By Frank Ledwidge
Here is a question. The United States and the United Kingdom (with one twentieth the number of US troops) are the largest military contributors to the failing Iraq mission. What is the third largest? Its quite surprising this one, because until last weekend it was Georgia. Last weekend the entire Georgian component of ‘coalition forces’ in Iraq was withdrawn to defend its homeland.
No doubt some of those soldiers were thinking, as they flew out of their bases in the desert, that their great ally might stand beside Georgia as Georgia stood by the US, and that American comrades would fight alongside them, or at least threaten to do so. How wrong they are. That was not going to happen. Like many other countries, Georgia thought that it was taking out an insurance policy by sending its finest soldiers to a desert country wherein she has no national interests. That insurance policy has now been shown to have been void.
The United Kingdom thought that by getting enmired in Iraq might assist in preserving what is called there the ‘Special relationship’. The result has been the first lost war the UK has sustained for very many years.Many countries consider themselves to have a special relationship. Only one can truly claim it -Israel. Maybe Georgia had a sneaking suspicion that its supposed democratic credentials made it a little bit special. How wrong they were.
Albania has also contributed to the various wars that the US is fighting in its ‘long war’. It too believes that by doing so it is preserving and strengthening its alliance with the world’s superpower. But is there a single person who will argue that if Albania had not put its men in harms way in faraway countries it would have made any difference to Albania’s standing? Has Germany’s failure to fight in the desert harmed it? Or Greece? Or for that matter Croatia? My own fatherland Ireland seems to have no problems with the US. None have sent troops. On the other hand the Poles, with a large contingent and many casualties are wondering exactly what happened to the promised relaxations on US visa restrictions on Polish citizens.
And whilst Albania faces no active military threats like that which has defeated the Georgians, can anyone with a grasp on reality honestly argue that the presence of a few Albanian troops in Iraq would ever outweigh political realism, if as they say push came to shove. The hard, hard lesson that Georgia has learned is that when it comes to realpolitik, small countries cannot rely on sentiment. And those Georgian soldiers,a long way from where they should have been, may well wonder now what on Earth they were doing in Iraq in the first place. I am a lawyer, and I always advise clients to read the contract before signing. I would respectfully suggest that Albania might want to have another look at that insurance policy whose premiums are paid by her soldiers.
