Letters from an American - Undermining the Post-WWII Order

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

October 5, 2026The US Southern Command struck another small boat in the Caribbean, bringing the number of strikes to more than 70, The administration has not made its justification for the strikes public, although there was a DOJ memo, US District Judge Engelmayer has demanded that it be shown to him, Pete Hegseth told reporters that the US can move military personnel from Europe and that the US is expanding its presence in Latin America, In an interview, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that he does not anticipate that the court will overturn the decision recognizing the right to same sex marriage because “people have come to rely on it,” but that overturning Roe v Wade in the Dobbs decision was acceptable because that was “much more abstract,” The administration is undermining the post-World War II order by abandoning the UN prohibition on violating the territorial integrity and political independence of any state and the human rights that are covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, It is also abandoning the rights of women, In place of the post-WWI order, Trump and his allies propose a dictatorship, FDR noted that Nazi forces were openly seeking the destruction of elective systems of government in place of rule by a handful of individuals, In a speech in March 1941, he said that “the rallying cry of the dictators … will prove to be pure stuff and nonsense."To read this letter, click here:Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyYou can also find Heather at:YouTubeBlueskyInstagramFacebookThreadsTikTok Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

October 5, 26. Last night, on October 4th, U.S. Southern Command posted that it had struck another small boat in the Caribbean, killing another four people it called narco-terrorists. This brings the number of strikes to more than 70, and the number of people killed in the strikes that began a year ago to more than 230 people. The administration's justification for the strikes has not been made public. It has claimed, without evidence, that the men on the boats were trafficking drugs, but such a charge would normally be handled by the legal system. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice produced an opinion providing legal cover for the strikes, and some of the members of Congress who have seen it are alarmed. Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, saw the memo

in November and said, if that opinion were to be adopted, it would not constrain any use of force anywhere in the world. I mean, it's broad enough to authorize just about anything. In December, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights sued to gain access to the memo after the government denied their requests to see it under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. On September 21st, a report from the United Nations concluded, that the extrajudicial killings broke international law and maybe crimes against humanity. Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmeyer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice to show him the memo and let him know who else has seen it

in order to evaluate whether to release it to the public. On October 1st, John Hudson of the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration has taken $52 million Congress appropriated for countries impacted by Russia's war on Ukraine, and rerouted it to right-wing governments in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru. On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hagezith told reporters the U.S. could move U.S. military personnel from Europe to the Western Hemisphere, saying, well, we're definitely expanding our presence and our footprint in Central and South America with partners and because of the bold move the president made in Venezuela, referring to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in a nighttime raid in early January. We have a whole new suite of options economically and militarily with partnerships. While the administration is billing its intervention in Latin America,

as a battle against drugs, the comparison to Venezuela, where Trump has claimed control over the country's oil fields and says he has taken billions of dollars out, although there's no public acknowledgement of where that money has gone, is instructive. On Saturday, Jan Crawford of CBS News, published an interview with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which Alito said one of his first thoughts after he learned that a draft of his Dobbs v. Jackson Women's, health decision, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision had been leaked, was that this would endanger the people on the court. Alito went on to say that he does not anticipate that the court will overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, recognizing the right to same-sex marriage.

That case is different from Roe v. Wade, he said, because people have come to rely on Obergefell as they organize their lives. One of the most important factors we take into account in deciding whether we should re-examine a past decision is the degree to which there has been reliance on the decision, Alito said. Obviously, a great deal had changed in the country as a result of Obergefell. There was a lot of reliance in various ways

on the decision in Obergefell. In fact, all but one of the justices who overturn Roe, Thomas declined to answer, said in their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe settled law. Crawford pointed out that people thought Roe was settled law and had organized their lives around it, just as people had organized their lives around Obergefell. After Obergefell, people of the same sex got married and entered into contracts. It was much more concrete, Alito told Crawford.

Whereas with Roe, the argument was made that it had an effect on people's ideas, women's ideas about the kind of society that they were going to live in, that this would have an effect on the society. It was much more abstract than what would have been involved had we'd been asked to overrule Obergefell. These are the same story, the deliberate destruction of the post-World War II order those who had lived through the horrors of World Wars I and two put into place to prevent another World War. Even before the U.S. entered into World War II, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and their advisors laid out principles for an international system that could prevent future world wars. In the 1941 Atlantic

Charter, they declared that countries must not invade each other. In April 1945, 850 delegates and their staff and advisors met in San Francisco, California, where they wrote and adopted unanimously the United Nations Charter, prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Trump and his loyalists reject this framework in favor of one favored by those like Russia's President Vladimir Putin, one that looks much like the world did before 193 nations signed onto the United Nations Charter. In their worldview, strong nations exercised spheres of influence, taking political and economic control of neighboring nations. Part of the post-World War II attempt to prevent future wars was an insistence that all human beings had certain rights and must be

treated equally before the law. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or UDHR, which provided a common standard of fundamental rights for all human beings. Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and much beloved defender of human rights in the United States, led the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, figuring out how to define the violation of human rights not only internationally but also within a nation, and how to protect the rights of man all over the world. Drafted over the next two years, the final document established that all human beings are born

free and equal in dignity and rights, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social, origin, property, birth, or other status, and regardless of the political, jurisdictional, or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs. Those rights included freedom from slavery, torture, degrading punishment, arbitrary arrest, exile, and arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and attacks upon honor and reputation. They included the right to equality before the law and to a fair trial, the right to participate in government, either directly or through freely chosen representatives,

the right of equal access to public service. After all, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights noted, the authority of government rests on the will of the people, expressed in periodic and genuine elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrage. Under Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegesith, the U.S. has abandoned the U.S. prohibition on violating the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, as well as the human rights of the people in the small boats, not to mention migrants. As Alito's statement that the right of women to have control over their health care was simply an abstract idea that didn't have to be protected, suggested. Undermining the post-World War II order has been a long-term project. In his place, Trump and his

allies propose a dictatorship. Binance Finder Chang Peng Zhao, who was jailed in the U.S. for money laundering, but pardoned by Trump, worked with the Trump family to establish the crypto startup World Liberty Financial, which put $799 million in Trump's pocket last year. Zhao now lives in the United Arab Emirates. In a recent interview with David Yoffie Bellany of the New York Times, Zhao explained, Democracy has been hailed as like the Holy Grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient.

If you get a benevolent dictator, it's actually extremely efficient. There's very little debate going on. You don't waste time on a lot of frivolous stuff. It's a model for which Trump repeatedly has expressed admiration. In March 1941, eight months before the U.S. joined World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt noted that Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every,

continent, including our own. They seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force. These men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order, FDR said, but it is not new and it is not order. The rallying cry of the dictators, their boasting about a master race, will prove to be pure stuff and nonsense, he said. There never has been, there isn't now, and there never will be. Any race of people on the earth fit to serve as masters over their fellow men. The world has no use for any nation, which, because of size or because of military might, asserts the right to goose step to world power

over the bodies of other nations or other races, he said. We believe that any nationality, no matter how small, has the inherent right to its own nationhood and that the men and women of such nations, no matter what size, can, through the processes of peace, serve themselves and serve the world by protecting the common man's security, improve the standards of healthy living,

provide markets for manufacture and for agriculture. Through that peaceful service, every nation can increase its happiness, banish the terrors of war, and abandon man's inhumanity to man. Never in all our history have Americans faced a job so well worthwhile, he concluded. May it be said of us in the days to come

that our children and our children's children rise up and call us blessed. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.