With the arrival of Vice President Biden in Israel today, the Israeli government acted to remind poor Biden that it and not the government he represents is America’s boss. There to push the eternally useless “peace process” and to beg the Israelis not to attack Iran, Biden was met with the announcement of Israel’s authorization for another spate of land-stealing, settlement construction. The message for Biden is, of course, remember that Israel is the boss and that U.S. citizen Israeli Firsters fund the campaigns of many Democratic and Republican congressional candidates. Poor Biden, the Israelis have him and all other U.S. political “leaders” by the neck. All Biden can do is tug his forelock — if he has enough hair left — and like the Baboo in Kipling’s “The Man Who Would be King” declare “Thank you, Sir” as the Israelis kick him off the train.This is more business as usual for the non-sovereign U.S. government, and the American people must by now realize that their soldier-children will be taken to war automatically if Israel decides to attack Iran. In regard to Israel it can be said as it was in the era of the British Empire: “If the King is at war, the Empire is at war.” For America, the pathetic truth is that if Israel is at war, the United States is at war.

But Israel is not alone in its ability to drag America into war without its citizens’ approval. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War U.S. leaders have expanded such automatic war commitments. NATO, for example, has been greatly expanded and the trip-wire for war in Europe is now stretched over a far broader area than ever before. U.S. and European leaders also eagerly engaged in the theft of Serbia’s province of Kosovo — sacred territory for the Orthodox Serbs — and gave it to the province’s Muslim population as an independent state. So when the Serbs eventually decide to take back the land that is properly and legally theirs, the United States will be bound to try to defend the undefendable Muslim nation-state it foolishly helped to create in Europe.

In Asia, Washington continues to be bound by a mutual assistance treaty with Thailand, a nation troubled by a slowly but steadily growing Islamist insurgency in its southern provinces. And, of course, there is Taiwan, the existence of which we have long guaranteed with political and military commitments, even while we have placed control over much of the U.S. economy in the hands of China, the funder of our runaway national debt and the eternal and lethal enemy of an independent Taiwan.

On top of these, there are the obvious U.S. military commitments that will be triggered if any revolt or other form of disturbance seriously curtails the production of oil on the Arabian Peninsula or in the Gulf of Guinea.

Each of the foregoing are instances where the sovereignty of the United States to decide whether or not to go to war has been knowingly compromised by America’s governing class. In the areas of issuing blank checks for war and refusing to control its own international borders, the federal government — under both parties — has made a hollow shell of America’s sovereignty and cannon-fodder of its soldier-children.