Entangled Alliances
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”
– George Washington
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. Entangling alliances with none.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Flowers bloom, pollen builds, and temperatures rise. Bees bounce from bush to blossom, as branches burst with birds and buds.
On the Vernal equinox, the earth enjoys a fleeting balance. Dark and light, bull and bear, red and white… all continue the eternal quest for an elusive crown.
But some stories are inordinately skewed, certain coins show only one side. In this brief moment of precarious equilibrium, let’s even the scale with some forbidden thoughts.
Origin Story
The Second World War is the origin story of the international “rules-based order”.
A global conflagration that took 70 million lives, unleashed nuclear weapons, laid waste to much of the world, and caused eight decades of proxy conflicts is known as “the good war”.
Its supposed “moral” is that liberal alliances are needed, and must deploy force to thwart acts (or potential acts) of rogue aggression or racial prejudice.
This has been called the “load-bearing myth” of World War II. It’s the basis for every subsequent military intervention, and for obligating Americans to defend Israel no matter what.
For these reasons, the greatest catastrophe in human history can never be questioned. Nor can we remind each other that it started a couple decades earlier, by intervention rather than reticence.
We must assume it’s always Munich 1938… but never Sarajevo 1914. The former lesson is almost always misunderstood. The latter is frequently forgotten, and repeatedly re-learned.
That seems to be happening again.
Those who think it unwise to continue the Ukraine war are maligned as sniveling cowards and a craven appeasers… just as anyone who questions US support for Israel’s government is reflexively smeared as an implicit “anti-semite” (if not an overt one). It’s easier to dismiss skeptics by impugning their motives than to engage them by addressing their arguments.
Those who want to end the killing in Ukraine are derided as “Neville Chamberlains”. This is a tired tactic, but a predictable one.
Whether Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, or Vladimir Putin… anyone who dares defy US hegemony becomes a new “Hitler”, to be aggressively resisted by wannabe Churchills.
But invoking “Chamberlain” is an odd insult, particularly from people who insist “we” must fight to defend the Ukraine.
Neville Chamberlain wasn’t the peacenik they presume. He was the Prime Minister who gave the disastrous security guarantee to Poland. The “Chamberlains” in the current conflict are those who would do the same for the Ukraine.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of them. Many condemned President Trump for daring to talk to Putin, much less deal with him. But that’s diplomacy. It’s what leaders
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
