Lord Palmerston's Principle
Babbin3, Jed
Lord Palmerston's Principle Y JED BABBIN As Winston Churchill said, the only one thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them. Over a century, America became used to having its...
...Second are the "in-play" nations...
...We need building blocks to help steady what already are zones of conflict—in the Middle East, in Africa, in Central and South America, in Southwest and Southeast Asia, and the Far East...
...Our strategy should be to build regional alliances to deal with terrorism and other security threats in their area, not globally...
...Between 1991 and 2003 Sad-dam's threat grew...
...A cornerstone of NATO for fifty years, Turkey may nonetheless be more comfortable today in a regional role...
...Both our military and our diplomatic resources are finite...
...Rome is a much nicer place, as is Madrid...
...In Central and South America, our interests lie in and around the Panama Canal, still a vital U.S...
...Going to war with an ad hoc coalition—especially one that includes some of the few remaining serious nations such as Britain, Australia, and Poland—is no failure of diplomacy, no diminution of our standing in the community of nations...
...France is now leading an effort to have the European Union form its own military alliance, in competition with NATO and excluding the United States...
...Which is why we need to limit our alliances to those nations that meet either of two criteria...
...Colombia—also part of the equation by virtue of geography—still has a huge part of its land under control of the FARC narco-terrorists...
...Terrorists are studying and applying the lessons of our vulnerability to drug trafficking...
...Schroder is out of office...
...CENTO, made up of Britain, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran—the United States was a "participant?' though not a member—fell apart after the Iranian revolution in 1979...
...Denmark and Portugal also have agreements with us...
...If Palmerston were our secretary of state today, he would likely not be too concerned with the spoilers of the United Nations or salving wounded egos in Paris and Berlin...
...If indictments were issued on those charges, Gen...
...Until Belgium becomes serious about defense, it, too, should not participate in NATO defense matters...
...We therefore need to devise criteria to identify those nations worth engaging in alliances...
...Turkey thwarted our plan for a northern front when France threatened its chance to join the European Union...
...Our long-term goal there should be a new version of CENTO, with Israel as a member...
...Among many of those in the Americas and elsewhere, we should be cultivating alliances that will provide a basis to fight terror, now and for the next several decades...
...The knuckle-rubbers who quail at the idea of pursuing our interests with ad hoc allies at our side seek shelter in the multilateralism that has failed us for the past two decades...
...Some do not...
...We should encourage his political opposition, and any nonmilitary pressure we can mount should be brought to bear...
...We now know that French officials told the Saddam regime everything they learned in private conversations with American generals and President Bush in the weeks before the war...
...France did that as well...
...Those in-play nations in which we have a serious interest should be able to ally themselves with us, but on different terms from those we offer military allies...
...Those nations should partly define the threat any new Middle Eastern alliance will have to face...
...We should tell the EU members in the most blunt terms that any who join such a competing group can no longer be NATO members...
...Other terrorist threats and aggressor nations such as Communist China must not be ignored...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JUNE/JULY 2003 for more than a decade...
...Though we have defense treaties with individual nations, NATO remains our only significant military alliance—even if it does now resemble the UN sanctions regime against Saddam's Iraq...
...American and British pilots risked their lives daily to enforce the "no-fly" zones, while the UN did precisely nothing to enforce its own mandates...
...There will be nations in which we need to base forces to defend against third-party adversaries...
...Above all, it is neither unilateralism nor an omen of American isolation from the civilized world...
...t, JUNE/JULY 2003 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 37...
...While they contemplate that, we will have an effective military alliance that can move against them if necessary...
...In Northern and Central Africa, no nations appear to meet either criterion for alliance...
...Any treaty of alliance should provide that if a nation fails to continue its investment in people, equipment, training—and joint training with U.S...
...But the fact that France has turned coat should be of concern only to those who can't stand being criticized in Le Monde...
...In the Iraq campaign, we didn't even have NATO...
...Some regions have the seeds of an affiance in them...
...But since Ronald Reagan sent a few F-ills to visit Muammar Qaddafi's tent one dark night twenty years ago, the war against terrorism has been one only we, the Brits, and the Israelis have chosen to fight...
