The Ceuta Affair Tests American ‘Civilizationism’

Foreign Affairs What really happened in Spanish Africa last week? Photo by Marcos Moreno/Anadolu via Getty Images At the end of July, the Spanish exclave of Ceuta found itself on the receiving end of an invasion. Ceuta is, alongside its sister city Melilla and a few barren rocks along the Moroccan coastline, all that remains of a 600-year-old Iberian presence in North Africa. And last Thursday and Friday, more than 70,000 migrants surged into this small Spanish foothold, overwhelming the security forces and making themselves at home. In some sense, this was predictable. The prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, is perhaps the most pro-migration leader in Europe. In April of this year, his government enacted an astonishingly liberal—some might say certifiably insane—policy that will grant