“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” -- Lord Palmerston (and repeated by Henry Kissinger)

It's a dangerous world out there, and best not to be weak.

When. But the same can be said about the US. Look at the “reconstruction” of Iraq.

> Iraq's oil infrastructure was damaged when the CPA took over. The CPA effected selected repairs. But the IAMB found that the CPA had chosen not to repair the meters on the pipelines. The IAMB told the CPA that they were concerned that the lack of metering made auditing Iraq's oil exports unreliable – making it impossible to detect fraud, deception or smuggling. The minutes of the IAMB meeting make clear that the CPA had assured the IAMB that they were in the process of repairing the meters – in bad faith. The CPA's authority came to an end with the meters unrepaired. Estimates of how much oil revenue was siphoned off during the year of the CPA's administration go as high as $4 billion – comparable to the amount Saddam Hussein is suspected of stealing during the entire duration of the oil-for-food program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_Fund_for_Iraq

You have to laugh...

And Ukrainian partners don’t even wait for that. Lands are being divided and bought out by BlackRock and the like for pennies on the dollar.

I think this sentence makes more sense if you are talking about Ukraine and its partners.

Framing it differently, they have skin in the game.