Both Washington and Jefferson detested alliances. What did they know? From David Stockman at antiwar.com:
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.
In fact, the truth is more nearly the opposite – so it needs to be stated coarsely, almost defiantly. To wit, allies in today’s world are mostly an albatross, completely irrelevant to the military security of the American homeland and a major source of unnecessary friction and even outright conflict among the nations.
In a word, America is such an outsized economic and military Hegemon that all the little and mid-sized nation’s it has lined-up in formal and de facto alliances are inherently incentivized to pursue policies that minimize their own defense investments – even as they are also encouraged to throw diplomatic caution to the winds. That is, Washington’s “alliances” enable the domestic politicians or elected governments of these small allies to be more aggressive or confrontational vis-à-vis the “bad guys” designated by Washington than they surely would be if operating only upon their own steam.
For instance, the former Estonian prime minister between 2021 and 2024, Kaja Kallas, and now foreign affairs chief for the EU has been a loud-mouthed, vitriolic critic of Russia and hardline supporter of sending other people’s money [i.e. yours] to the support of the equally pointless proxy war against Russia on the Ukrainian steppes.
