What Do We Do when Allies Don’t Act Like Allies?
By Patrick N. Theros - June 16, 2023
Juliet’s
soliloquy on her balcony, “A rose by any other name would smell as
sweet” makes the point that what we call something is not as important
as its attributes or behavior. You could call the fruit of the Japanese
“stink bomb trees” (AKA gingkos) that decorate the sidewalks of my
native Washington DC “a rose” but it doesn’t change the stink. In the
same vein, we should not persist in labeling as allies countries whose
behavior seriously threatens the national interests of the United States
nor suck up to them – using the vulgar term – for fear of “losing
them.” Too often our foreign policy gurus, even the most hawkish, act
as if a misbehaving “ally” must be mollified and even rewarded to keep
him on side no matter what it does. Perhaps, instead, the errant ally
should worry about losing its ally status with the United States?
Recent
years have seen several examples of the United States pandering to
allies whose behavior threatens our interests. Does Saudi Arabia fit
the criteria of an ally? Until recently, it propagated the worldwide
spread of a violent religious ideology responsible for attacks against
the United States and its interests. It has sided with Russia in raising
the price of oil in the midst of a major American-led effort to reduce
Russian oil revenues. I doubt anyone would argue that it is like-minded
on shared mutual values. We have elevated Israel to the level of an
ally superior to that of any other ally. Yet, it has no formal
obligation to come to the assistance of the United States, and (unlike
Saudi Arabia) its troops have never fought on our side in war. It
currently has what can at best be described as a highly ambivalent
position on the Ukraine war. It defies American requests to stop making
a terrible situation in the occupied territories much worse.
Saudi
Arabia and Israel, among many others, make these decisions in pursuit
of their own. perceived interests. They are, of course, quite free to
do so. In all these cases we seem to have decided that larger issues
demand we must continue to deal with them despite the harm inflicted by
those decisions. But our overuse of the term ally carries its own costs;
when such an ally harms another country or person we become, in the
eyes of the victim, unwitting co-conspirators. Our overuse of the term
confuses other countries’ perception of the United States and provides
cover for further bad behavior by such allies.
Turkey
is perhaps the most egregious example of a destructive ally, especially
in the last decade of the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan;
it is difficult to exaggerate the damage Turkey has done to US
interests. In Syria, Turkey not only supported jihadist groups that
committed some of the most brutal atrocities of the tragic conflict, but
has directly attacked the Kurdish forces allied to the United States
that did almost all the fighting and dying to liberate broad swaths of
Syria and Iraq from ISIS control. Both Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglou,
his vanquished rival in recent elections, have vied with one another
denouncing the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that fixed its boundaries with
Iraq, Syria and Greece. They have questioned Iraqi sovereignty over the
oil-rich Mosul region and Greek sovereignty islands large and small in
the Aegean, reviving long-defunct territorial disputes. Turkish air and
naval forces violate Greek airspace and territorial seas on an hourly
basis. Ankara broke long-standing NATO understandings (and defied US
laws) not to procure military equipment from Russia. (Ankara’s
acquisition of the S400 missile system led the US to actually show some
rarely-used backbone by ejecting Turkey from the F35 program.) It has
called for the permanent division of Cyprus. Ankara refuses to
participate in US and EU sanctions of Russia and has grown dangerously
close to Moscow in the Caucasus. Currently, Turkey has refused to agree
to the accession of Sweden to NATO.
Yet
we persist in the delusion that pandering to President Erdogan will
“save” the alliance, that it is America’s responsibility to keep Turkey
on side, rather than demanding Turkey behave like an ally. They blame
the victims, e.g., Greece and Cyprus by quoting Turkish talking points
while minimizing Turkish threats and ignoring Turkey’s violations of the
Lausanne Treaty.
In
response to Turkish action that could spiral into an all-out war
between Greece and Turkey, Senate Foreign relations Committee chairman
Robert Menendez put a hold on a Turkish request to purchase 40 new F16
fighter jets and a modernization package for its older planes Turkey,
demanding Turkey stop its warplanes’ overflights of Greek Aegean
islands, calling them “unacceptable behavior from a NATO country.”
Sadly, the State Department chose to reframe the issue by claiming that
the sale would encourage Turkey to lift its veto of Sweden's request to
join NATO. It sounds as if the State Department believes that stopping
Swedish accession will do more harm to NATO than war between two of its
best-armed members!