- Jan 5
- 5 min read

Valuing American Allies

The wars on Ukraine and Israel have triggered a torrent of takes about America's role in supporting those victimized countries. Many of those takes are confused and even disingenuous, notably those from celebrated righties Tucker Carlson, Vivek Ramaswamy & Candace Owens. Given that and our epochal moment, this post seeks to clarify how America should regard other countries, focusing on how to rank and value our allies.

Characterizing American Allies

American allies have long been valued by Americans, valued especially by American leaders, if less so by workaday Americans. During World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower valued the Brits and the rest of The Allies (as the Good Guys were then called). General George Washington valued the French during the Revolutionary War.

But it's not just shared foxholes that create allies. Our strongest allies share our Judeo-Christian values and often a mutual history, including mutual travel and immigration. Nor is it only war, values and history that creates allies. Shared peace is necessary, represented by shared business, the forth ingredient required of any American ally.

Ranking American Allies

American Allies can be ranked via a balanced scorecard that quantifies the four ingredients that make a country an American ally, thus quantifying our shared interests.

Shared Foxholes: Countries with whom we share a metaphorical foxhole meet one or more criteria. Have we been allies in war? Do they share intelligence with us? Do the same bad actors want to destroy us both? Are we military treaty allies?
Shared Business: Do we share business interests? Do they operate an above-board, fair and reciprocal trading relationship with us? Do their business strengths complement and reinforce ours, free of mercantilism?
Shared Values: Do they share our Judeo-Christian values? This generally means they are also members of the West, aka Western Civilization. Or, they may not be of the West but have absorbed its main tenets, as with Japan and South Korea.
Shared History: Is their origin story and/or national evolution shared with us, or highly compatible with our history?

This rubric scores each country's four allyship ingredients on a 5-point scale, with negative scores allowed for America's opponents. High scoring countries are then classified as a 1-star acquaintance, a 2-star ally, a 3-star ally or a 4-star ally. This is done by rounding down their overall average score of the four allyship ingredients.

Our allies are those that are 2-star and above, shown below by their relative importance to us. It's worth noting that these relationships are ever changing and subjective, albeit our 3-star and especially our 4-star allies have stood the test of time. They also meet the present moment of deep global instability, notwithstanding their own internal weakening from Cultural Marxism, the cCon scourge that also besets us in America.

America's Two Top Allies: Israel & the UK

Israel and the United Kingdom are arguably our only two 4-star allies, i.e., Top Allies. Let's focus on Israel for now, given its existential fight against enemies who also want to destroy America and the West as a whole.

Israel's detractors falsely brand it a Western colonial outpost, sited apart from the West. Wrong, the West literally begins in Israel. The interlopers to Israel are from the East and South. Nor do those interlopers share the Judeo-Christian values that originated in the Holy Land, on which the freedom, justice and bountifulness of our modern life is based.

Israel and America are also deeply intertwined in culture, commerce and defense, all to the good. Given all this and that The West Begins in Israel, were Israel to be destroyed, America would be grievously harmed. The Ayatollah of Iran knows this. He calls America the Great Satan and Israel the Little Satan, and has promised to kill both Satans in jihad.

Hundreds of millions of Americans also know this, most Christian, some Jewish. Theirs are civilizational bonds with Israel, akin to those with our mother country of England, the only other 4-star American ally, our only other Top Ally.

Perverting America First

Tucker Carlson, Vivek Ramaswamy & Candace Owens don't speak of American Allies. These unelected guardians of America First thinking speak of American charity to countries we feel sorry for.

For instance, Vivek lumped Ukraine, Armenia and Israel together, prognosticating that while we feel bad and want to help them, any help we may give is out of the goodness of our warm American hearts, not because it's in our own interest to do so.

But, Vivek was profoundly wrong in two ways. First, while we feel sorry for those three countries, only one is an ally, and a Top Ally at that. Second and vitally, we have a self-interest in the ongoing viability of our allies, especially our two Top Allies. Israel is a Top Ally. Ukraine & Armenia are in terribly sad situations, but American allies they're not.

Tucker, Vivek & Candace are three exceptionally smart political agitators. Therefore, the fact that "American Allies" is the dog that never barks during their prognostications on Israel is a conscious decision on their parts. Is their rhetorical slight-of-hand due to antisemitism? It waddles like it, but intentions don't matter. Burkeans know that only results matter. Leaving a Top Ally to twist in the wind results in harm to America. Whatever their intentions, the results they are trying to manifest are harmful to America.

That's not proper America First. It's best described as perverted America First.

Proper America First

President Donald J. Trump is not just the OG America First leader of the 21st century, he's a foreign policy realist par excellence who demonstrated shockingly accurate foreign policy judgement during his Nobel-worthy first term. He highly valued Israel as a Top American Ally and was Israel's greatest friend ever in the Oval Office. He owned that position because of his innate understanding that America First requires that our small handful of Top Allies remain strong, so considerable are our Shared Interests.

One implication of this divergence between the OG America Firster and the wannabes who claim to be A1 priests is that Vivek could only be Trump's VP if he swore off his anti-ally shtick. Given how headstrong a Chief Executive the biotech mogul is, that's unlikely.