Back in 1776, America claimed a “separate and equal status” with other nations. But now, our alliances are usually based on an understanding that the other nation has fewer rights than we do. And in the end, America’s client states always end up getting sold out by the regime in Washington.
Foreign
affairs have accounted for a larger-than-usual share of notable events this
week, with newsfeeds blaring out headlines like the following:
US
Withdraws From Syria With Tail Between Legs!
Trump and
Syria: The Worst Week For US Foreign Policy Since The Iraq Invasion?
Trump’s
Betrayal Of The Kurds Will Echo For Generations.
To make a
long story short, when President Trump abruptly withdrew American troops from Syria,
Turkish forces poured across the border to secure the territory and finish off
the last of ISIS. Caught in the crossfire are the Kurds, the only faithful allies
that America and Israel ever had in that part of the world. Kurdistan’s brief
foray into self-government, which began when the regimes in Baghdad and
Damascus fled ISIS’ territory and left the Kurds to fight the Islamic State
alone, is now on the verge of being stamped beneath the Turkish boot.
This turn
of events is certainly dismaying, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise to
anybody with a memory longer than that of a goldfish. About two years ago, in
September of 2017, Kurdistan held an independence referendum with 93% voting in
favour. The United States, despite characterizing itself as Kurdistan’s ally,
refused to support Kurdish independence, as did most other countries, the main
exception being Israel.
Ever
since then, it’s been obvious that, while America might have an alliance of
convenience with Kurdistan, that alliance isn’t based on any concept of equal
rights. The Kurds do not, for instance, have the right to self-determination
that the Americans exercised in July of 1776.
And the outcries
that recent events have elicited from President Trump’s political rivals should
be taken for the crocodile tears that they are. Neither party’s mainstream has
ever supported Kurdish independence. That the Kurds should have less rights
than we do is a matter of agreement; the question is only how much less.
And now
the upshot of it all is that the nation which bore the brunt of the fighting in
the ground war against ISIS will learn the same bitter lesson which nations
like Taiwan have already learned – that America will always sell out its client
states.
No doubt the
opponents of Kurdish independence have reasons for their point of view. For one
thing, national identities based on ethnic heritage are considered backwards in
the world of today, where the inhabitants of the Middle East and Africa are
expected to instead direct their loyalty based on lines arbitrarily drawn on a
map by European colonial powers. And for the Kurds, those lines point toward
Baghdad and Damascus.
Another
reason is simply that Turkey, which is an important geopolitical partner of the
United States, doesn’t want an independent Kurdistan.
Still, if
one goes back and reads the American Declaration of Independence – the piece of
legislation on which our ideas about when a country has the right to become
independent ought to be based – one will find that appeasing the largest
nation in the area wasn’t a driving concern for us. And it wasn’t a driving
concern for other countries, either: France, Spain, and the Netherlands all
recognized American independence before the Revolutionary War was over.
And when
General Cornwallis was surrounded at Yorktown both on land and by sea, and he tried
to surrender to the French navy rather than endure the embarrassment of surrendering
his sword to the rebels, the French refused the offer. Cornwallis had to
surrender to Washington.
A little
over a century later, America found itself in a similar situation to the one
that France had been in. The Spanish-American war was near an end, and the
defeated Spanish force in Manilla, caught between an American fleet and the
land forces of Filipino independence leader Emilio Aguinaldo, ignored Aguinaldo
and surrendered to the Americans. The Americans not only accepted the surrender,
but reneged on their promise to support Philippine independence and spent the
next few years fighting a brutal counterinsurgency against their former allies,
at last reducing the fledgling Philippine republic to just one more American
territory.
Such transparent
landgrabs aren’t in fashion in the world of today, and in any case, the United
States is past the phase in its history where expansionism is seen as desirable.
Now, the process of betrayal simply consists of abandoning an ally to the
depredations of whichever large, nearby country believes that said ally has no
right to exist.
This is
what happened with Taiwan, when America suspended diplomatic relations in order
to appease a larger and wealthier new partner in Red China, and then bullied
the Taiwanese into giving up their nuclear program. Now Taiwan is defenceless against
the day when the Maoist regime finally decides that the time has come to retake
a territory whose allies have already decided that it deserves fewer rights
than they do.
This is
what is happening to the Kurds right now, and it’s what will probably also happen
to South Korea, once America no longer has the resources to keep a huge garrison
in that country and the South Koreans realize, all too late, that keeping Kim
Jong Un’s men out would have required a military that could stand on its own two
feet.
But there
is one country that is often mistaken for an American client state, even though
it doesn’t actually deserve that label. A country which has a close military alliance
with the United States and which, like Taiwan, is surrounded by enemies who
insist that it has no right to exist. But rather than relying solely on
American garrisons to protect itself, that country used universal conscription to
build the strongest military in the region. And that country also refused to be
bullied into not developing nuclear weapons.
The
country that I am talking about is, of course, Israel. And the reason that
Israel will probably continue to exist in the post-American world is because,
unlike Taiwan, South Korea, and Kurdistan, Israel has avoided becoming America’s
client state.

There is an old Arab joke:
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Why is it better to be an enemy of the British, rather than their friend?
Answer: Because if you are their enemy, they will try to buy you. But if you are their friend, they will try to sell you.