Is Now The Time For The U.S. To Scale Back It's Many Alliances Around The World?

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Ted Galen Carpenter, National Interest: It's Time to Prune America's Overgrown Alliance Network

Since the end of World War II, U.S. officials have spurned George Washington’s advice that the republic should avoid permanent alliances. To wage the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the United States forged alliances with various nations around the world. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be Washington’s first such venture outside its traditional sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, but it was far from the last. Key bilateral military alliances with such countries as Japan, South Korea, and Nationalist China followed. So did U.S. efforts to create pale imitators of NATO in other regions, including the ill-fated SEATO in Southeast Asia.

One might have thought that the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union would have marked an end to such pactomania. But that assumption would have been wrong. Indeed, the United States exploited the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet empire to add a plethora of formal allies in Central and Eastern Europe. During those same years, Washington’s involvement in the toxic rivalries of the Middle East deepened, and so did relations with a variety of allies and client states in that region.

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WNU Editor: There are too many vested interests who do not want to change the status quo .... unfortunately .... there are also many vested interest groups who will benefit if it is expanded. A prediction .... Africa is the next place where the U.S. will start to establish new political and military alliances.

Hat tip to Jay for this link.