It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.

Most Americans have no memory of the designs Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealers had for postwar-American foreign policy. Human rights, self-determination and an end to European colonization in the developing world, nuclear disarmament, international law, the World Court, the United Nations - these were all ideas of the progressive left.

Kai Bird Quotes