America: totally sovereign or eternally colonized?

The Founding Fathers declared American independence in 1776. Freedom and sovereignty were born in that courageous moment. But is America still sovereign? Did we ever truly break away from incessant, international colonization?

Opinion-editorial by Summer Lane | June 12, 2026

America was once the “New World.”

She was representative of a burgeoning, unknown wilderness, rich with bountiful natural resources, and broadly unsettled from sea to shining sea. Such untapped potential sparked an enormous geopolitical struggle.

Major nations scrambled to colonize this untamed new land – Great Britain, of course, was the dominant colonizer. Spain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and even Russia (at one point) tried their hands at colonization. But this cacophony of settlements was doomed to fail. Eventually, American individualism won out, a war for independence was fought, and the 13 British colonies joined together on the East Coast to establish a permanent government.

Thus began the United States’ era of becoming, at least in the upper Western Hemisphere, the regional hegemon.

America’s sovereignty in chaos

What is sovereignty? Sovereignty is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as having “supreme power over a body politic,” or having “freedom from external control.” In other words, it means to be totally in control of one’s own country, destiny, laws, and policy. Total and complete autonomy.

If this is the standard of sovereignty, then the United States is no longer the autonomous nation it once was. In fact, there’s a case to be made that America is just as colonized as ever.

For example, foreign investors own more than 47 million acres of land in the United States, according to the USDA. While China certainly owns a fair amount of farmland here, it is Canada, surprisingly, that owns just over 14 million acres in the U.S., according to data compiled by LandApp.

But it’s not just that China or Canada owns land here; it’s that their interests have crept into American culture and politics. Who could forget the shocking exposure of a covert Chinese police station being run in Manhattan’s Chinatown in New York? How about the nearly 270,000 Chinese students studying at American universities right now? Or even more telling, a California mayor was recently exposed as acting as an alleged Chinese agent, per Fox News. Are there other local leaders like her, acting on behalf of a foreign nation?

And at least two illegal Chinese-linked biolabs have been uncovered on American soil post-COVID, leading to the burning question: how many more are there?

How about the unhealthy and unconscionable hold that lobbyists – many of them foreign-based – have over American lawmakers? According to OpenSecrets, foreign countries have spent over $6 billion on lobbying in the United States. But it is foreign proxies, doubtless, who have the most influence – the mega donors whose agendas are likely to be tied to external players.

Billionaire casino titan Miriam Adelson, for example, reportedly gave President Trump over $100 million through a super PAC during his 2024 reelection bid. Adelson was born in Israel and has strong Israel-first sympathies. Track AIPAC, a lobby tracking organization, has postulated that since 2020, President Trump has allegedly, at the very least, benefited from around $230 million from pro-Israel groups. That’s a lot of money.

Now, curiously, the United States finds itself joined in a difficult war with Israel – a war long envisioned by pro-Israel interest groups. And while it’s all well and good for Israelis – or the Chinese, or anyone else – to advocate for the needs of their own country, it poses one burning and unavoidable question: is America really sovereign if it is being influenced by foreign powers, taking foreign-linked money, and fighting wars that appear to be driven by foreign interests?

A new kind of colonization

America is so beautiful, so resource-rich, and so coveted that nations around the world have slowly but methodically worked to make inroads into this great country, seeking to take it for their own.

Influenced by foreign interests that range from Somalia (has anyone checked on Minnesota lately?) and Israel to China, sovereignty has become an abstract idea.

Of course, this was made plainly clear when then-President Joe Biden threw open America’s borders to the world, eradicating the concept of sovereignty in a single moment. Those years of open border policies invited foreign entities from around the globe to flood into the United States and, essentially, recolonize it. How many communities are now left unrecognizable? How many Americans have been killed by violent crime linked to illegal immigration?

It appears that America is being reshaped and reformed into something new, and unless the America First movement steps in to stop it, the U.S. will be little more than a thinly sliced pie, divvied up among many, many nations.

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