Jay Honeck wrote:

the more the Russians and the French disagree
with us, the more likely it is that we are following the correct course.

Excellent phrasing, and too true.

for a contrary view, consider J.F.K.'s secretary of defence Robert McNamara,
looking back on his own mistakes miring the U.S. in the Vietnam war:

And if we can't persuade other nations with comparable values and
comparable interests of the merit of our course, we should reconsider the
course, and very likely change it. And if we'd followed that rule, we
wouldn't have been in Vietnam, because there wasn't one single major ally,
not France or Britain or Germany or Japan, that agreed with our course or
stood beside us there.

To be fair, France and Russia also have histories of miring themselves in
unwinnable wars as well (think Algeria and Chechnya, or even Vietnam itself,
which was originally a French problem before it became a U.S. one).


All the best,


David