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“Critical” Allies and Exaggerated Threats

Matt Yglesias invites unchecked Bolivian aggression against a stalwart democratic ally*: There are lots of countries whose security isn’t crucial to the United States. Chile, for example. And yet we still enjoy a nice, healthy, state-to-state and society-to-society relationship with Chile. It’s not a slam on Chile to observe that Chilean security isn’t critical to […]

Matt Yglesias invites unchecked Bolivian aggression against a stalwart democratic ally*:

There are lots of countries whose security isn’t crucial to the United States. Chile, for example. And yet we still enjoy a nice, healthy, state-to-state and society-to-society relationship with Chile. It’s not a slam on Chile to observe that Chilean security isn’t critical to American welfare.

If we went through all of the allies deemed “critical” to our security, we would find that a large number of them could be fairly described as “a very small country that simply isn’t very important.” Indeed, many of our allies have become our allies because they hope to enhance their security at U.S. expense, and oddly enough many Americans have convinced themselves that it is imperative that we cooperate. These alliances and patron-client relationships often make sense for the other party, but very few of them make sense for the U.S. any longer.

Of course, that’s the point in repeatedly describing allied security in such exaggerated terms. It’s the flip side of threat-inflation, and it is an integral part of hyping foreign threats. Most of the states being hyped as threats nowadays don’t meaningfully threaten U.S. security at all, and Americans are conditioned to think of them as threats mostly because they are perceived as threats by hard-liners in allied countries. If most of these alliances were judged according to how they actually contribute to American security, they wouldn’t last very long.

* No, not really

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