My enemy’s enemy is my friend

My enemy’s enemy is my friend is presented as a once-plausible justification for choosing allies by the identity of their opponents. In the satirical fable embedded in the novel, that logic first excuses Western arms dealings and then comes under pressure: when weapons cross a moral and political boundary, hostility toward a shared enemy is no longer enough to explain or defend the choice.

The maxim in a satirical fable

The expression appears within Ashur-Proffitt & the Cloak of Invisibility, a text styled as A Modern Fairy Tale. Its deliberately whimsical opening casts American officials as men who sell arms to Iran and divert the profits to the Contras, while British officials sell arms to Iraq. The two governments’ conduct is narrated as a parallel exercise in expediency: Iran and Iraq are enemies, but their conflict serves Western interests.

The fable makes the maxim’s underlying calculation explicit: an enemy can be treated as a useful friend when that enemy is fighting someone the speaker also opposes. The account’s fairy-tale tone does not soften the charge. Instead, its jokey description of powerful officials makes the policy’s contradictions appear at once brazen and absurd.

Invisibility and expediency

The fable’s central image is a cloak of invisibility. The arms dealings are described as directly contrary to the laws of the countries involved, yet the people responsible remain unseen by those in charge. Invisibility therefore signifies more than secrecy: it represents the gap between rules publicly upheld and conduct tolerated when it serves strategic interests.

That gap gives the maxim its political force and its danger. Treating an opponent’s opponent as a friend allows competing alliances and arms sales to be presented as practical necessities, even when they violate domestic law. The fable’s parallel examples also undermine any suggestion that this is one country’s isolated hypocrisy; the same expedient logic operates on both sides of the Atlantic.

The maxim challenged

The passage’s final paragraph turns from the earlier rationale to reject its sufficiency. It recalls the patriotic case that an enemy’s enemy could be supported while rival groups were left to fight one another, but declares that this case no longer settles the matter. The decisive question becomes not simply who is fighting whom, but whether those who send weapons understand and accept the direction in which those weapons may be used.

The argument centers on a line in the sand: political allegiance cannot excuse crossing it. The Ashur-Proffitt motive, the passage concludes, is no longer enough; those involved must be asked whose side they believe they are on. The maxim thus survives as an account of expedient reasoning, not as a complete moral defense. Its movement from apparent patriotic common sense to an inadequate excuse is the fable’s sharpest reversal.