Perfidy is the essence of both empire and realpolitik. Perfidious Albion is now usurped by its former colony, the USA.
The self-righteous, sanctimonious, and virtue signaling USA has a lengthy history of betraying its most ardent and loyal allies, especially when they are in the throes of existential crises.
In the Yalta conference in 1945, President Roosevelt threw Churchill and the British Empire under the bus so as to curry favor with the demented and murderous Stalin.
In 1972, in the Shanghai Communique, President Nixon handed Taiwan over to the PRC (People’s Republic of China). This abandonment was formalized in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
In 2025, Trump is merely continuing the tradition of pivoting towards a major power at the expense of a lesser one. Israel, which haughtily considers itself immune to such machinations, is next.
Perfidy in war is considered a crime, but not in diplomacy where it is much admired and analyzed, if rarely lauded.
But the problems with disloyalty and backstabbing are myriad. They cause a cascade of desertions among erstwhile authentic allies. They rarely result in a long-term realignment beneficial to the traitor, and they diminish its moral capital.
In the long run, other players in the international scene assiduously avoid coalitions with the perfidious. Such shunning is a harbinger of decline and heralds the demise of great polities and empires.
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