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Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Ok, our old "allies" aren't with us except for the UK and Australia and the UK likely will not be after its all said and done and Blair's gone. Who's left?
The way I see it, these old alliances don't make much sense for a new war. The French may be helping a little in 'Stan, but I think we've shown they can't be depended on. i don't have a problem with them not sending troops to Iraq if they don't want, but they shouldn't have tried to block the NATO trainers. They are not not supporting, they are actively working against. That's not an ally.
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I actually disagree about the UK and Blair. Remember, Blair is Labour (albeit "New Labour"). If the Tories were to take power... there are quite a few Tory wets who are old school conservatives (i.e., aristocratic and patrician) who dislike us crass loutish American boobs, but most Tories remember that they are the party of Churchill and Thatcher.
I would recommend rechecking what was actually at issue in the debate over NATO's role in Iraq.
As for "old" or "new" alliances, as a general rule we should not oversentimentalize alliances. The "coalition of the willing" had some 60+ members, but less than a half-dozen were willing to commit troops for the ground combat phase, and just under 40 joined the occupation. Of these, more than half joined solely for peacekeeping/reconstruction tasks, and eschewed a combat role other than in self-defense.
In Afghanistan, both ISAF and the CJTF have a lot of countries represented, but maybe a dozen have played a combat role. And only Canada, Britain, Italy and Romania have deployed conventional ground combat forces. The others have been SOF and close air support.
And no matter how many countries contribute to a multinational operation, the US will almost invariably shoulder the greatest share of the burden. This isn't just the case in "unpopular" wars like Iraq and it isn't even solely the result of so many countries' gutting of their military capabilities after the Cold War. It was the case in Korea and Desert Storm, both of which had UN mandates, strong US diplomacy, and broad international support (all those things the lack of which Kerry claims is at issue in Iraq).
I of course don't have a real solution. At heart I am an American pseudo-imperialist. I think we should have a grand strategy to gradually absorb the world.
The Canadian PM has talked somewhat of supplanting the UN structure with a somewhat more permanent version of the "coalition of the willing" - a semiformal grouping of the major advanced capitalist democracies. But he wants to invite a few non-advanced capitalist democracies who are otherwise "major" players like India, Brazil and Russia to the table, which will simply gut any possibility of effectiveness.
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BTW, you do realize that for many the United States is not always a dependable ally too?
The UK, France, Russia and their allies had stood up to the Central Powers for 3 years, and some 7 million soldiers had already been killed by the time the US decided to go "Over There" in 1917.
In 1939, as the totalitarian threat reached the tipping point, we again decided that the affairs of Europeans were not our concern, leaving the UK and France alone to face Hitler. In July 1940, the US recognized the Vichy government. On December 20, 1940, FDR dispatched Admiral Leahy as Ambassador to Vichy France. In his instructions, he told Leahy: "I have noticed with sympathetic interest the efforts of France to maintain its authority in its North African possessions and to improve their economic status. In your discussions you may say that your Government is prepared to assist in this regard in any appropriate way." Other than Free French and other small forces from occupied countries (Norwegians, Poles, Czechs, Belgians, etc.), the UK was left to face Germany alone as 1940 turned into 1941. It was not until November 8, 1942, that US relations with Vichy were terminated, and that was by Pierre Laval's action, not that of the US.
On April 25, 1943, after the Polish Government-in-exile demanded an International Red Cross investigation of the Katyn Forest massacre, the USSR severed relations. The US and UK continued to nominally recognize the GIE, and allowed it to raise some 200,000 soldiers to fight and die from Monte Cassino to Arnhem, but at diplomatic conferences they shunned the Poles and acquiesced to Soviet plans. On July 6, 1945, the sham was ended and the US and UK withdrew their recognition. Poland would remain a Soviet vassal until 1989.
In 1954, the US refused to aid the beleaguered French forces at Dienbienphu.
Speaking of "working against," in 1956, the US did not merely refuse to support the UK, France and Israel, but actively worked with the Soviets, helping Nasser secure the benefits of his nationalization of the Suez Canal.
Also in 1956, the Hungarians rose up against the Communists. Soviet troops went in to suppress the uprising. Eisenhower said "I feel with the Hungarian people." John Foster Dulles said "To all those suffering under communist slavery, let us say you can count on us." What did we do? Well, Time did make the Freedom Fighter the Man of the Year for 1956.
In April 1975, the US abandoned its allies in South Vietnam. Also in 1975, Iran and the US abandoned Iraq's Kurds, whose uprising we had been supporting.
In February 1984, the US withdrew from Lebanon, leaving French and Italian troops behind. And to this day, US remembrances of of Beirut almost invariably fail to mention that the there were two simultaneous truck bombings that October 1983 morning. One took the lives of 241 American Marines, sailors and soldiers; the other took the lives of 58 French paratroopers.
In early 1991, we encouraged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, hoping for a military coup that would get rid of the dictator but keep the dictatorship as a buffer against Iran. Taking us at our word, the Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south began a popular uprising. Fear of instability and Saudi opposition to Arab Shi'ite self-determination led us to abandon the rebels to Saddam's thugs.
In 1992, the US and Germany pushed forward recognition of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the ensuing civil war, we gradually went from humanitarian aid to enforcing a no-fly zone to limited attacks on Serb positions, before finally deploying IFOR. Meanwhile, Britain, France and Canada had led an ineffective UN peacekeeping force that might have been more effective with a strong US presence (IFOR/SFOR's successes lend some credibility to this possibility).
In 1994, we abandoned Somalia, leaving the country and the UN force we had been part of to their fate, and rendering the sacrifice of our warriors for nought.
There is obviously more to many of these events than this summary. Its purpose is to point out that there are different perspectives on a number of events, even forgetting those of the rabid anti-Americans, anti-Westerners or anti-capitalists.