Why America Don’t Need No Stinkin’ “Allies”, Part 1

OK, the title is a bit crude and is deliberately mocking in tone. But it has to be because there is a deeply-entrenched, almost sacred presumption embedded in the nation’s foreign policy catechism that “allies”, “alliances” and “coalitions of the willing” are the be-all-and-end-all of enlightened, necessary and effective foreign policy.

American policy-makers and diplomats perforce should therefore never leave these shores for the wider world without them. This dogma perhaps reached its epitome in Secretary of State James Baker’s “coalition of the willing” during the utterly pointless first Gulf War of 1991 and has plagued us ever since. Unfortunately.