Why are America's allies so consistently pathetic?

In the unlikely event that I was ever to become persuaded to adopt the Paul/Buchanan isolationist approach to the world, there could only be one possible cause: our pathetic allies.

All take, no give. There are exceptions, of course- allied soldiers fighting and dying alongside ours in the protection of our common security in Afghanistan, for example, or those moments when we merely bear the heaviest part of the load in a collective action like the First Gulf War or Kosovo- but  it must be nice to be able to have a nice, lean budget because somebody else will see to your defense needs. And they're ready to badmouth us at the drop of a hat- and yet, when their bacon is in the fire, to whom do they look to pull it out?

Yes, as bizarre, unhistorical and unrealistic as the paleoconservative avoidance of any real foreign policy may be, every time I hear a Canadian or an Englishman or a German or- sacre bleu!- a Frenchman wax snarky about the United States, there is this evil little voice inside me that says that we should abrogate all of our treaties, cancel all our alliances, deal with the world as we jolly well please and let our sometime "friends" go hang.

But then I wake up and realize that while some of them might do exactly that in our place, we're made of different stuff. And I remember the Canadian and British and German friends I have who aren't jerks, whom I am proud to have as friends, and whom I'm glad to think of as allies of my country.

It's just that if we stab our friends in the back, it's generally- not always, but generally- after having shed a lot of blood and squandered a lot of treasure on their behalf first.

Or as an aberration, while being temporarily  led by somebody who is clueless.

HT: Real Clear World

Comments