...As soon as a new democratic government is established in Iraq, we should form with it—and with Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, and possibly the UAE—a new military alliance...
...Alliances will shift, new ones will arise, and old ones disappear...
...We may still have to move NATO Headquarters, but that would be fine...
...To them, multilateralism means acting only after receiving UN blessing, a fictional sine qua non of legitimacy...
...Some may not get done at all...
...We need to set some criteria for nations wishing to be part of a real alliance and distinguish them from others that may (or may not) join in future "coalitions of the willing:' Even if France had not been so desperate to preserve its Iraqi cash cow, and even if it wanted to support our camJUNE/JULY 2003 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 35 paign to oust Saddam, France lacks the military power to participate seriously in a major military campaign...
...The members would agree that American forces, whether or not based there, could operate within their borders, on due notice to respect their sovereignty...
...If an EU defense alliance is formed, and if NATO refuses to evolve, we can always go back to Plan A. We need Western Europe and it needs us...
...That alone turns France's status from friend to foe...
...The failure began when the first President Bush decided that the mandate of the UN—and the Saudis' blandishments—limited our ability to eliminate Saddam then and there...
...The fact that they are kept out will grate on their pride and may help bring them to reform...
...President Bush ordered the most-telegraphed military punch in American history only after giving the UN—and our former allies—many months to prove themselves useless...
...Others, like those we may have to develop in the Far East and in Central and South America, will be more limited...
...Instead, his plans would recognize the need for change in our military alliances and seek it, not resist it...
...There are at least two ways to start...
...We will need, instead, smaller regional alliances...
...Its problems can be resolved the easy way or the hard way...
...Other nations of the Middle East—notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt—cannot be allowed into such an alliance until they act in a substantial and sustained manner to end their support for global terror...
...Tommy Franks and other Americans...
...They generate good press, but accomplish little...
...Because terrorists are now using the same tactics to reach America that South American drug traffickers have for years, there is a confluence of interests in fighting drugs and fighting terror...
...And our guide should be the "Palmerston Principle:' I n the nineteenth century, when England ruled most of the world, Henry John Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston, served for many years as foreign secretary and later as prime minister...
...And we are—wisely—making more agreements with nations of Eastern Europe, bringing some into NATO...
...And, from what I've heard, they're pretty damned good...
...As a body, the UN was never a military alliance, more a second marriage after the League of Nations' divorce...
...These examples are but a few...
...Remembering Churchill, it will be wiser for us not to go it alone in circumstances in which we are able to go in good company...
...But we cannot wait...
...Though America's unmatched military power leaves us without peers, we want no vassals...
...Only an enemy would send its agents to Damascus in March to give EU passports to fleeing Saddamites...
...Any global alliance will be fettered by those nations whose concern about a problem is lessened by their lack of proximity to it...
...Four years later, the West realigned itself around the victorious allies...
...Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow?' Palmerston followed that principle in continuing to build and change alliances whenever necessary—ad hoc, in other words, "for this...
...For decades the French have not chosen to spend tax dollars on defense at an adult level...
...As the war on terror evolves, so will our relationships with other nations...
...Beginning with the NATO Treaty in April 1949, America has over the past half century signed thirteen defense and military-related treaties and entered into four other formal "exchanges" with other nations...
...Given that Saddam is gone, the sanctions are moot...
...And the words of the UN charter promising peace and abstinence from aggression were—as the vows of second marriages famously are—a triumph of hope over experience...
...As alliances evolve and national interests are pursued, our ministers should seek to perform their duty as Palmerston would have them do...
...We should pursue an alliance in every region where our interests lie...
...Many of them not only can be saved but can also be the building blocks for new, effective alliances...
...Our alliances should be small and focused on our interests and the mutual problems we face...
...Some, such as several Central and South American states, have great economic or geographic importance...
...I vote for the hard way...
...B eyond NATO, alliances will be harder to make, but just as important...
