Who Are Our (US) Allies?

[Dan Bidewell]

Being someone whom is of 75% Irish ancestry and has a fairly good sense of history, I will tell you that Ireland had it's reasons for engaging in Guerilla warfare with your country, going all the way back to the time when my ancestors were forced out of their homes by the potato famine. You may be a bit worried that a plastic bomb might be set off by an IRA splinter cell on your island and injure or kill a few dozen people (and I by no means support the IRA), but Iran seeks to wipe out the entire country of Israel. You do the math on which country is doing more to injure America and the rest of the world.

Norway's trade with America (particularly Oil) has been rather good, and they did send troops to aid in Afghanistan and Iraq. My criticisms of Germany have less to do with their lack of a foreign policy and more to do with the way they structure their government. I don't care how much they kiss our fannies, no socialist party is a friend of the US, and I will never acknowledge a socialistic country as a greater ally than one that is more economically free.

I don't approve of America's current foreign policy, so this is falling on deaf ears. And I'm not a person whom really cares what anyone in any other country thinks of me or anyone else, I am who I am, you can take it or leave it. But I will tell you that my country has been philosophically deteriorating for the past 150 years because of people in Europe (Germany in particular) who took pen and paper and wrote despotism into the laws of reason.

The issue has nothing to do with rights, because no state or country can possess rights, only individuals can. Collective opinions, held for their own sake, amount to nothing more than mob rule, be it American or otherwise. The American state has the obligation to protect the rights of the people it represents, it is the servant, not the master, or the citizens it holds.

I do not think the English colonisation is an argument for Irish nationalist terrorism any more thean the settling of the deserts of the Palestine is for Palestinian terror. There is no maths to do. I do not believe that terrorism can be measured in terms of the amount of people it kills. It is not an issue of quantity versus quality. It is all wrong.

Ireland has held, and does hold, bank accounts for the IRA.

There is also a lot more state-control of the economy in Ireland than in the UK - they have benefitted from EU aid and managed to create a welfare state along the Nordic model. Hardly free-market capitalism!

The structure of the German government was imposed on them by the NATO (US, British and French) powers. I believe a conservative was recently elected Chancellor?

I am not here to slag America off - I only want to point out that a country whose aims and ambitions do not exactly match America's should not be written off so quickly as "not an ally" - which it seems to me on this forum is being held as being the same thing as an enemy.

[softwareNerd]

I only want to point out that a country whose aims and ambitions do not exactly match America's should not be written off so quickly as "not an ally" - which it seems to me on this forum is being held as being the same thing as an enemy.

For the record, my own posts were in response to whether governments have rights to their own foreign policy, not to the issue of who is an ally. In that vein, the US government is guilty of violating rights too. Of course the moral equivalence folk (like Harry Belafonte) grossly evade the facts when they compare the U.S. to middle-eastern countries or even to terrorists! However, it's quite appropriate to compare the U.S. to most western European countries. If one is considering the world as a whole, the US is pretty close to western Europe.

As for which countries are "allies" of the U.S., the first question is: why formulate such a concept? A satisfactory answer to that question should yield a criteria.

[Dan Bidewell]

As for which countries are "allies" of the U.S., the first question is: why formulate such a concept? A satisfactory answer to that question should yield a criteria.

I think I understand you - I know I am quoting badly (it's Disraeli, the nineteenth century British prime-minister I think): "Britain has no friends, only interests"?

[Eurynomus]

The question of who are the allies of the US brings to my mind another question -- what are the terms of a proper alliance?

For instance, if you are to read Robert Tracinski's --at least I believe it was Tracinski... maybe it was another op-ed at www.aynrand.org-- reasoning for why we should have taken military action in the Middle East, he cites, among other things, that our ally, Israel, was being threatened.

But is it justifiable to go to war for another country, even if that country is our ally?

[gags]

But is it justifiable to go to war for another country, even if that country is our ally?

If we value our association with the ally and we deem that it is in our long-term interest to defend our ally, then we would be justified in going to war on their behalf. As with virtually all issues involving foreign relations, I would apply a strict standard of self interest to such a situation.