Uncle Sam’s Playground
The American Conservative · R · trust 29/100
Introducing the November/December 2026 issue of The American Conservative.
Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... One of the upshots of the globalist era is novel and surprising combinations. Immigrants from the deserts of Somalia concentrate in frigid Minnesota, where they have proceeded to pillage the welfare system (as Roger McGrath warned they would in a November 2002 issue of The American Conservative , when Nick Shirley was seven months old). And, as the Latin American right tries to ingratiate itself to its pro-Israel Yankee counterpart, the presidents of Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, among others, discover a fresh commitment to Zionism and deepening bilateral relations with Jerusalem. Juan Rojas is here to tell this strange tale in his cover story for the issue. As right-of-center parties surge in popularity and power across the Western Hemisphere, his findings will only grow in relevance.
The unintended consequences of American hegemony and how we have chosen to use it are a recurring theme in this issue. Jennifer Kavanagh presents a sober analysis of the United States’ continued exposure in the Russia–Ukraine War, and how we can extract ourselves in the coming year. Andrew Day, TAC’s senior editor, writes about how American policy, including our war advertised as a check on Iran’s nuclear program, has actually encouraged nuclear proliferation. Daniel DePetris examines how that very war may result in American retrenchment and a reorientation of foreign-policy priorities; Luke Nicastro, senior editor, surveys some new left-wing proposals for what form that reorientation might take. And our founding editor, Scott McConnell, reviews a new book on the Israel lobby’s continued influence on American politics and policy.
The world is, however, very large and very old, and not everything happens purely under the auspices of Washington. Jude Russo, managing editor, writes about the life and times of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the future of Turkish politics. Will Collins reports from a strange cultural festival in Hungary, where the fringe cultural theory of Turanism unites hobbyists from the Balkans to Mongolia.
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Jude Russo is the managing editor of The American Conservative and a contributing editor of The New York Sun . He is a 2024–25 James Madison Fellow at Hillsdale College and was named one of the ISI Top 20 Under 30 for 2024.
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