Mount Vernon, Virginia November 14, in the Year of our Lord 2025

My Fellow Citizens of These United States,I return not in flesh, but in spirit, summoned by the anxious whispers of a people once more entangled in the toils of foreign ambition, and divided by passions which threaten the sacred Union I labored to establish.When I took leave of public life in the year 1796, I warned you—with the earnestness of a father to his children—against permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. I counseled that your commercial relations should be wide, but your political connections few; that you should honor existing engagements, yet form no new chains to bind your destiny to the caprice, rivalship, or ruin of distant empires.Observe now the fruits of disregarding this counsel.You have bound yourselves in a perpetual league with the nations of Europe—NATO, you call it—whereby an insult to one is deemed an injury to all. Thus, the quarrels of Poles, Balts, or Scandinavians—matters wholly foreign to your peace—drag your sons and your treasure into wars not of your choosing. Did I not warn that Europe’s controversies are essentially foreign to your concerns? Yet you stand upon her ground, your fleets in her seas, your armies in her deserts, your purse open to her endless demands.You have fought twenty years in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spilled rivers of blood in the sands of Iraq, not for defense of your own soil, but to reshape the governments of strangers according to your own image. This is the very “interweaving of destiny” I implored you to shun. Temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies—yes, I allowed. But permanent occupation? Nation-building by force of arms? These are the artificial ties that sap your strength and invite the contempt of mankind.You bestow billions in tribute—not loans, but gifts—upon nations near and far, expecting gratitude in return. Did I not declare it folly to look for disinterested favors from another nation? Such largesse breeds not alliance, but dependence; not respect, but resentment. The receiver scorns the giver, and the giver grows weary of the burden.You entangle your prosperity with the ambitions of a distant empire in the East—China, you name it—whose workshops flood your markets, whose debts you hold, whose ports your navy shadows. Commercial relations? Yes, and wisely so. But when commerce becomes strategic dependence—when your medicines, your machines, your very means of defense rely upon a rival power—you have quit your own ground. Your liberty is no longer your own.You submit your sovereignty to councils of nations—the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the tribunals of Europe—where foreign judges and distant bureaucrats presume to bind American law. Did I not caution that the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake against the insidious wiles of foreign influence? Yet you surrender your birthright for the applause of strangers.Hear me once more:

• Trade with all, ally with none permanently. Let your merchants cross every ocean, but let your soldiers defend only American soil—unless a clear and present danger threatens your own shores.
• Honor treaties made in good faith, but make no new ones that mortgage your future.
• Cultivate strength at home—a navy to command your coasts, a militia to secure your frontiers—so that neutrality, when you choose it, shall be respected.
• Beware both inveterate antipathies and passionate attachments. Hate not Russia for her czars, nor love France for her revolutions. Let policy, not passion, guide your course.
• Above all, preserve the Union. Foreign powers delight in your divisions—on tariffs, on borders, on the very meaning of your laws. A house divided invites the wolf.

I see a nation rich beyond the dreams of 1776, yet anxious, indebted, and overextended. Your enemies are few, your strength immense—if you would but trust in yourselves. Why stand upon foreign ground? Why entangle your peace in the toils of ambition not your own?Return, my countrymen, to the simple maxim: America first in interest, in affection, and in policy—not from pride, but from prudence; not from isolation, but from independence.May Providence, which has so often smiled upon this land, guide you back to the exalted justice and benevolence worthy of a free people.I remain, as ever, Your obedient servant, G. Washington