies. Although they have been frequently at odds over trade, their militaries have operated together, their intelligence services have cooperated closely, and their economies have been deeply integrated. Yet Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off as part of the U.S., while imposing and threatening tariffs on Canadian goods. Last month, his administration imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian products.

 

Carney, who has called for what he calls “middle powers” such as Canada to become more self-reliant, has responded accordingly. In January, he traveled to Beijing—the first visit for a Canadian prime minister since 2017—and announced a new strategic partnership focused on trade, energy, and agriculture. Canada subsequently secured renewed Chinese-market access for canola, seafood, and beef and set a goal of increasing exports to China by 50 percent by 2030. Canada also became the first non-European country to participate in the European Union’s new Security Action for Europe defense-financing program, giving Canadian companies access to European defense contracts and deepening military ties.

 

Earlier this month, the EU proposed making Canada its first “associate member,” a status that would reflect the closeness of the relationship and give Ottawa—as well as, perhaps, other nations—an alternative to the U.S. and China. Trump has taken notice of their deepening ties, but in ways one imagines Carney might see as a form of respect. The president recently told reporters, “A lot of people say, Who’s the toughest one to deal with? Is it China, sir? Is it China? Is it Vietnam? I said, No, actually, it’s Canada. Canada has felt emboldened.”

 

***

 

The American decision to pull back from its alliances has created opportunities for China, particularly in the Pacific region. The U.S. has few allies stronger than Australia, which during the Biden administration agreed to a deal with the U.S. and the United Kingdom to receive a supply of nuclear-powered submarine technology. But China is Australia’s largest trading partner, and the Australian government has been trying to bolster its relationship with Beijing in other areas as well, including energy and climate. “The United States—not by accident or circumstance, but by design—has become a less dependable ally,” former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told my colleague David Frum in a recent interview. America’s “traditional allies have got to hedge.”

 

Japan, meanwhile, has eased its arms-export rules. The country has largely isolated itself from global arms markets since the end of World War II, and the shift has sparked interest in countries around the world that have long relied heavily on U.S. weapons sales. Japan and South Korea, longtime rivals, have also been drawing closer to each other as they confront both a powerful China and the unpredictability of the Trump administration.

 

That unpredictability was on display with recent annual joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. Known as Ulchi Freedom Shield—the name evokes a seventh-century Korean general celebrated for repelling a Chinese invasion—the exercises have been held for decades. But hours before this year’s exercises were due to begin, Trump blindsided officials by announcing on social media that he was ordering a substantial pullback in U.S. participation. He argued that the drills were costly and sent a signal that was “totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea. Trump continues to praise the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, despite the leaders’ failure to reach a rapprochement during Trump’s first term.

 

U.S. and South Korean forces, as well as those from other countries, were confused about how and whether to proceed with the exercises. They ultimately went ahead but on a much smaller scale, with the 11-day schedule cut to five and major field-training activities scaled back. “It was an absolute clusterfuck,” a U.S. official told me as the mess was unfolding. In the meantime, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has moved aggressively to deepen ties with Beijing. His January state visit to China included a summit with Xi and a business forum attended by about 600 Korean and Chinese business leaders. Fourteen government-to-government memorandums were signed during the visit. With Seoul stuck on Trump’s bad side, that may be just the beginning.

 

Experts told me that even if these countries don’t open the floodgates to Chinese cooperation, Beijing still stands to gain. Every weapons system current U.S. allies build themselves, every supply chain they diversify, and every new relationship they develop gives Beijing another opening—a possibility that even Trump allies acknowledge. “We have to make sure that China doesn’t take advantage of the situation in the short term,” Richard Grenell, who has held a number of positions in both Trump administrations, including as ambassador to Germany, told me. “But I’m not worried about the long term, because what we hear over and over from world leaders is that dealing with China is not worth the price they pay.”

