We’re A Very Dangerous Ally
The United States’ tendency towards chaotic foreign policy and the machinations of same have resulted in some shameful letting down of our allies at times. The example that first comes to mind is how we let the Kurds twist in the wind in ’93, but there are many many others. Sometimes it’s due to war weariness and our tendency to demobilize too far and get tired, such as the abortive attempt to aid the White Russians in their resistance against the Communists, an investment entirely too small after WWI that could have prevented enormous loss of life and world trouble later on. Other times it’s due to other things.
Max Boot details a few more in an LA Times article worth reading in its entirety.
Which kinda reminds me. The next two years, will we tire, falter and fail?
7 Responses to “We’re A Very Dangerous Ally”
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November 24th, 2006 at 6:29 am
Historically, the United States can be counted on to do one thing as a matter of policy: look after its own national interests, sooner or later. We have that in common with virtually every successful developed nation in the world.
An ugly but related truth is that once our policy objectives have been either achieved or abandoned, our interest in helping our allies achieve *their* policy objectives tends to wane rather quickly.
Who, pray tell, has historically been a more “steadfast” ally than the United States in this wide world?
November 24th, 2006 at 8:36 am
I’ll let Mr. Blankeley sorta define where I think we are at this crossroads period (fairly short-no link-sorry):
———————————————————–
MAKING THE LAST MISTAKE IN IRAQ
By Tony Blankley
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
———————————————————–
The decisions made on Iraq over the next few months will take the measure of
America’s maturity and sense of responsibility. Because, whether we like it
or not, our decisions — and our decisions alone — will determine
whether the barely containable murderous pathologies of the Middle East will
just be dumped into the face of humanity — or whether rational efforts
will be persisted at to contain and mitigate its civilization-threatening
forces.
We have the most profound obligation to attempt to calculate the
consequences of the impending American decision to wash our hands of the
Iraq unpleasantness. In that regard, the words of President Kennedy come to
mind: “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far
less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
If we, the most powerful force on the planet, in a fit of disappointment
and anger at our bungling policies to date, decide to shrug off our
responsibilities to the future, we will soon receive, and deserve, the
furious contempt of a terrified world. In fact, even those Americans who
today can’t wait to end our involvement in the “hopeless” war in Iraq, will
— when the consequences of our irresponsibility becomes manifest
— join the chorus of outrage.
Expedient Washington politicians take note: Your public is fickle. They
may cheer your decision today to get out of Iraq, but vote you out of office
tomorrow when they don’t like the results.
Much of the world (and a fair portion of the American public) may hate
us today for our alleged arrogance. But they will spit out our name with
contempt through time if we permit to be released the whirlwind that will
follow our exit.
I have heard it said (by conservatives and Republicans, as well as
others) that “if the Iraqis just want to murder each other, we should let
them. We offered them freedom and they didn’t want it.” If our decision on
Iraq was only about Iraq, that argument might be persuasive.
But if, as it is hard to imagine otherwise, our departure from Iraq
yields civil war, chaos, war lordism and terrorist safe havens — it is
very likely that Iran will lurch in to harvest their advantages, Turkey will
send in its army to stop an independent Kurdistan and Saudi Arabia, Egypt
and the other Sunni states will be sucked in to fend off Shi’ite Iran’s
hegemony. In that nightmare maelstrom, the 20 million barrels a day of oil
shipped from the Persian Gulf — and the world economy with it; will be
in daily risk of being cut off.
Nor is that all. Al Qaeda and other terrorists are already gloating that
they have whipped the “cowardly Americans” in Iraq. We will be seen (in fact
already are beginning to be seen) as a weak reed for moderate Muslims to
rely on in their hearts-and-mind struggle against the radical Islamists.
Osama bin Laden was right in one regard: People fear and follow the strong
horse; even more so in Middle Eastern culture where restraint is seen as
weakness and murder is seen as strength.
