Talk:The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Alien vs. Predator

Man, that's where I first heard this phrase. Shouldn't the entry say SOMETHING about that movie???? jcm 5/1/8

Considering that the phrase pre-dates the movie by several thousand years, and appears in many historical contexts throughout the world, I'm going to say no. 24.6.66.193 (talk) 07:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Several hundred years, not several thousand. 73.70.13.107 (talk) 19:01, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd say any culturally relevant invocations of the phrase should be included Flameoguy (talk) 05:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

In Nature

I have put the term friend in quotients as it is a social construct not easily applied to animals.--Wilson 18:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Did you mean "quotes"? (A quotient is the result of dividing one number by another.) 24.6.66.193 (talk) 07:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Persians vs Greeks

"A historical example of this policy occurred when the Greeks were attacked by the Persians at Thermopylae; the Greek city states put aside their differences and fought the common enemy." This seems illogical, wouldn't the phrase applied make the some of the Greeks friends with Persians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.110.241.126 (talk) 23:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it's probably fair to say that the differences between the Greek city-states were much smaller than the differences between those states, taken together, and the invading Persians. 07:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)24.6.66.193 (talk)

But the phrase says nothing about similarities or differences between cultures. If two Greek city-states have been at war for a while, and suddenly the Persians show up and start attacking one of them, the other should be inclined to see the Persians as potential allies. In fact, this exact scenario happened during the European conquest of the new world; the Native Americans saw the Europeans not as a common threat, but as potential allies in their wars against each other. Some tribes allied with the Spanish, some with the French, and so on...

Muslim context?

Has anyone heard this phrase, or quoted inpart in the Quarn? Almost all of my Muslim Somali students have heard this phrase - take care... Dinkytown (talk) 05:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Criticisms

"This has been shown before, such as when US - backed militia in Afghanistan fighting the occupying Soviet Union are now one of its greatest enemies." - That is at least an example of poor grammar and arguably false in other ways. Also "In many respects, the USSR and the USA posed far greater threats to each other than Nazi Germany ever did." is largely true in that the USA and USSR had nuclear weapons, but the Nazis where only limited as a potential threat by the fact that other countries united against them. Its probably not the best example of an argument against "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", esp. considering the threat of the USA and USSR to each other was mostly potential, while in WWII hundreds of thousands of Americans, and millions of Russians died. twfowler (talk) 23:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Variations

The "varitions" passage is just silly and irrelevant, should it be removed?

- 81.103.21.106 (talk) 22:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

'In Business' Removed

"The doctrine can also be seen in the business partnerships formed over the years. One example might be in the speculated purchase of Yahoo! by Microsoft in an attempt to gain marketshare from Google in the online search engine market.[10]"

IIRC, Yahoo's CEOs didn't have a choice in the matter, it was the shareholders, who are there to make short to mid-term profit, they could, for the majority at least, not care less whether the company survives. 24.113.84.167 (talk) 09:07, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

References

Origin - Pre-Imperial China (Sun Tzu)

The origin is Chinese, not Arab. The phrase "My enemy's enemy is my friend", and various translations thereof, is attributed to Sun Tzu (6th century BCE) in The Art of War. Sun Tzu lived during the later years of the Old Chinese (language) period, about 300 years before the founding of the first Chinese Empire - which happened about a century after Old Chinese finished its evolution into Middle Chinese (c. 4th century BC to c. 12th century CE). In the same way that Latin became Italian, French, Spanish, Galician, etc., Middle Chinese became Mandarin, Yue, Hakka, etc. - but whereas the Roman Empire had fallen apart prior to the development of these other languages, China never has; so that all or most of the languages that evolved from Middle Chinese formally call themselves "Chinese". Additionally, because all of the Chinese languages are written logographically instead of phonetically, and because all of them use the same Middle Chinese-derived system of logographs; there is essentially only one written Chinese language despite being almost a dozen spoken ones - because, while phono-graphs represent sounds, logographs represent things. It is thus possible to read Chinese characters as if they were English, French, or any other language; that is, you can learn to read Chinese without learning how to speak it (and vice-versa).

It appears that the one citation about the origin of this phrase/proverb is broken, and the supposedly Arabic origin is not cited at all. Does anyone have any valid citatiosn for the origins of this proverb?

Merpius (talk) 14:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

http://books.google.dk/books?id=FFJz72h5qjUC&pg=PA520&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false Perhaps this can shed some light on an early source of a similarity with the proverb. See the phrase "Any king, whose kingdom shares a common border with that of the conqueror, is an antagonist." Tanyacrook (talk) 04:58, 4 June 2013 (UTC) It is Arabic, not Chinese. It was found written on a sandskit tablet. Although I can't site the date — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.0.101.45 (talk) 04:43, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Star Trek Into Darkness playing on cable TV aprox 201604101500, I guess the latest star trek movie (unsure exact title) Capt Kirk and Mr Spock: Kirk "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", In reply Spock attributes this saying to an arab who was betrayed and beheadeded by his subjects

John5Russell3Finley (talk) 19:03, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

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