My, Wasn't Che a Cuddly Fellow.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Griff

Remember what our treaty-bound allies were saying before the Iraqi debacle? The standing army game isn't working right now. The Executive branch is unable to resist attempting to remake the world when it has vast resources. I suspect most of our treaty obligations are in the form of defending allies territory, when was the last time we were called on to do that?

Most of those treaties grew out of the aftermath of the post WW2 era and Korea. People feared their big neighbor and wanted us to take them under their wing in exchange for access to ports and resources. Very little has changed in that respect other than now there is competition for those essential resources and large powers are now looking to get at them. Competition is good for us as a country. Few countries will ever need to call in that card with the exception of Israel or Taiwan. And in both of those treaties we would be in a hornet nest ten times the complication of our current situation.