Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
American adoptions of foreign-born children have declined by 94% since 2004 – bad news for American soft power. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, America championed international adoption. The Pax Americana expanded opportunities for Americans to adopt children abroad, particularly from countries that had experienced destabilizing shocks like the Vietnam War or collapse of the Soviet Union. In total, America has welcomed 284,000 foreign-born children into American families, in many cases creating opportunities for human flourishing that were unlikely in the orphans’ home countries. In part, Americans’ willingness to adopt became a source of international soft power, magnifying American values, reflecting prosperity, and demonstrating the U.S. government’s diplomatic strength.
But governments that once facilitated the adoption of thousands of orphans – mainly Russia and China – now impose targeted restrictions or bans on American adoptions for geopolitical reasons. Historically, America has criticized foreign governments’ restriction of international adoptions, especially when their orphan populations are remarkably underserved like Romania in the early 2000s. Nonetheless, global adoption trends continue to decline. U.S. international adoptions dropped to a historical low in 2023. In contrast to the increasingly globalized world of the 1990s, modern global competition isolates nations and undermines one of the most important pillars of diplomatic relations: robust people-to-people ties.
American foreign policymakers should consider U.S. intercountry adoption trends to be a key indicator of the strength of American soft power worldwide. American soft power declines when rogue nations distort the globalized ecosystem in which people can move between countries freely and when Americans can no longer build stronger ties with host countries through international adoption. Russia and China’s strategy effectively holds orphans hostage to create political leverage against America and tarnish America’s reputation as a safe receiving country for these children, which reflects broader and more troubling international political trends. This playbook must be studied and thwarted before other countries replicate the same retrenchment strategy at the cost of human flourishing and international cooperation.
Global adoption privileges = American soft power
The extent to which a country can adopt children abroad reveals its implicit global ‘social credit score’ insofar as any sovereign country can decide which countries can and cannot adopt its citizens. Generally, the extent of intercountry adoptions reflects trust and cooperation between states and should be considered key metrics for assessing the health of foreign relations. The State Department has found that adoption-related cooperation strengthens bilateral relations between countries. And on a micro level, foreign adoptions can increase average Americans’ interest and stake in foreign affairs by emotionally connecting families to sending countries, resulting in more communication, travel, and understanding among peoples.
Somewhat analogous to the concept of American “passport privilege” resulting from strong American diplomacy, the expectation that Americans will be able to adopt children from foreign countries reflects the state of American soft power worldwide. The U.S. government reports that Americans adopted children from 60 countries in 2023, down from 64 in 2022. That year, laws enacted by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Russia, and Latvia effectively restricted or outlawed American adoptions of their children. But Russia stands out for its intentional efforts to sabotage American soft power and derail adoption cooperation for political purposes.
How Russia and China’s anti-American adoption policies undermine soft power
Since 2013, it has been illegal for Americans to adopt Russian children, mainly because of the Kremlin’s political gamesmanship. After the Soviet Union collapsed and glimmers of Russian liberalism opened relations with the United States, Americans adopted over 60,000 Russian children. Unifying Russians and Americans through adoption increased people-to-people diplomacy – a major win for U.S.-Russia relations following the Cold War. But politics got in the way. Russia periodically imposed moratoriums on American adoptions of Russian children, freezing all adoptions. Tensions culminated in 2012 when the United States passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Act which singled out Russian officials who committed human rights violations. Russia retaliated in part by banning American adoptions of Russian orphans under the auspices of protecting orphans’ human rights from abusive American parents and insufficient U.S. protections for children. On the global stage, Russia tried to save face by undermining American credibility and highlighting its hypocrisy regarding human rights issues. Russia’s adoption ban became a key marker of deteriorating relations between Moscow and D.C. It also foreshadowed a decade of Russian retrenchment. In 2024, Russia facilitated no foreign adoptions to any country, as outcry over Russia’s ban on American adoptions faded further from memory.
Likewise, China’s restrictions on American adoption appear to be politically motivated. China became the largest sending country for American adoptions in the 1990s but not without its own troubles. Chinese bureaucracy also created the longest wait times for American adoptions. China eventually paused American adoptions of Chinese orphans in 2020, statedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later, China formally banned all international adoptions. Chinese President Xi Jinping claimed to follow “international trends” aimed at bolstering domestic social support systems for orphans. If that sounds innocent, such trends embraced by Russia and China reflect competition with the United States and stand counter to globalization and mobility afforded by Pax Americana.
Russia and China’s strategies seem to be working, receiving relatively forgettable American responses. Once two of the largest sources of American adoptions, their adoption bans continue to communicate to the world that Americans should not be trusted to uphold basic human rights of foreign children. If that is true, then why should the United States be trusted to uphold human rights worldwide or to criticize the human rights policies of other countries? Russia and China’s policies continue to unjustly undermine American credibility and soft power at the expense of their own citizens.
Anti-American adoption policies reflect broader global trends
Beyond the loss of soft power, governments’ decisions to restrict adoptions to particular countries reflects political priorities and international trends that may threaten American interests and global stability. For example, U.S. policymakers should study the possibility that autocratic crackdowns on domestic populations – including orphans – are evidence of destabilizing demographic crises or preparation for conflict. Blanket adoption bans could be as practical as wanting to mitigate troubling demographic trends or maintain control over more people who could eventually support military operations. For example, Russia banned all American adoptions about one year before its military invaded Crimea, Ukraine. In 2024, China banned all international adoptions, and American intelligence has suggested that China could invade Taiwan as early as 2027. Intercountry adoption data should become a more prominent variable as U.S. policymakers evaluate both the health and trajectory of international relations and state of American soft power abroad.
As Russia and China retreat from the relatively open intercountry adoption models of the 1990s, the U.S. should expect other countries to study their playbook, especially if Russia and/or China promote a narrative that the United States is an unsafe place for international adoptees. Accordingly, U.S. policymakers should study recent adoption-related disputes and consider questions like: when Russia banned American adoptions, what did Russia gain and what did America lose? Was the American response sufficient? What could the United States do to re-open the lines of communication with Russia to resume international adoptions?
The United States must remain a global advocate for expanding intercountry adoption opportunities and upholding international laws and norms that protect children throughout the process. Likewise, it should prepare contingency plans if other countries’ major sending countries impose adoption moratoriums or bans for political gain. In the meantime, diplomats, lawmakers, American adoptive parents, and American adoptees should take pride in their unique power to connect countries and should advocate for the removal of these politically-motivated adoption bans.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.