 

Last year, European leaders traveled to Beijing with major complaints about China’s growing industrial output, their limited access to its markets, and the massive trade imbalance. But the summit also reaffirmed a collective desire among European nations for deeper engagement with Beijing, despite the Chinese government’s obvious weaknesses as a prospective alternative to the United States as a global superpower. Their appetite for closeness reflects evolving public opinions around the globe. This year, a Pew Research Center survey in 36 countries found that for the first time, China was viewed more positively than the U.S. in a majority of the countries surveyed. In Canada, 44 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of China, compared with 33 percent for the United States. China also overtook the U.S. in overall favorability in several European countries.

 

I asked William Taylor, who twice served as head of the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, whether Europeans feel that they can just buy time until Trump leaves office in 2029, when things might presumably snap back. “They’re not sure that it’s going to snap back,” Taylor responded.

 

The economic stakes of these shifts are substantial. Trade wars with allies raise costs for American consumers. U.S. defense companies could eventually lose market share as allies develop their own industries and buy more from one another. And the more that countries diversify their supply chains and commercial relationships, the less leverage Washington enjoys. “Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over,” Carney said, weeks after assuming office last year. “While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.” Trump’s biggest impact during his second term may be that America’s allies are now planning for that reality to outlast him.

Trump’s Costly Greenland Play

National Review Online

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

If the U.S. is indeed on its way to securing a deal with Denmark and Greenland akin to the one that the president is now describing, that is good news, even if getting to this point has been far more painful than it needed to be. Donald Trump maintains that the deal will give the United States “permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland,” and that no U.S. adversary could have a base or military presence there without Washington’s written approval. If so, great.

 

To be clear, Trump was right about one big thing: that Greenland merited much more attention than it had been getting. The Arctic may not have warmed up by as much and as quickly as Al Gore and others claimed it would, but it has done so by enough to render it much more accessible than before. As a result, it is becoming a zone of geopolitical competition for its resources and, more simply, because of location, location, location.

 

For obvious geographical reasons, that increases the already-considerable importance of Greenland to this country. The island is a potential back door through U.S. defenses and a key North Atlantic vantage point. Moreover, in an era of supply-chain anxiety, it has potentially valuable mineral resources, including rare earths.

 

During the Second World War, the U.S. assumed de facto control of Greenland, which was a colony of Denmark, a country then occupied by Germany. After the German defeat, the Truman administration floated the idea of a $100 million purchase. Denmark was not interested but, recognizing Washington’s legitimate interest in Greenland and all too aware of the broader Soviet threat, entered into a comprehensive defense agreement with the U.S. in 1951.

 

Legally, Greenland is no longer a colony. It is a part of Denmark, but with a high degree of autonomy. In response to the changing relationship between the two, the defense agreement was amended in 2004 in ways that provided for a greater degree of consultation with Greenland’s government and effectively restricted the U.S. “zone” to the one remaining American base (down from a peak of perhaps 17) at Thule, now known as Pituffik. The U.S. has a relatively small number of personnel at the facility but maintains critical early-warning installations designed to detect a missile attack, along with satellite guidance and control systems (for which locations in the far north are indispensable) and a large airfield. Given the limited resources Denmark has at its disposal to defend Greenland, an agreement to upgrade the U.S. presence needed doing.

 

Asking politely to upgrade the existing agreement might well have delivered just that — and done so without creating all the geopolitical self-harm. Unfortunately, Trump went about defending the U.S. strategic interest in a different way, and that was the wrong way. The core of the problem has been that, despite his own nationalist instincts, the president is oblivious when it comes to the national sensitivities of others. Originally, he had imagined that Greenland could simply be bought: essentially, it would be “a large real estate deal.” This was not, unsurprisingly, how the Danes and Greenlanders saw it. The president’s adding the threat of stick (tariffs and hints of worse) to the promise of carrot caused a major rift within NATO and did damage to our reputation as a reliable ally.

