Dependents Are Not Allies.

• Author: Carpenter, Ted Galen

Since the end of World War II, U.S. officials have had an unduly expansive concept of what constitutes worthwhile strategic allies for the United States. In too many cases, the "allies" that Washington touts are small, weak, often militarily useless dependents. Worse, some of them are on bad terms with more powerful neighboring states. Under those circumstances, the so-called allies are major liabilities rather than assets to the United States. Indeed, they are potential snares, ones that can entangle America in unnecessary military confrontations.

Washington would do well to become far more selective about which nations it includes in its roster of allies, and U.S. leaders should stop elevating security dependents to the status of allies. When U.S. officials described the regimes that Washington installed through military force in Afghanistan and Iraq as allies, it became clear that they had lost even minimal understanding of the concept. That point became abundantly evident when their Afghan client collapsed almost overnight in the face of the Taliban military offensive. Ir's time for U.S. policymakers to do better.

Troubling promiscuity about acquiring weak U.S. security partners was evident even during the Cold War, and the tendency has become even more pronounced in the post-Cold War era. As the fiasco in Afghanistan (and its ugly predecessor in South Vietnam) confirmed, that problem with U.S. foreign policy has existed in multiple regions. However, the defect has become most acute with respect to Washington's campaign to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. administrations have worked to add a menagerie of new NATO members, and it has done so with even less selectivity and good judgment than some people use to acquire Facebook friends.

Many of those new members have very little to offer to the United States as security partners. Indeed, some are mini-states, bordering on being micro-states. Such lightly armed Lilliputians would add little or nothing to Washington's own capabilities--especially in a showdown with another major power.

As economic assets, their importance is decidedly limited, and militarily, they are even less valuable. It's hard to see how new NATO allies such as Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia enhance America's power and security. That point should be apparent based on size of population alone. Albania's 2.87 million, North Macedonia's 2.1 million, and Slovenia's 2.07 million people put those countries squarely in the mini-state category, while Montenegro's 628,000 barely deserves even that label. It doesn't get much better with respect to either annual gross domestic product or size of military forces. Even Slovenia's $52.8 billion GDP puts that country only eighty-sixth in the global rankings. Albania's $15.2 billion (125th), North Macedonia's $12.26 billion (135th) and Montenegro's $4.78 billion (159th) are even less impressive.

The military forces that our new NATO allies can field are not likely to strike fear into Russia or any other would-be aggressor. Albania's armed forces consist of 8,500 active-duty personnel, Slovenia's consist of 8,500, and...