Keep Your Frenemies List Short and Your Enemies List Shorter

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Of course, international relations have never been a simple matter of sorting other nations and groups into friends or enemies, as Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Jonathan Schanzer noted recently in National Interest. Not all foes rise to the level of enemy, they write. Pure enemies are foes that must be destroyed. Other foes are mere adversaries, who need only be bested in the arena. Venezuela, hostile to the United States, but no real threat to its sovereignty, would seem to fall into the third category — adversary. Cuba, once a U.S. enemy by virtue of its relationship with the Soviets, can also lay claim to this designation. A fourth category, not explored by Gartenstein-Ross and Schanzer, would be antagonists — petulant countries in perpetual variance with the United States. I’m looking at you, France.

Gartenstein-Ross and Schanzer make their mark by identifying a fifth and broadening category: states that behave as allies, adversaries, and enemies at the same time, and are usually countries that have something to barter—military cooperation or oil—for the special relationship. The ranks of the AAEs, as they call them, include Pakistan, long-time beneficiary of U.S. aid and its proxy in various Afghanistan war campaigns (during which Pakistan both supported the Taliban and sometimes fought against them) and also supports Islamic forces militarily opposed to the United States. Additionally, it harbored Osama bin Laden, who was killed there by invading U.S. troops who declined to notify the Pakistanis of their mission.

Other AAEs in their summary: Saudi Arabia, which the United States has long protected, but whose “petrodollars funded schools, charities, and other institutions that spread the intolerant and frequently violent Wahhabi creed,” and Qatar, which hosts U.S. military bases, also had an “undeniable preference during the Arab Uprisings for supporting Islamist groups,” has hosted and backed Hamas, and  supported 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

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Clearly, since the end of the Cold War, the moral certainty of which group to back in which conflict and how far to back them has become less automatic. (The less said about the moral certainty of U.S. intervention in Vietnam the better). Gartenstein-Ross and Schanzer wisely counsel that the United States minimize its entanglements with AAEs and avoid, where possible, becoming entangled with new ones. In practical terms for the United States, this means editing the enemies list down to a manageable level. Once a nation starts drawing red lines around “enemies,” as Obama did in a speech about Syria more than a year ago, words become tantamount to military action.

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