The Trouble with American Alliances
Lee on Aug 09 2008 at 6:14 pm | Filed under: Foreign affairs
Always demanding when they need you, useless and even obstructionist when you actually need them. Our friend Geoff Morrell can serve as something of a personification of that characteristic in fact:
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Georgians had requested U.S. help in moving their troops. But he said the Pentagon was looking for a way to assist without appearing to support Georgian military operations against the Russians.
(Los Angeles Times)
A little on why those troops are critical:
Sphere: Related ContentToday, roughly one-quarter of Georgia’s functional land forces are US-trained. The backbone of the Georgian army is seven infantry battalions raised from scratch and brought by the US Green Berets from boot camp to something quite close to NATO-standard combat readiness over the years, a mass of some 5,000 men.
Georgia’s government on Saturday called on those desert-hardened veterans, requesting the Pentagon release the elite 13th battalion to return home from the Middle East, to fight Russians in Ossetia.
First-line Georgian soldiers wear NATO uniforms, kevlar helmets and body armour matching US issue, and carry the US-manufactured M-16 automatic rifle — a dramatic turn away from the way most former Soviet republics outfit troops, with a mix of Soviet-era hand-me-downs and more recent Russian or Chinese gear.
(DPA)
Hey, if those same planes taking those troops home from Iraq will also take our people away from Georgia, I’ll accept it.
America and Iran supported and trained the Mujahedin (including bin Laden and his fellow Arab volunteers) of the 1980’s. The original Chechen separatists were Red Army veterans of Afghanistan, commanded by General Dudayev. Sadat abruptly expelled all Soviet personnel from Egypt while retaining everything they left behind. US forces completed Cuban-Soviet-initiated construction in Grenada and renovated Soviet bases in Somalia. The Ethiopian air force deployed aging MiG-23’s against OIC forces in Somalia with great success. My point is, mentors cannot remain ultimately responsible for the decisions made by their erstwhile understudies, and neither can the original makers and issuers of equipment once the original recipients trade them away or pass them down.
Firstly, that’s untrue as a point of fact. The Afghan Arabs of whom Osama bin Laden was a part, were independently financed by Saudi interests. The CIA’s program was focused on indigenous Mujahidin. As Milt Beardon –who ran the program in Pakistan in the late 80s– related, there was no lack of local volunteers, the Arabs had their own funds and were more than a little problematic as trainable recruits.
But, even if it were true, so what? On the other side, we gave the Soviets thousands of tanks, trucks, radar equipment, you-name-it in World War II. And it was more readily obvious at that time that the USSR was going to be a far more serious threat to the United States than bin Laden ever would be.
You fight the war in front of you. If you’re making security policy based on every conceivable “blowback” scenario, you won’t have a security policy, because everyone is potentially an enemy when power relationships and global dynamics change, as they inevitably will. Complaining about that, is complaining about reality.