The U.S. is allied with every major industrialized power on the planet. America’s friends in Asia and Europe generally are prosperous and populous. Yet decades after the conflicts which led to Washington’s security guarantees for them, the allied gaggle remains a bunch of “losers,” to paraphrase Donald Trump.
Last week North Korea staged its fourth nuclear test. Naturally, South Korea and Japan reacted in horror. But it was America which acted.
The U.S. sent a Guam-based B-52 wandering across South Korean skies. “This was a demonstration of the ironclad U.S. commitment to our allies in South Korea, in Japan, and to the defense of the American homeland,” opined Adm. Harry B. Harris, Jr., head of Pacific Command.
Unfortunately, the message might not work as intended. CNN’s Will Ripley reported from Pyongyang that “A lot of North Korean military commanders find U.S. bombers especially threatening, given the destruction here in Pyongyang during the Korean War, when much of the city was flattened.” Which sounds like giving the North another justification for building nuclear weapons.
Worse, though, reported Reuters: “The United States and its ally South Korea are in talks toward sending further strategic U.S assets to the Korean peninsula.” Weapons being considered include an aircraft carrier, B-2 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters, and submarines.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/americas-persistently-dependent-allies
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