Time to Practice ’No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’

2019-10-08

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. The Roman general Sulla succinctly captured the formula for success in international affairs with the phrase, “No better friend, no worse enemy.” Statesmen, however, are often tempted to take their allies for granted and lavish attention and favors on their adversaries. That’s a formula for having fewer reliable friends and more emboldened enemies. Such calculations are being made around the world at the moment in the context of Syria...

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Roman general Sulla succinctly captured the formula for success in international affairs with the phrase, “No better friend, no worse enemy.”

Statesmen, however, are often tempted to take their allies for granted and lavish attention and favors on their adversaries. That’s a formula for having fewer reliable friends and more emboldened enemies.

Such calculations are being made around the world at the moment in the context of Syria. Will America throw in with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ever-more-virulently hostile regime in Turkey – and abandon the Kurds who have done the brunt of the fighting there for our interests against assorted Sharia-supremacists, including the Islamic State and Iran?

The world will be a far more dangerous place if obvious adversaries – especially China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and Turkey – get preferential treatment and America’s proven friends conclude they’re on the wrong side.

This is Frank Gaffney.

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