What Black Americans Learned First, Our International Allies Cannot Ignore Now

To our international allies, especially those in Europe:

I write this not as a representative of the United States, but as a Black American with deep generational roots in this country, and with a long memory of how its power behaves when it believes itself untouchable. America’s white supremacy complex has always rested on a dangerous belief: that its power is exceptional and therefore exempt from consequence. What has changed is not the belief itself, but the restraint that once moderated its presentation. The language has hardened. The euphemisms have thinned. The mask has slipped. And what follows will not remain contained within the United States. It never has.

If that sounds familiar, it should. We’ve heard this story before, even if we weren’t always told its name.

American power has always required a story strong enough to sanctify it, to make domination feel ordained rather than chosen. One of those stories keeps showing up, no matter how many times we pretend it’s faded. In this country, that story has long been supplied by a strain of white evangelical theology that treats American authority not as political, but as divine mandate. The nation is framed not as one among many, but as chosen. Exceptional not because of conduct, but because of perceived favor. In this worldview, wealth becomes proof of righteousness, power becomes evidence of blessing, and hierarchy becomes confirmation of God’s design. Mega churches, political platforms, and media ecosystems reinforce the same logic: if America leads, it is because it was meant to; if others suffer, that suffering is either deserved, instructive, or irrelevant.

This is where people often misunderstand what they’re looking at. This is not faith as private conviction. It is faith as justification.

A system that understands itself as divinely chosen does not feel bound by human limits. It does not accept reciprocity. It does not negotiate in good faith. Correction becomes heresy. Accountability becomes persecution. Violence, when exercised, is reframed as obedience. History shows that when moral certainty is insulated from consequence, restraint dissolves quickly.

Before any of this showed up in foreign policy, it was practiced at home.

That logic was first rehearsed on vulnerable populations within the United States. Black Americans were among the earliest proving grounds. Enslavement was defended from pulpits. Segregation was preached as order. Violence was sanctified as discipline. Native Americans followed, their displacement rationalized as destiny and divine expansion. During World War II, Japanese Americans, many of them citizens, were stripped of their rights and placed in internment camps not because of evidence, but because fear required a target and the state needed to demonstrate control. Immigrants have been folded into this logic throughout and then more recently, framed as threats to purity, culture, and national survival.

None of this came out of nowhere.

Each time, the method remained consistent: identify a population rendered suspect, apply pressure, escalate harm, cloak it in moral or patriotic language, and observe whether resistance can be fragmented, shamed, or exhausted. What was tested domestically was never meant to remain there.

Once you see how it works here, it’s not hard to recognize it elsewhere.

Today, that same logic is being deployed outward. The United States has launched military action against a South American nation under the familiar language of stability, only to seize control of its oil infrastructure in the aftermath. At the same time, it has openly prepared for the forcible acquisition of Greenland, a sovereign territory and long-standing ally, treating international law and alliance commitments as inconveniences rather than constraints. This posture is not strategic. It is transactional. Sovereignty is treated as conditional. Resources are treated as spoils.

Because power is never just political. Someone is always paying for it.

That posture is further reinforced by an untethered class of extreme wealth that increasingly treats the American state as a private instrument. Billionaire donors with aligned economic interests find direct pathways into policy, converting personal investment into geopolitical objective. When executive power, military capacity, and private enrichment converge without accountability, foreign policy begins to resemble portfolio management. State force is deployed not primarily to defend shared values, but to secure profitable outcomes for those closest to power.

This is how a nation begins to function less like a democracy and more like a mercenary enterprise with a flag.

Over the past few months, I’ve watched the headlines stack up, one after another, and it’s made one thing clear: a lot of people in power are not ready for the kind of moment we’re in. Not emotionally. Not politically. Not spiritually. Watching American officials and world leaders respond with polite letters — addressed to my own country, a country now talking out loud about taking land and turning the military on its own people — felt like watching folks smile at a house that’s already on fire.

It wasn’t surprising. It was sobering. Because there’s a point where diplomacy stops being strategy and starts becoming a liability that gets people hurt. When someone tells you exactly who they are and what they intend to do, the danger isn’t disbelief. It’s pretending politeness can interrupt appetite. Once you’re in the lion’s mouth, negotiation isn’t strategy. It’s already too late. Who keeps writing formal letters as if the danger is still theoretical, as if the teeth aren’t already showing?

It immediately brought to mind Little Red Riding Hood standing face to face with the wolf, noticing the teeth, the eyes, the voice, and choosing conversation over immediate guard.

What we are living through now is not unprecedented. It is a familiar story told without disguise. Little Red Riding Hood was never a children’s tale. It was a warning. In its earliest version, written by Charles Perrault, there is no rescue. The wolf devours the grandmother. Then he devours the girl. The lesson is blunt: predators do not negotiate, charm is not safety, and innocence offers no protection once the door is opened. That is the ending America chose for itself long ago.

The Brothers Grimm revised the story later, adding a huntsman, a rescue, the possibility of interruption. That version endures because it offers hope, but hope conditioned on recognition, timing, and decisive intervention. The distinction matters now because the world stands at the same fork in the path. One ending assumes restraint will appear on its own. The other understands that predators stop only when they are stopped.

Folklore endures for a reason.

For decades, American power cloaked itself in the language of protection while operating through extraction, coercion, and threat. That mask has slipped for audiences who were previously spared its impact. What remains is not confusion, but clarity. The wolf no longer hides its teeth. It speaks plainly. It takes openly. It dares those watching to mistake familiarity for safety once again.

The question facing the European Union, and every nation still tethered to American power, is not whether the story is real. It is which version they believe they are in. Perrault’s ending requires no further action, only patience and trust. Grimm’s demands vigilance, solidarity, and the willingness to intervene before the door closes.

For Black Americans, none of this feels theoretical. We have long functioned as this country’s unwilling early warning system. Not because of ideology, but because proximity sharpens perception. We learned early that American promises are conditional, that calm is often demanded precisely when violence is accelerating, and that moral language is frequently deployed to mask that structural violence. We warned domestically that voter suppression was not about security, that militarization was not about peace, that surveillance was not about safety. Those warnings were dismissed as grievance and divisive. They were assessments.

This is not alarmism. It is the lesson handed down, whether received or refused, with history left to speak for itself.

I’m writing this plainly, because anything else would be dishonest now, and to bear witness as someone who has seen what happens when people mistake silence for safety. This is not meant to provoke fear, but to strip away the comfort of plausible deniability. To our European counterparts, for the global south, and for any nation still treating the United States as a predictable partner, this is a warning worth taking seriously. The danger of unchecked power does not begin at the border. It begins wherever domination is mistaken for destiny.

In witness and with care,

Tasha Monroe

Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.

Writer & Editor, The Commons Dispatch