 

Full details of the revised arrangement have yet to be disclosed. Denmark is talking about a greater role for NATO as a whole, something that is already underway and was overdue. From the American point of view, this ought to be in line with our insistence on greater burden-sharing within the alliance. To be sure, Greenland was already under NATO’s shield, but emphasizing the involvement of the broader alliance may help seal the deal in the Danish and Greenlandic parliaments, where the agreement will have to be ratified and where suspicion of American intentions has soared. Stressing the fact that Danish and Greenlandic sovereignty will be left intact will help. There will be no grant of exclusive mining concessions to the U.S., but, if some reports are accurate, there will be a provision that only NATO and EU members will be allowed to make “sensitive investments” in Greenland. If so, that’s also to the good.

 

One key question that appears to be unresolved is the durability of any deal. The president is saying that it will be permanent, which would be best for U.S. interests. But would the agreement really be “forever” if Greenland became fully independent, something that, judging by the polls, most Greenlanders would like to see, if only at the right time?

 

For now, however, it seems that the U.S. is on track to better secure its position in Greenland, although there’s no deal until there’s a ratified deal. If and when an agreement is concluded, the best way to maximize its benefits to the U.S. will be to repair the diplomatic damage that this episode has caused by rebuilding a deeper relationship with Denmark and Greenland.

The Politics of Depopulation

By Joel Kotkin

Monday, September 21, 2026

 

The land of la familia is now a land of gli anziani or, less politely, i vecchi, the most elderly society in an aging continent. In the land of la dolce vita, Italians seem to be having less of it, with some of the lowest birth rates among major European capitals. Half the population is now over 48 and a quarter over 65.

 

By 2100, it is projected that the country could have more 80-year-olds than children under five. The country’s population has fallen by 1.5 million since 2015.

 

Everywhere you walk in Rome and other Italian cities, you see people in their 80s and 90s struggling with hills and broken pavements. This has created a crisis of sorts, with some independent groups, acting in guerilla fashion, performing repairs that the Italian state is unable to perform. In one case a pensioner who filled a pothole received a stiff fine for daring to address a severe danger to seniors.

 

Creaking streets and broken ankles are just symptoms of a greater challenge. Due to a lack of children, Italian schools are, as one observer put it, “vanishing like glaciers.” Many historic small towns are depopulating. Increasingly, resources are poured into care for the elderly while many young Italians seem reluctant to enter the workforce, leaving the workplace to recent immigrants.

 

The Italian workforce is expected to contract by 20 percent over the next 25 years. GDP growth is among the slowest in the world. Companies large and small, most notably in the still-vibrant artisanal industries, complain that they cannot find Italian workers. This is made worse by Italy’s low level of female participation in the workforce, including in executive positions.

 

“Italy is going backwards,” suggests economist Veronika de Romanis, author of the recently published Economy of Fear. Italy, she notes, “is a nation of tribes” that protects its own but creates few new opportunities for young people and families.

 

The Specter of Depopulation

 

Italy’s dilemma repudiates the hugely influential Population Bomb written a half century ago by the late Paul Ehrlich. Rather than bursting at the seams, we are experiencing a demographic implosion that will shape our political and economic life for decades to come. Roughly two-thirds of countries experience fertility rates below 2.1, the level needed to replace the current population.

 

Even India, with the world’s largest population, is experiencing a dramatic decline in its birth rate. In the Islamic world, both Iran, a supposed center of religious fervor, and Turkey, another quasi-Islamist stronghold, now have fertility rates similar to that of the U.S.

 

University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde estimates, rather than the U.N.’s assumed peak global population of 10.4 billion in 2084, humanity will peak at 9.2 billion in 2060. Generally, U.N.-projected fertility rates have been far higher than what actually occurred. In the next quarter century, estimates the IMF, China’s population will drop by 155.8 million, Japan 18 million, Russia 7.9 million, Ukraine 7 million, South Korea 6.5 million, and Italy 7.3 million .

