Musing of One Watching a Squirrel Trying to Crack Open a Golf Ball

In the news reports lately there's been a story that the new national security strategy will focus more on diplomacy and international cooperation than military pacts and actions.
This is a laudible goal. However, there is an old truism about treaties and pacts. It says that a treaty is good only so long as each party to it intends to, and does, comply with its terms. Some examples of broken treaties come to mind; the Treaty of Versailles, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Munich Accords and the Paris agreement between the U.S. and North Vietnam. I think that prior to World War Two the Germans and Russians had one or more treaties which probably neither one of them ever intended to honor.
One of Ronald Reagan's famous one-liners was "Trust, but verify." To which we would add "Stay alert."