We all know that based on what the main stream media is saying (includes conservative and liberal voices) that our relationship with our allies is either the best it has ever been or the worst. That our current president is destabilizing the world with his rhetoric or is gaining closer relationships with our allies and making our enemies fear us.
While I am sure most can at least on a rudimentary level back up their claims one way or another. I say this with a heavy heart and quite honestly I hate having to say this as of 2018, but both sides are wrong. Instead a third option more accurately reflects the truth of our standing on the world stage.
Let me explain why.
On the issue of destabilizing the world. The world always was and is a hot mess, I believe, objectively, you can see that we have less issues in areas of the world we are directly involved. Examples being North Korea in particular. News coming out that we are in beginning stages of negotiations with taliban. Iran has less influence around the middle east. These are all obvious signs that the world is not falling apart a the liberals and liberal media claim.
While I am more sympathetic to the conservative line of thought, I still think they make a critical error. Who is an ally? I believe the term has become watered down to meaning nothing. As well as the term enemy. What is an ally? Is it someone we have semi-open and friendly trade relationships with? Semi-open military agreements? The whole idea that we have any true allies in 2018 is laughable. Name me any nation that you can with 100% certainty would commit ground troops and thousands of lives to save us if we were ever caught in civil war or invaded by a foreign power. We cannot even reliably count on our "allies" to vote with us on UN resolutions or pay dues towards NATO.
This is an ally in the conservative mind?
No, the US has had no true ally in nearly all of its existance. How many of our allies would stay on friendly terms if we didn't have so much economic and military strength? I would be willing to bet few to none.
Germany pits us against Russia regularly when their is no need to do so. Israel has us do a majority of the work for them in the middle east when they are perfectly capable of doing a majority of it, and most of our other allies regularly defy us on trade and openly close their markets or make it difficult to enter their markets. They do this and will still accept our dollars which is basically slapping us then asking us to pay for the privilege of being slapped by their hand.
Our supposed enemies are rarely that obvious or blatantly rude to us. Iran possibly being one of the notable exceptions. China? They will remain friendly with us as long as we stay strong. Our economy is not dependent on theirs, but theirs is very much on ours. Russia has some common interests with us and some disagreements…hardly considered an enemy in the classic definition.
In short, let us stop with this generalization of the terms ally and enemy. Instead deal with every nation as a unique identity that needs ti be approached differently every time. Otherwise we will fall for the very trap our first president warned us about watch out for entangling alliances.
"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world" George Washington's Farewell Address to us.
Let us heed that warning. If we look back since World War 2 what benefit has our country gotten getting overly involved with European bickering? A bunch of ungrateful louts who regularly tell American's how superior they are to them.
Americans need to decide whether the supposed allies that we have are truely willing to put their lives on the line for American lives…my gut tells me far less than we like to think would.
So I am calling all Americans to start moving away from party lines and start thinking in terms of national lines. We need a period of rediscovering the American spirit. How do we do that? Well, a start would be to not fight other nation's battles for them. Then when those nations are ready to sit down and talk maybe then we can reevaluate how America does business with the world.
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