Who Are the Good Guys? The Side That Has Someone Else’s Back

I read once that the Japanese asked Hitler to coordinate his war plans with them. If Hitler wanted to attacked Russia, the Japanese would attack Russia/Mongolia from the east. If Hitler wanted to go for the Suez Canal/India, they would attack the British Empire in southeast Asia. Hitler ignored the Japanese. He went north (the German forces in Northern Africa were nothing compared to what was sent to Russia. He could have crushed the British in Africa/Middle East with those forces), but the Japanese went south. End result: the Allies destroyed them both. Of course, no one took Mussolini seriously enough to even bother consulting with him.

In one of his YouTube videos, Stephen Kotkin gave a rule of thumb that illustrates one huge, glaring difference between democracies and dictatorships: dictatorships don’t cooperate with each other. That is a feature, not a bug. A dictator by definition doesn’t trust anyone. Their very structure is built on fear, on secrecy, on loyalty to a person. That type of edifice doesn’t allow for cooperation with other countries. How can they cooperate when the people in charge basically don’t trust anyone?

Democracies work together. They may argue, they may get on each other’s nerves, but at the end of the day, they cooperate with each other. NATO is a perfect example of that cooperation. On the other hand, the Warsaw Pact fell apart at the first possible moment.

Whether it was Israel and America under President Joseph Biden, or Israel and America under President Donald Trump, these two democracies have been cooperating for the last 20 months. Yes, with all the headaches Israel may have had with Biden, at the end of the day the two countries cooperated very well. The fact of the matter is that Israel’s security was much, much better as of January 1st, 2025 than it was October 7th, 2023. Hamas had been basically destroyed. Hezbollah was gone, the Assad regime was gone, the Iranian air defense system was gone. With Trump, the cooperation only got better, as we now know.

Dictators don’t do this. They don’t have each other’s backs.

Israel’s super nightmare scenario would have been a Hezbollah invasion alongside Hamas’ invasion and an Iranian super bombardment on 7/10. That didn’t happen for various reasons.

But even without that type of mega invasion, what was stopping Nasrallah from opening fire massively on October 8th? Same with Iran. We have seen that Kipat Barzel (Iron Dome) and Qelah David (David’s Sling) and the Arrow can be overwhelmed. 10% of 200 ballistic missiles fired towards Tel Aviv getting through means that 20 ballistic missiles could fall on Tel Aviv, God forbid. What about 10% of 2000 missiles? Do that for two weeks straight. Add in missile fire towards Haifa, Jerusalem, and Beer Sheva.

That didn’t happen. Instead, Nasrallah satisfied himself with doing the absolute minimum and firing a few missiles only toward the northern border. Only later, during the summer of 2024 did Hezbollah increase the missile range toward cities like Haifa and the Galil. By that point, Hamas had basically been destroyed and Israel was free to deal with Hezbollah as it did. Iran? They cheered on Hamas, and little more than that. When they finally decided to act it was too little, too late.

This type of cooperation didn’t happen because Sinwar, Nasrallah, and Khamenei are all little dictators. Dictators don’t trust people, not their own people and not “allies”. They certainly don’t protect others. This type of thinking doesn’t stop with the top leaders. These people were in charge of horrible organizations made up of horrible people. Look at the Hezbollah officers who ran away to Syria and left the foot soldiers to fight the IDF. Look at the Iranian officers and leaders who ran away to Turkey. Sinwar himself was trying to run away when he was killed. They didn’t care about their own people; they couldn’t care less about their “allies”.

Contrast that behavior with the hundreds if not thousands of Israelis who ran towards the Gaza border on October 7th, looking for any possible way to assist in the fighting or rescue operations. Look at the 130% call-up rate. Look at the way the United States and Israel (and other European countries) worked hand in hand over the past 20 months.

Of course, it goes without saying that democracies can fail. We all know this. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Indian Genocide, the way Jews from Arab countries were treated. That doesn’t mean that the moral basis of the democratic system is inherently flawed or that there is some moral comparison between democracies and dictatorships. The contrast between democracies’ moral basis and dictatorships’ moral corruption is day and night. It is that moral basis that allows for trust between allies.

You want to know who are the good guys? Look to see who has someone else’s back.