 

China, with among the world’s lowest fertility rates — near 1.0 — blames foreign influences, but policies imposed by the communist regime are much to blame, notably the now-abandoned one-child policy and a commitment to high-density living, which tends to discourage family formation. Certainly, a recently enacted tax on condoms has not boosted fertility rates, nor has Comrade Xi’s typical propaganda onslaught promoting “a trend towards family.”

 

Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou suffer among the world’s lowest fertility rates, even lower than places like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. A culture once renowned for familialism is no longer so, as evidenced by the popular new app called “Are You Dead?” — a way to check up on the elderly, now living and dying in isolation. It’s a boom market now that the Middle Kingdom experiences three deaths for every two births. The situation is so extreme that the state is being forced to bribe people with cash to have children.

 

Europe is similarly challenged. The EU’s population by 2100 is projected to fall from 443 million to just under 400 million. The U.S., although not depopulating, has seen its fertility rate at record lows, roughly half the 1965 level. As recently as a decade ago, most demographers predicted 400 million Americans by 2050; likely we will not get close to that. The fertility rate among women between ages 20 and 29 is down 38 percent in the past 18 years. Two-thirds of American counties already have more deaths than births.

 

A smaller population, suggests the British author Fred Pearce, could offer some relief for the natural environment, perhaps lessening the need for draconian measures that would impoverish more people. But many of the effects are threatening. Low fertility rates may boost dependence on the welfare state, particularly as informal networks — children, grandchildren, extended families, churches, and community organizations — weaken. The iPhone and other distractions may be great products of technology, but they “[atrophy] our social muscle,” as Robert Green puts it.

 

It’s also a potential fiscal nightmare. In high-income countries, notes McKinsey, the ratio is already 3.9 workers per person over 65, down from 6.8 in 1997. By 2050, the worst dependency ratios will be found in Western Europe, led by Italy and France, as well as in East Asian countries such as South Korea, where over 4,000 schools have been closed.

 

Is Mass Immigration the Answer?

 

Many see the solution as mass immigration. The National Immigration Forum suggest the U.S. needs a 37 percent jump in migration over 2020 levels “to prevent the US from falling into demographic and socioeconomic decline.” A 2024 analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model claims the current worker-retiree level necessitates an annual immigration rate 3.5 times higher than today’s. In Europe, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development insists on a need to boost immigration to maintain the labor force.

 

Many countries are unlikely to open their doors to mass immigration. This is particularly true in East Asia, where homogeneity is greatly honored and immigration strictly limited, even in worker-short Japan. Poorer countries such as South Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Egypt, Kenya, and Ethiopia also resist adding new people because of their already high unemployment.

 

In contrast, left-leaning elites in Europe, Oceania, and North America see mass immigration as the way to address our much-feared “demographic winter.” Some advocates also see a virtue in boosting racial diversity and, particularly on the left, a way to shift the political dynamic in their favor. Business, for its part, embraces migration as a wayto address a shortage of workers and keep wages down, including among the undocumented.

 

Or Maybe Not?

 

There are clear, and compelling, reasons to not fully embrace this conventional wisdom. Europe’s foreign-born population, now at a record of over 64 million, has not turned out to be a salve for its sluggish economy. Many countries with the highest per capita rates of immigration — the U.K., Canada, Germany, and France — also suffer from stagnant economies.

 

In 2023, Canada, with 40 million residents, received 1 million immigrants. It also suffered the slowest economic growth rates among advanced countries while its once-high standard of living continued to decline. In Canada, one in five recent immigrants now suffers “deep poverty” — an income below 75 percent of the poverty line — compared to only 5 percent of the whole population.

 

In Europe, newcomers also are far more dependent on welfare transfers than are natives. Spain recently legalized at least 500,000 migrants, whose rate of poverty stands at roughly three times that of the native population. Even in the United States, the immigrant share of the U.S. population living in poverty since 1993 has nearlydoubled to almost one in four; among the undocumented, nearly 30 percent now live in abject poverty. Among Minnesota’s Somali immigrants, welfare use is four times that of native-born families.

