america and her allies
A PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES
DAVID
SOLWAY
David
Solway is the author of The Big Lie: On Terror,
Antisemitism, and Identity. His editorials appear regularly
in FRONTPAGEMAG.COM and
Pajamas Media. He
speaks about his latest book, Hear,
O Israel! (Mantua Books), at frontpage.com.
For several years, my family and I used to summer in the mountain
hamlet of the small Greek island of Alonissos, where we had
rented a house near the single village restaurant, run by a
plump, bustling woman who went by the nickname of Kyratsoula.
We and a couple of friends were generally her only customers
until the brief tourist season arrived, when all nine outdoor
tables would be occupied by a gaggle of passers-through. One
memorable evening at the height of the season, a flustered Kyratsoula
knocked on our door, explained she was behind schedule, and
asked to borrow a potato peeler which she could use to prepare
the supper fries rather than the standard, dull, slow-working
knife. As we were about to leave for the restaurant ourselves,
we brought the coveted implement with us, took our usual table,
and ordered several plates of fries to accompany the meal, expecting
to be served quickly since it was still early and we were the
only ones there.
But
within the next ten or fifteen minutes, the terrace had filled
up, and one table after another was gradually festooned with
heaping plates of French fries. An hour elapsed and still our
meal had not appeared. More time passed, and both our kids were
by now asleep on the banquette. We were in fact the last table
to be served. Since we were long residents on the island, had
known Kyratsoula for two or three years, were her steadiest
clients, and had also provided the potato peeler—that
is, since we were friends—we could be safely ignored and
treated like interlopers, our hunger subordinated to the appetites
of strangers who would be gone tomorrow. After all, according
to this way of thinking, what are friends for but to be scanted,
exploited or abused?
Mutatis
mutandis, this just about sums up the nature of American foreign
policy on the world stage today. A Kyratsoulan America under
the stewardship of Barack Obama practices outreach to non-client
nations while, in the words of Richard Fernandez, “slapping
around” friends and allies — Poland, the Czech Republic,
Honduras, Columbia and, most emphatically, Israel.
“Over
the long haul,” Fernandez writes, “international
relations are about the keeping, not the wooing.” Indeed,
so are all relations. Kyratsoula wooed her passing strangers
and so failed to keep her most reliable customers, for when
the season had started to taper off and her tables were more
or less empty, we were already patronizing Kyria Nina’s
taverna which had recently opened down the street, and brought
our friends and visitors along with us. This became our habit
over the ensuing years. Though not neglecting her other customers,
Kyria Nina, who never asked to borrow our potato peeler, always
saw to it that we were among the first to be served and that
the kids didn’t fall asleep waiting interminably for their
plate of fries. Meanwhile, except for the mid-summer traffic,
Kyratsoula’s establishment did rather poorly and eventually
lingered on as a village afterthought, before closing down entirely.
The
moral of this little tale is entirely obvious but let me articulate
it anyway. If America continues on her present path, catering
to “strangers” while shunning her friends and stable
clients, she will one day find her tables pretty well empty
while some other nation down the way will do a thriving business
at her expense. The Kyratsoula figure sitting in the White House
has embarked on a policy based on the assumption of immediate
gains but leading inevitably to diminishing returns. Charles
Krauthammer is even blunter in his assessment of the president’s
behavior. “Why this one-sidedness?” he asks, and
replies, “Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while
beating up on allies.” Be that as it may, apropos America’s
relations with her traditional allies, Obama is either a false
friend or a true enemy.
“No
metaphor runs on all four legs,” said the poet Coleridge
in his Biographia Literaria, so I will need to make
a slight adjustment to my analogy. Unlike the relation between
Kyratsoula and her customers, America’s allies are more
dependent on her than vice-versa. Nonetheless, they all have
something important to offer: exports, business opportunities,
markets, strategic bases, areas of influence and, in the case
of Israel, high-tech innovations in cybernetics, military applications,
medicine and agriculture on which America (and much of the world)
have come to rely.
And
these are not mere potato peelers.
By
David Solway:
A
Culture of Losers
Political
Correctness and the Sunset of American Power
Talking
Back to Talkbackers
Letting
Iran Go Nuclear
Robespierre
& Co.
The
Reign of Mediacracy
Into
the Heart of the United Nations
The
Big Lie
As
You Like It
Confronting
Islam
Unveiling
the Terrorist Mind
