About France, and other good suggestions for worst alliances

My post on “America’s Worst Allies” stirred up a considerable response.

Sadly, none of it was from Le Monde or the French embassy (or Citronelle or my local Renault dealership), complaining that I was being too hard on the French. That was half the fun of doing the whole thing. (Which is a way of saying, as I thought I did in the piece, that I do not consider the chronic dysfunctionality of the U.S.-French relationship to be anything on a par with the other truly disastrous failed alliances that I cited. It was, as one observant reader noted, a tweak.)

There were many good suggestions about bad alliances, the best of the being Saudi Arabia. I should have included them in the main list. But part of the reason I ended up tweaking France was I started feeling a little bad that most of the relationships were in the Middle East. That said, it is striking to look at my list and your suggestions and to see just how many of the worst relationships America has are with the countries in that region. No wonder things are so difficult for us there.

Pedro Simões