 

Rather than supercharging the economy — despite claims that deportations are “sabotaging” commerce — most recent immigrants, according to the Congressional Budget Office, now compete with other poor people for living space, jobs, and social services. Although this effect is far from universal, wages in some industries employing the undocumented, notably construction and food manufacturing, have risen as deportations took effect.

 

To these economic concerns one has to add the disruptive impact. Recently, migrants to Europe have been disproportionately involved in crime. According to the World Prison Brief, foreign nationals made up 24.4 percent of France’s prison population in 2025 despite accounting for roughly 7–8 percent of the population. The International Network for Immigration Research found foreign nationals accounted for about 17 percent of France’s criminal suspects — more than double their share of the population — with rates rising to four to five times their share for vehicle theft, burglary, and unarmed robbery.

 

Much the same is evident in Catalonia where, according to government statistics, foreigners accounted for 84.3 percent of arrests for theft in 2025, 73 percent for violent robbery, and 60 percent for sexual assault. In Italy, according to the Ministry of Justice, foreign citizens account for nearly one-third of all prison inmates, despite representing around one-tenth of the resident population.

 

Designed to reinvigorate aging societies, mass immigration is reshaping Europe in ways many natives deplore. The seemingly inexorable tide of migration threatens national identity, undermining principles of free speech and respect for traditions, creating what Marilynne Robinson describes as “a cerebral whiteout.” The European Union as well as the governments of France, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Italy have pledged to crack down on migration.

 

This is recasting politics across the West. Uncontrolled mass immigration under the Biden administration helped Donald Trump win his last presidential election. Support for deportation of criminal aliens, and all the undocumented, has risen even among Democrats. Such sentiments did much to elect Giorgia Meloni in Italy and could bring Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, or someone from Germany’s AFD to power.

 

Do We Still Need Masses of Immigrants?

 

To maintain their workforce, renew their culture and pay their bills, the U.S. and other countries still need to keep some considerable amount of immigration. Right now, the U.S. suffers shortages of skilled manufacturing workers, providers of medical services, and workers in some technical jobs. But even this could change. The rise of artificial intelligence may reduce demand for software writers from India; tech companies have cut some 240,000 jobs since 2004.

 

Demand for low-end jobs may also diminish. Jobs requiring extensive manual labor dropped to 22 percent of all jobs in 2025, from 35 percent 50 years ago.

 

The rapid development of robots will likely hit all sorts of low-end jobs, from fast-food preparation and package-handling to bed-making, elderly care, and toilet-cleaning. Even the ranks of drivers — one in five is foreign-born — will be culled by the rise of autonomous vehicles.

 

Remaining low-wage immigrant workers, about 4 percent of the labor force, could benefit from a better regulated reboot of the old U.S. Bracero Program, allowing foreign laborers to do specific jobs without having them bring their families. Even Trump has been forced to acknowledge that in fields such as agriculture and hospitality, immigrants, including the undocumented, may be difficult to replace, at least in the near future.

 

Needed: A Focus on the Native-Born

 

The domestic working class seems an obvious if unintended victim of mass migration. Since many of the newcomers are poor and ill-educated, their presence in the workforce tends to retard wage growth at the lower ranks, noted a recent congressional study. But even in high-skilled professions, companies import workers at the exclusion of Americans. This approach is widely promoted by immigration lawyers and tech and other U.S. firms, even if it works against the native-born STEM workers now suffering increasingly high unemployment rates.

 

Rather than looking abroad for salvation, Western countries might prioritize getting their disengaged workforce back toward employment. Today an estimated one-third of American working-age males are neither in school nor working, the highest percentage in a half century. In Europe, in the U.K., and in Canada, as much as one-quarter to one-third of the population under 30 is neither in school nor in a job.

 

Under such circumstances, blindly pushing for mass immigration seems absurd. Increasingly, young people never enter the labor pool, with record-low numbers taking summer jobs. Generation Z constitutes the most “disengaged” workforce across the advanced world.

