My Comments: Most of you know that I am a center left Democrat. And I want the Republican Party to become relevant in American politics. That’s what going to keep the Democrats from moving too far to the left. Which is where they will go if there isn’t a legitimate, electable force coming from the right.

What has this do with my professional status as a financial consultant? I listen to clients lament that we are becoming socialist, even communist. Which is nuts since it’s unlikely anyone will simply eliminate private ownership of land and every corporate enterprise in the land. But that’s the silliness you have to respond to when some folks get their only input from the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

I’m ready for us to spend out treasury on improving the lives of all of us over here, and let someone else spend their money on factions around the world that are not a threat to us and our way of life. If France wants to kick ass in Mali, I’m all for it, except it seems we are spending our money there too.

By Philip Stephens for the Financial Times

Strange things happen in wartime. Discussing the conflict in Mali at last weekend’s Munich security conference I heard a senior French official remark how much easier things had been between the Elysée and the White House during George W. Bush’s presidency.

To be fair, the official added a qualification. This flourishing of Franco-US relations had happened during the twilight of Mr Bush’s administration. By then the US president had turned from war to diplomacy, and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy was proposing to reintegrate France into the Nato alliance. As US troops pulled out of Iraq, “freedom fries” had been rechristened French fries.

Such nostalgia reflects more than the irritation of François Hollande’s government at the initial reluctance of Barack Obama’s administration to support the French operation in Mali. Not so long ago Europeans – or most of them – fretted about how to contain US military power. Now they lament Mr Obama’s refusal to deploy it. As French troops engaged Islamist fighters in Mali, the US president was telling Americans that the door was closing on a decade of war.

The message from the platform in Munich was that all is well in the transatlantic alliance. Joe Biden, the US vice-president, tipped up to assure the assembled politicians, policy makers and generals that Europe is the “cornerstone” of US foreign policy. There was optimistic (more like fanciful given the deep cuts in military budgets) talk of a post-Afghanistan reinvigoration of Nato. The success of French forces in Mali was held as proof that Europeans, or at least some of them, are willing to project hard power.

The conversations in the thickly carpeted corridors of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof were different. Europeans have caught the interventionist bug just as the US has shaken it off. The French and the British led the war to depose Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi. They are in the vanguard of calls for intervention in Syria. But Europe lacks the means. So we live in a world where Americans are unwilling and Europeans are unable to deal with the myriad conflicts and ungoverned spaces of the Middle East and Africa.

The French are not alone in grumbling about the US. Some British officials draw comparisons between a peacenik Mr Obama and Bill Clinton’s early years, when the US refused to intervene to end the bloodshed in the Balkans. That strikes me as unfair given the then UK government’s tacit backing for Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia.

The question, though, has not changed much. How can the west intervene when the US says no? Cue a collective shrugging of shoulders. Alongside the angry condemnations in Munich of Bashar al-Assad’s regime sits a dismal consensus that there is nothing much to be done.

For some, the French intervention in Mali offers a contrary indicator. It certainly showed uncharacteristic decisiveness on Mr Hollande’s part. France and Britain have been busy nurturing new regional alliances. I have heard it said David Cameron spends more time on the telephone to the leaders of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates than to most European leaders. British officials note approvingly the Gulf states have shown themselves “ready to act”. So too has Saudi Arabia.

Things are not quite that simple. The Europeans still rely on the Americans at the very least to lead from behind. By French accounts, the White House’s first reaction to the Mali intervention was to offer a short lease on C17 military transport aircraft. It suggested a rental fee per aircraft of $50,000 an hour. It also cited legal obstacles to the sending of tankers to refuel French jets. Paris was appalled.

US officials have a different story: the French were hopelessly ill-equipped, had offered no prior consultation about the operation and wanted to “bounce” Washington into open-ended military support.

Whichever version one prefers, the war has since been sustained by the US: alongside heavy-lift and tankers, Washington is providing almost all of the “ISR” – intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – that the French need to track and engage Islamist militants. And, no, it is not charging. French and British claims of “full spectrum” military capability are pretty threadbare.

At very best, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states make for dubious bedfellows. Europe is supposed to be on the side of Arab democracy. The interest of its authoritarian allies lies in the struggle between Sunni and Shia Muslims and efforts to contain Iran. The Saudis still export the Wahhabi fundamentalism that nurtures much Islamist terrorism. Western officials believe weapons channelled by Qatar to the Syrian opposition are finding their way into the hands of foreign jihadis.

The easy thing to say is that all this is the fault of the US administration. Senator John McCain did just that in Munich when he castigated Mr Obama for his “failure to lead”. Certainly, the terrible death toll in Syria stands as a rebuke to Washington’s reluctance to adopt a tougher stance against Mr Assad earlier in the conflict.

My own instincts are on the side of those who argue that “something must be done”, whether in Syria, Mali or the Maghreb. What concerns me is the absence of anything resembling a strategy. Intervention is the easy bit. I have yet to hear anyone offer a serious answer to the “what then” question. And why, I wonder, have neither the Europeans or Americans done anything much to help nurture stability in the place where all this started – Tunisia. Is it really easier to dispatch troops than to provide economic aid and to open rich western markets to nascent Arab democracies?