...In the buildup to the Iraq campaign, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson managed, with our help and with Britain's, to maneuver the question of NATO protection of Turkey into the alliance's Defence Review Committee, on which France—alone among NATO members—lacks a seat...
...Some, such as a rationalized NATO, can help outside their geographic areas...
...Notwithstanding past problems over Iraq, we should continue to support Turkey's NATO membership, while recognizing that increased free trade and a regionally based alliance with the United States may be an increasingly attractive—and more realistic—option...
...We can hope that Ankara has learned a lesson from its failure to cooperate in Iraq...
...Mexico—which should be an ally—is not one...
...Except for the Israelis—who had no choice—none of the other Western nations did so more than sporadically until 9/11...
...After that come the Middle East, Central and South America, the Far East, and others...
...If we can help Colombia free itself from FARC—by aggressive application of intelligence resources, among other things, we should...
...NATO now functions through several committees...
...Turkey's unrequited courtship of the European Union—which France has delayed and disrupted on grounds that are essentially racist—may make NATO an uncomfortable alliance...
...In forming these alliances, we need to be both careful and flexible...
...UN-based multilateralism failed spectacularly in Iraq Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration and is the author of the novel Legacy of Valor...
...But all those countries support it...
...Our interests there are negative and do not provide the necessities for an alliance...
...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JUNE/JULY 2003 Palmerston's Principle requires us to be engaged with Europe, and we are...
...The UN's failure to act should not have been a surprise...
...There can and should be other alliances in other places, wherever America's strategic interests are present...
...They are outright adversaries that seek to limit our ability to act in our own interests, even when those interests implicate survival...
...Now, some of our "former allies" don't even qualify for that amorphous label...
...No matter how many nations join us, the critics will say we are acting unilaterally and illegitimately...
...First priority is NATO...
...SEATO fell apart when its members failed to agree on intervention in Laos and Vietnam...
...Meanwhile, it may be possible to revive alliances in Central America and the more southern parts of South America...
...Poland, it must be remembered, sent special operations troops to fight alongside our Navy SEALs in Iraq...
...They argued then and now that the Coalition of the Willing more than forty nations—was nothing more than a fig leaf covering our shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later military action...
...Traffic of probable terrorists to the United States from the Middle East—including citizens of Egypt, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia—is now partly concealed by the fact that many of them travel on easily obtained Brazilian and other South American passports...
...To demonstrate our seriousness, we should call a meeting of the alliance for the purpose of voting out France and removing Belgium from the Defence Review Committee...
...With the Soviet Union and China holding permanent vetoes in the Security Council, the UN could never have been more...
...Babbin often appears as a talking warhead on the Fox News Channel and MSNBC and as guest host of Oliver North's Common Sense Radio...
...NATO's value can be much greater than it is now...
...First, if any nation wishes to sign a mutual defense treaty with the United States, it should be able to prove that in recent years its military budget was both sufficiently large and wisely invested to produce and maintain forces commensurate with the obligations likely to be undertaken...
...So many opponents of that campaign—such as Tom Daschle, who castigated the president for failing horribly in diplomacy by not getting UN support—said that we were unilateralists, cowboys, going it alone...
...There is no easy way to go about saving NATO or forming new alliances, but both must be done...
...It will be some years before most Arab nations will be willing to ally themselves with Israel...
...Grand alliances are for those who wish only to pronounce grandiose ideas...
...But the fact that the Soviet threat is gone—or at least evolved into whatever Russia may be—does not make irrelevant the need for an Atlantic alliance...
...Each of these nations meets the second criterion: having an economic, military, or geographic value...
...Nations that later deny those operational rights would forfeit membership...
...Iraq had signed a precursor agreement, but failed to join when its government became unstable...
...The Communist Chinese are buying it up piece by piece, and it is threatened by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan Castro wannabe...
...We need to reestablish our close relationship with Turkey...
...By re-forming NATO, ending French membership, and enhancing our ties to other nations, we can accomplish much more than by allowing NATO to wither on the vine...
...By legitimizing the UN sound stage, the victorious allies of World War II created a diplomatic laboratory, where the opponents of freedom could expand their reach and turn our allies into former allies or worse...