 

A mismatch of native workers and jobs drives fertility rates even further down. Many are failing to launch, much less get married or have offspring. In the U.S., the percentage of people 18 to 34 living at home, notes Pew, is roughly one in three, but in Italy the percentage reaches over 70 percent.

 

Stefano Becucci, professor of sociology at the University of Florence, told me this lack of jobs affects many educated people, who would rather sit at home than take a job, for example, in the artisan economy. “People stay in school long, well into their thirties,” he observed over coffee at the school’s suburban campus. “They stay because it’s difficult to get a job in their field. You get a Ph.D. and expect a job that pays well. When they don’t get one, they stay home.”

 

Even East Asia, once the heartland of family-centered workaholics, is losing its workforce; thus Japan has witnessed the rise of “freeters,”permanent part-timers often living with their parents and more interested in traveling, playing video games, and the like. In China, many educated Millennials, faced with diminishing prospects, have abandoned striving in favor of “lying flat,” taking part-time work rather than seeking out a career and a family.

 

Turning the Old Into an Asset

 

Many economists and politicians treat the aging population as a giant liability. America, like the rest of the world, is older than it has ever been: The population aged 65 and older is projected to increase from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050 (a 42 percent increase). Seniors’ share of the total population is projected to rise from 17 percent to 23 percent .

 

The late former Nixon Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson spent decades skewering retirees; in his polemic, Gray Dawn, he railed against their long retirement “in subsidized leisure.” Brookings more recently declared that the rise of an aging population “has no perceivable upsides.”

 

Yet in reality, seniors can be seen as an asset. Every year approximately 26.3 percent of U.S. seniors aged 65 and older — 15 to 16 million strong — volunteer for a wide array of charitable activities. Another 40 percent informally help friends and neighbors, particularly those with disabilities, with groceries and transportation. Altogether the Boomers — the vast majority of seniors — and the aging Xers account for the largest group of volunteers in charities, churches, and other service institutions. And an increasing number continue to work well into their seventies and beyond. Nearly onein five Americans aged 65 and older are currently working or looking for work, which is nearly double the participation rate seen a few decades ago, according to Investopedia.

 

You also can see their predominance, and desire for engagement, in almost any church, synagogue, or mosque, but also in many other forms of community service. Several times a week, a group of seniors, mostly female, gather at the Boys and Girls Club in San Juan Capistrano, a charming historic town on California’s southern coast. They do not play bingo but spend an hour with young children who need help with reading. Literacy is a gift cherished by these aging Boomers, while it has faded among following generations.

 

“We fill a gap for kids with problems with reading,” explains Janice Frenchette-Artinger, the executive director of the Parentis Foundation, which sends 200 seniors, mostly well into their 70s and 80s, to work with youngsters in Southern California. “Seniors want to be useful, and they can help even if it’s just feeding dogs. It’s a reason to be alive.”

 

Age does not necessarily mean decrepitude or dependence. Today’s elderly are far better-educated than in the past. In 1965 only 5 percent of seniors had college degrees; today that number is above 30 percent. They are also more self-sufficient; today roughly 14 percent of seniors are poor, compared with 30 percent in 1966. Not surprisingly, a growing percentage do not use nursing and other senior facilities, wanting instead to age in place.

 

Seniors “are reinventing old age,” Joseph Coughlin, director of MIT’s AgeLab, told the Wall Street Journal. They are living longer, and more capably, well into their 80s and beyond, notes a recent Yale study. Some become more functional, mentally and otherwise. Dementia rates are falling dramatically.

 

For decades, older workers embraced retirement as “the great national repository of delayed gratification,” author Mark Freedman notes. But in this decade, many Boomers are starting businesses, launching new firms at a 22 percent rate compared to 0.6 percent for the rest of the population. Bain estimates that worldwide, seniors will occupy 150 million jobs by 2030, providing up to a quarter of the workforce in some countries.

