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The enemy of my
enemy is my friend
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend is an ancient proverb which
suggests that two opposing parties can or should work together against a common
enemy. The earliest known expression of this concept is found in a Sanskrit
treatise on statecraft dating to around the 4th
century BC, while the first recorded use of the current English version came in
1884.
The
proverb is sometimes phrased as "the enemy of mine enemy is my
friend" or "my enemy's enemy is my friend."
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_enemy_of_my_enemy_is_my_friend
International
policy
In
his Arthashastra:
Book VI, "The Source of Sovereign States", Kautilya
writes:
The king who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the enemy.
The king who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend (of the conqueror).— Kautilya, Arthasastra
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Political
cartoon depicts the murderous actions of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
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World
War II
The
idea that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" functioned in various
guises as foreign policy by Allied powers during the Second
World War. In Europe, tension was common between the Western Allies and the Soviet
Union. Despite their inherent differences, they recognized a need to work
together to meet the threat of Nazi aggression under the leadership of Adolf
Hitler. Both U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill were wary of the Soviet
Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. However, both developed
policies with an understanding that Soviet cooperation was necessary for the
Allied war effort to succeed. There is a quote from Winston Churchill made to
his personal secretary John Colville on the eve of Germany's invasion of the
Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). He was quoted as
saying, "if Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at
least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
The Soviet leader reciprocated these feelings towards his Western allies. He
was distrustful and feared that they would negotiate a separate
peace with Nazi Germany. However, he also viewed their assistance
as critical in resisting the Nazi invasion.
The
doctrine of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" was employed by
nation states in regions outside of the European theater as well. In the Second Sino-Japanese War, within the Pacific
theater, an alliance was formed between Chinese
Communist and Nationalist Chinese Nationalists. Leading up to this, these
forces had battled each other throughout the Chinese
Civil War. However, they formed an alliance, the Second United Front in response to the mutual
threat of Japanese aggression.
Cold
War
The
doctrine was also used extensively during the Cold War
between Western Bloc nations and the Soviet Union. The Soviets
and the Chinese aided North
Korea during the Korean War as well as the Viet Cong/North
Vietnamese during the Vietnam War to oppose American foreign policy goals.
Likewise, the United States and its allies supported the Afghan
Mujahideen after the Soviet invasion in the hopes of thwarting
the spread of Communism. In the Third
World, both superpowers supported regimes whose values were at odds with
the ideals espoused by their governments. These ideals were capitalism
and democracy
in the case of the United States, and the Marxist–Leninist interpretation of Communism in
the case of the Soviet Union. In order to oppose the spread of Communism, the
United States government supported undemocratic regimes, such as Mobutu
Sese Seko in Zaire
and Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
The
support provided by the Soviet Union towards nations with overtly
anti-Communist governments, such as Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt, in order to
oppose American influence, is another example of "the enemy of my enemy is
my friend" as policy on an international scale. The Soviets also backed India to counter
both the pro-American Pakistani government and the People's Republic of China
(following the Sino-Soviet split), despite the fact that India
had a democratic government. Similarly, China, following the split, lent
support to nations and factions that embraced an anti-Soviet, often Maoist form
of Communism, but whose governments nonetheless embraced Sinophobic
policies at home, such as the Khmer
Rouge.
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The Allies of World War II at the Yalta
Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph
Stalin, 1945.
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Middle
East
In
an example of this doctrine at work in Middle Eastern foreign policy, United
States backed the Iraqi government under Saddam
Hussein during the Iran–Iraq
War, as a strategic response to the anti-American Iranian Revolution of 1979. A 2001 study of international
relations in the Middle East used the proverb as the basis of its main thesis.
The thesis examined how enmity between adverse nations evolve and alliances
develop in response to common threats.
Balance
theory
Main
article: Balance theory
In
mathematical sociology a signed
graph may be used to represent a social
network that may or may not be balanced, depending upon the signs
found along cycles. Fritz
Heider considered a pair of friends with a common enemy as a balanced triangle.
The full spectrum of changes induced by unbalanced networks was described by Anatol
Rapoport:
The hypothesis implies roughly that attitudes of the group members will tend to change in such a way that one’s friends’ friends will tend to become one’s friends and one’s enemies’ enemies also one’s friends, and one’s enemies’ friends and one’s friends’ enemies will tend to become one’s enemies, and moreover, that these changes tend to operate even across several removes (one’s friends’ friends’ enemies’ enemies tend become friends by an iterative process).
Frank
Harary described how balance theory can predict coalition
formation in international relations:
One can draw the signed graph of a given state of events and examine it for balance. If it is balanced there will be a tendency for the status quo. If it is not balanced, one should examine each of the bonds between pairs of nations in a cycle with regard to relative strength in the situation. One might then predict that the weakest such bond will change sign.
Harary
illustrated the method as a gloss on some events in the Middle East using
several signed graphs, one of which represented eight nations.