...The talking shop on Manhattan's East Side proved useful only to what then-ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick called the "blame America first" crowd, a U.S.-subsidized forum to vent its hatreds at no measurable diplomatic cost...
...The easy way would be to simply close NATO Headquarters in Brussels and open a new alliance without France, Belgium, and Germany (at least until Mr...
...We have a treaty with Spain, which has kept faith...
...security asset...
...There are many nations that can be of great assistance and are of considerable strategic value...
...Such nonsense cannot be tolerated...
...Few today even remember the other alliances NATO spawned—the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization (SEATO and CENTO, respectively), both of which became defunct in the 1970s...
...Though the Middle East is and will remain the focus of the war against terrorism, our attentions cannot stop there...
...If need be, put the NATO flag in a museum...
...It is up to us to find those that can work and make them germinate and grow...
...We need to find—in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, or elsewhere—building blocks for an alliance...
...We can rely on the fact that while these nations are under our consideration for an alliance, they are also under the consideration and possible influence of our adversaries...
...In Central and South America, we can do both...
...America is not some colossus bestriding the world...
...A regional alliance there can help control the flow of both drugs and terrorists into our country...
...In a speech to the House of Commons, he said, "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies...
...By the time the Iraq campaign began in earnest, the advantage of strategic surprise was long lost in pursuit of UN approval...
...It is that principle that must guide us in prosecuting the war on terror, which may take us everywhere Palmerston's England went and further...
...That has considerable appeal, but I also believe NATO is worth saving...
...It took us from November of last year through March to let UN multilateralism on Iraq fail redundantly...
...France marginalized itself years ago by ending military cooperation...
...Franks could be arrested on his way to a meeting at NATO Headquarters...
...In the Middle East, our surest and strongest ally is Israel...
...We could, conceivably, ditch all of the alliances we have now and start over...
...We have a strategic interest in fighting terror in, for example, the Sudan, Egypt, and Somalia...
...But since then, Belgium's courts—claiming global jurisdiction over war crimes—are considering war crimes charges against Gen...
...Even Germany, whose fate had been reversed at such great cost, became an ally, as did the newly democratic Japan...
...NATO has three of the same problems that the UN does: France, Belgium, and Germany...
...There can be no alliance with Venezuela until Chavez is gone...
...These countries, large and small, do not have the wherewithal to defend themselves...
...Germany, faced down forcefully, went along...
...Its longevity and the good faith of most of our NATO allies give it value far beyond the borders of Europe...
...As revolution swept Europe in 1848, Palmerston saw opportunity instead of disaster...
...Then invite Britain, Spain, Italy, and other former members—especially the nations of Eastern Europe—to form a new alliance with us...
...forces—that nation will be in default of its obligations, relieving us of the promise to come to its defense...
...We should be prospecting for allies among the in-play nations...
...For America, this is not a moment of alarm, of discovered weakness, but a moment of opportunity that may not come again for a hundred years...
...Turkey meets both criteria...
...We need to spend them wisely and in the priority our interests dictate...
...At various points, Palmerston—viewed by many, including Queen Victoria, as something of a renegade—had approached Russia, Germany, and even France in efforts to deal with different problems...
...When Russia switched sides in 1941, it became an ally of convenience...
...As a result, France is no longer a strategic—or for that matter, an economic—power, and its participation in any military operation would be of little consequence...
...Nations wishing to join that alliance would have to agree to fight terror internally and in the region and also to recognize Israel's right to exist...
...A Central/South American affiance—possibly starting with Costa Rica—would be of considerable value in stopping terrorism...
...Over a century, America became used to having its allies chosen for it...
...NATO should be saved and not allowed to fade away as have several other seemingly outmoded treaty organizations...
...Cuban opposition groups still lack the attention and support they should be getting...
...No single alliance can be counted on to deal with every problem...
...France, in particular, did everything it could to thwart us...
...In World Wars I and II, we were the latecomers...
...But Stalin's Russia—never a trusted partner—was rightly shunned for its imperial ambitions...
Vol. 36 • June 2003 • No. 3