 

Yet some describe the seniors, as The Atlantic put it, as a corrupt gerontocracy that has “amassed disproportionate wealth and power.” The New York Times, nearly two-thirds of whose readers are over 50, ran a column called “Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential,” penned by Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale and author of Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It. Moyn’s program embraces moves to confiscate the wealth of Boomers, all of whom are now over 60, and to hand it over to younger generations.

 

This resentment has roots in reality: In the U.S. at least, less than half of Millennials are doing better than their parents. A Deloitte study projects that Millennials (Americans born 1981 to 1996) will hold barely 16 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2030, when they will be the largest adult generation by far. By then, the preceding Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, will hold 31 percent, while the even older boomers will still control 45 percent.

 

Over time, of course, many young people will benefit from inheriting the roughly $4.6 trillion in property — $2.4 trillion in the U.S. alone. But some on the socialist-minded left see seizing these assets, particularly those of the successful, sooner as an ideal way to power.

 

To be sure, not all seniors are doing well. Optimism about aging, notes Pew, tends to follow income and savings. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. retirees have insufficient savings, a trend made worse by inflation, and 20 percent have already burned through their savings. Longer lifespans will add to that pressure. Demand for more transfers to seniors could further intensify the generational conflict even as they require the assistance of children and grandchildren, if they have any.

 

There are better alternatives than confiscating Boomer wealth or bringing poverty back to working-class seniors. The generations need each other. More than two-thirds of grandparents are caregivers who usually work for free, often on a regular or even daily basis, providing over $700 billion for the economy by allowing parents to work or go to school. Emerging new technologies, notably autonomous vehicles, also offer the prospect of greater mobility.

 

Seniors could prove a potential bulwark against a shrinking labor force. Today, 23.2 percent of U.S. workers are older than 55, up 17.3 percent over the past decade, according to one analysis. Sadly, in some societies, largely in the European welfare states, working after 60 or 65 is discouraged. In places such as Spain and France, less than 10 percent of people between 65 and 70 are employed. They are missing an enormous opportunity to shore up a dwindling workforce.

 

Dealing Successfully with the New Demographics

 

Changes such as raising the retirement age could encourage people to work longer, reducing the need for mass migration and filling critical market niches. And productivity gains, as one MIT paper recently argued, might make up for a declining workforce, further enhanced by artificial intelligence. As we can see in some depopulating parts of the country, it may be possible to achieve what economist Paul Gottlieb calls “growth without growth.”

 

Under any reasonable scenario, slow population growth and increased aging seem inevitable. But rapid depopulation and generational war are not, although government may not be the best at providing solutions. State attempts in Italy to lower taxes on diapers and provide incentives for childbearing have barely moved the needle. Generous handouts to families have failed. “Markets,” notes demographer Nick Eberstadt, “cannot cure social pathologies.”

 

Ultimately the key lies in rekindling the familial values that have long buttressed society. A potential return to faith might help, whereas the decline in religious commitment, notably among Catholics, has had a devastating effect on fertility rates. Some religious subcultures, like the Amish, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews, enjoy far higher birth rates. Evangelicals, a far larger group, also demonstrate a slightly higher fertility rate.

 

“Culture is the only solution,” Sebastiano Mattefone, a leading Italian political theorist, told me outside his tree-lined Rome campus. Mexican immigrant kids, surrounded by a wide family network, experience appreciably fewer mental health problems than kids born here. Not everything boils down to money or efficiency. Religious values gaining some ground among the young could lift the current low fertility. It seems that some parents are getting the point: Remarkably, the time spent with kids is now twice what it was 50 years ago.

 

As the late Karl Zinsmeister notes in his last book, The Natural Family, the family is critical to the survival of civilization, a functioning economy, and a sense of purpose. The priority should be not to import our future wholesale, but nurture what G. K. Chesterton described as “the factory that manufactures mankind.” The demographic crisis calls most of all for a new humanism that relishes the creation of children, albeit in far smaller batches, prioritizes the concerns of our own working class, and taps the energies and wisdom of seniors. Demographics may well be destiny, but not necessarily a precursor to a bleak one.