U.S. needs new ‘special’ friends

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Since D-Day, when Americans and Britons stormed the Normandy beaches together, the United States and the United Kingdom have had a special relationship.

We share secrets. We come to each other’s aid in time of great need. We enjoy a special bond of trust.

That is all well and good. But it’s time for America to look around the world for additional “special” friends.

Why? Because some of our old friends are not acting like real friends any more — and some of our new friends are feeling neglected.

Take Poland, for example. Poland stepped up to the plate in Iraq alongside the U.K. and Australia during the major combat operations, and is increasingly doing so in Afghanistan - a vital NATO mission.

And yet we deny Warsaw the same visa waivers we give other NATO allies. We also tend to overlook some of their legitimate security concerns regarding Russia.

Another new friend, Georgia, really got the short end of the stick. It supplied troops to Iraq. But when the Russians invaded their territory, Georgians had to rely on the French, not us, to represent their interests in negotiations.

As for our “old” friends Germany and France, in addition to overtly opposing us on Iraq, they’ve also been acting as a drag on U.S. policy in other areas. On things that really count, like countering Russian aggression in Georgia or stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, they blunt what otherwise could be a united front exerting strong international pressure.

Just last week in St. Petersburg, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at her side, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pronounced that the “time was not ripe” for NATO to give Georgia a road map to membership, something the U.S. had hoped NATO would consider.

Mr. Medvedev couldn’t contain his glee, going so far as to boast that the age of U.S. economic leadership was coming to an end and that the current “global security system” was broken.

It’s time to show Mr. Medvedev he’s wrong. It’s time the U.S. became more imaginative in cultivating special friends, finding new ones and integrating these new relationships into a new global strategy.

Let’s start with Poland, the Baltic states and Georgia. In addition to liberalizing our visa-waiver policies toward Poland and other Central European allies, we should do more military contingency planning and military exercises with not only Poland, but the Baltic states.

The United States may need to give special security guarantees to Poland and the Baltic and other NATO states in the region, particularly if actions by the French and Germans appear to dilute the NATO commitment.

This may have to be done for Georgia as well, if Russia succeeds in blocking its membership in NATO.

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