2003 Year in Review

Allies? Maybe. Friends? No.

As individuals, we Americans are shamelessly naïve about the nature of friendship. We insist that every one with whom we have the slightest acquaintance be our friend. We introduce our co-workers as friends although our relationship is nothing more than friendly; we look upon our neighbors as friends although our meetings may be nothing more than over-the-fence conversations or a coming together to do a common community task. If our gestures at friendship are spurned, we take it to heart: “What is wrong with me? Why don’t they love me?” In severe cases of rejection, we seek counseling or therapy to mollify our sense of insecurity. Other people must like us, love us, respect us – be our friends.

We suffer this same confusion as a nation. Why are some of our international friends against us in our push to rid the Middle East and the world of a ruthless dictator, Saddam Hussein? Our European allies and supposed friends the French and the Germans seem determined to undermine the American push on Iraq. The Russians, our new friend in the war on terrorism, is equally opposed to any U. S. intervention in Iraq to bring about a regime change. What could have brought on the change of heart with Belgium and Turkey, our small, but trusted friends?

The United States needs to realize that as the greatest power in the world it has no friends. For that matter, nations and states do not have friends; they have allies. Like neighbors coming together to do a common community task, so nations ally themselves with other nations in order to take a common action, beneficial to each member of the alliance. Once the common task is completed or the common goal is achieved, then nations, like neighbors, return to their own small worlds. When the need arises, nations again form alliances, often new and often with different members. We are at such a point in international history when old alliances are breaking apart and new alliances are forming because of new conditions.

Essentially, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is dead. The reasons that brought it into existence and maintained its spirit for five decades no longer exist. The Soviet Union, the Evil Empire, has passed into the inglorious dustbin of history, taking with it the practice, if not the theory, of Communism. With the addition of former Soviet states into the organization, the name itself is no longer indicative of its true nature. It is no longer north Atlantic, nor a treaty organization, but rather an old bureaucratic complex of indecision. What is it to do but fade away since it raison d’etre is gone?

A united Germany and an effete France no longer have a common cause with the United States. In real terms, these two nations of old Europe are in competition with the U. S. for economic access to and control over the emerging states of Eastern Europe. American capital is pouring into these countries as are German factories and French products. In addition, along with Russia, these sunshine allies have maintained close ties with Iraq despite the imposition of an embargo by the United Nations and have considerable business and political investments in Iraq. Each is seeking what is best for its own interests, and those interests are at odds with those of the United States.

Feeble attempts at European unification have yielded to date a common currency – the Euro – and fewer border restrictions. The Germans hope a strong deutsche mark will give them an economic hegemony over Europe they failed to achieve militarily in World War II. France, with a declining population and aware of its own demise as a world leader, nevertheless, has enough oomph left to create problems for the United States within the United Nations. Russia, militarily weak and debt-ridden, wants American cooperation in its war against Chechen rebels, but promises to veto any war resolution that threatens its Iraqi investments.

None of these European interests coincide with the best interests of the United States. The presence of a strong United States no longer represents to these countries a deterrent against Soviet aggression and communist domination of mainland Europe. The United States, because it stands alone, militarily supreme and economically powerful, is no friend, no trusted ally, but a competitor whom these nations, in alliance with one another, must confront. We have done such a good job of securing European safety that the very nations we salvaged from the scrapheap of a world war now see us as the new enemy.

Nations do not form friendships; they form alliances. Like neighbors, they come together to solve common problems, then return to their own spheres of interest. We should not put ourselves through a period of national self-doubt because we fear the loss of friendships that never existed. We as a nation are no longer youngsters seeking constant approval; we are a great nation, not an adolescent ‘bully.’ We should act in our own best interests and rest assured that our best interests would coincide with those of other nations. We won’t make new friends, but we will find new allies.

by William Driver, Guest Columnist
March 10, 2003