Trump’s Captive Nations Week Proclamation Focuses More on Threats in US than on Those Elsewhere

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 20 – Since the US Congress in 1959 required that the president declare the third week of July Captive Nations Week, the content of those declarations have evolved as the world has changed and as US policy has as well. Up until the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the USSR, they focused on peoples being repressed by communist governments there.

            Then, since the victories over communism in 1989 and 1991, these proclamations focused in the first instance on the often tragic situations of peoples living in the remaining communist countries, in particular China. But in the last several years, these presidential messages have moved in two new and very different directions.

            In 2022, then-president Joe Biden broadened the targets of the message from those who continue to call themselves communist to all those who act as the communists have mindful that communism is evil not because of its name but because of its action (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/biden-reinvigorates-captive-nations.html).  

In his proclamation Biden made three key points: First, Captive Nations Week is not about anti-communism per se but rather against repression, regardless of what the states carrying it out call themselves. Only three of the regimes he lists among the world’s most repressive are communist – Cuba, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China.

            The other six are either former communist countries or have never been communist – Russia, Iran, Belarus, Syria, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – and it is no accident that the US president listed Russia first among all these countries, not because of its communist roots but because of its continuing imperialist and repressive behavior.

            Second, Biden was explicit that governments which repress their peoples at home as all nine of these countries do seek to repress others abroad through various kinds of repression. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is only the most obvious case of this; and it is no surprise in the current environment that the American president focuses on that.

            And third, and this may be the most important aspect of his message, Biden made it clear that Americans can’t remain unconcerned about such repressive be it within countries or between them and their neighbors. They must “stand in solidarity with the brave human rights and pro-democracy advocates around the world.”

            In his proclamation this week, President Donald Trump goes in a different direction. He does not mention a single country communist or not for attention with one singular and unprecedented exception. He says that the American commitment to the cause of liberty must “hold firm” not just abroad but “at home as well” (whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/07/captive-nations-week-2026/).

            “Today,” President Trump says, “communism remains the gravest threat our Nation faces, and my Administration is confronting it with relentless determination.  Under my leadership, we are defending the sacred rights at the heart of our Republic:  life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the freedom to worship Almighty God without fear.”

“That same promise drives us to usher in a new Golden Age of prosperity, safeguarding the free market that fuels our greatness and unleashing the boundless abundance of our economy for every citizen,” Trump continues, arguing that by “preserving these blessings, America offers hope to every captive people who dream of sharing in them and to the nations yearning to be free.”

 President Trump continues: “For over 250 years, our Nation has stood as the world’s beacon of liberty, and during Captive Nations Week, we vow never to forget the oppressed suffering under communist regimes.  America will never be a communist country, and we will never bow to socialism or the evil ideologies that seek to destroy the essence of who we are as a people and what we stand for as a Nation.”

And he concludes: “We stand with all who yearn to breathe free, are imprisoned for speaking truth, punished for their faith, and denied the abundance that liberty alone can bring.  Together, we will continue to champion peace, prosperity, sovereignty, religious liberty, and human dignity around the world – and as long as America stands, the cause of freedom will never be extinguished.”