In the face of such a dreadful likelihood, the emerging Washington
consensus is an exercise in self-delusion unworthy of a 5-year-old. The
almost consensus Washington argument assumes that if only we will formally
talk with them, Iran and Syria will volunteer to pull our chestnuts out of
the fire while we start removing troops from Iraq. Such arguments exemplify
the witticism that when ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Iran has been our persistent enemy for 27 years; Syria longer. They may
well be glad to give us cover while we retreat — but that would merely
be an exercise in slightly delayed gratification; not self-denial, let alone
benignity. So long as Iran is ruled by its current radical Shi’ite
theocracy, she will be vigorously and violently undercutting any potentially
positive, peaceful forces in the region; and is already triggering a
prolonged clash with the terrified Sunni nations. Our absence from the
region will only make matters far worse.
We need to start undermining by all methods available that dangerous
Iranian regime — as the Iranian people, free to express and implement
their own opinions and policies, are our greatest natural allies in the
Muslim Middle East.
We have only two choices: Get out and let the ensuing Middle East
firestorm enflame the wider world; or stay and with shrewder policies and
growing material strength manage and contain the danger.
Those who call themselves realists are the least realistic. Their great
unreality is that they can’t imagine that the passions of the people; for
good or ill; are to be reckoned with. Thus it was they who for half a
century supported and exploited the Middle East dictators who caused the
Islamist pathologies that threaten the world today. It is they who will do
business with the corrupt dictators to the very minute that they are
overthrown by the Islamist mobs. They will keep the cash register humming
until it is flooded with blood. The “realists’ ” unjustified conceit is,
today, the most dangerous pathology facing America.
As in all struggles, each side will make mistakes. We have certainly
made several. But as the last century’s great chess master Savielly
Grigorievitch Tartakower once famously observed: “Victory goes to the player
who makes the next-to-last mistake.” Retreating from Iraq would be the last
mistake.”
November 24th, 2006 at 9:12 am
Of course Mr Boot ignores the buffonery of the individual populations in just about all of his examples. South Vietnam’s corruption in particular as well as Iraq’s continuing inability to put their useless religion behind them. What he is really pointing out is that the US gets all of the burdens of empire without any of the perks. We gave away territory that was ours by right (Panama Canal and the Philippines…) and refused to support our European partners in keeping theirs.
November 26th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Here’s an interesting related question:
Back, say, in the 1980s, was it bad policy to “abandon” our allies such as Saddam (who we aided during the Iran-Iraq War) and the mujahideen (who we offered similar aid to in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan?)
Hell, we reflagged Iraqi oil tankers as US vessels, making an attack on those tankers an act of war against the US and guaranteeing a revenue stream for Iraq’s government; how much snugglier with Saddam could we have gotten?
Did we unwisely “abandon” these allies once they served our temporary purposes?
Or was it a mistake (of the Reagan administration) to have ever have made alliance with them in the first place?
After all, it’s not disputed by any serious person that matériel that we sold or provided our “allies” in this era wound up being used against innocents, e.g. the Kurds in Saddam’s case, and against us and our longer-term allies, in Al Qaeda’s case, as they inherited a lot of leftovers from the Afghani campaigns.
What kinds of “allies” d’you reckon we have in Iraq right about now, aside from the Kurds?
November 26th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Correction to the above: we reflagged Kuwaiti tankers that were heading to and from Iraqi ports, but the net effect of protecting Iraqi income and snuggling up with Saddam was the same.
November 26th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Key difference here between “flags of convenience” and allies. Sure, there are foibles and changes–and temporary allies are different from our treatment of, say, the Montagnards, or the Philippine comrades-in-arms who fought in our uniform and were abandoned when inconvenient, or Czechoslovakia 1936.
Sometimes we mean it and change our mind–or our administration.
May 9th, 2011 at 1:39 am
Dear Chap,
I think that history is reapiting itself all the time. Already 5 years have past from your original post and the same story is happening in the midle east and north Afrika. Who can forget Libya and Kadafi?