Bret Devereaux

Pet Peeve of mine: using the term "US Ally" for states that are not in fact US Allies under any formal treaty arrangement. We occasionally work with all sorts of countries. Sometimes we engage in military cooperation with them in pursuit of our interests... 1/6

...but we have *actual treaty obligations* to a much smaller number. I see in particular a lot of 'US Ally Does Human Rights Violation!' stories where the country in question isn't a treaty ally and the USA has no formal obligations to them. 2/6

Now those stories are valid, important stories - there are some relationships that the USA might want to reconsider in light of the human rights violations going on. But the transactional informality of those relationships is an important point that gets elided. 3/6

So no, Ethiopia is not a US ally, neither is Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, etc. It's fine to describe those countries as friendly, or cooperative or what have you - and argue that the USA ought to be more critical of them - but they are not formal allies and that matters. end/6