America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
John Quincy AdamsTags: liberty freedom peace independence imperialism isolationism noninterventionism
If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement".
Christopher HitchensTags: pacifism anti-war leftism noninterventionism peace-movement
Because you can't intervene everywhere, you don't conclude you can't intervene anywhere.
Zbigniew BrzezińskiTags: noninterventionism interventions humanitarian-intervention libyan-war
Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.
Christopher HitchensTags: anti-war realism noninterventionism
I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty.
Christopher HitchensTags: anti-war isolationism middle-east noninterventionism
Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace.
Christopher HitchensTags: sudan darfur noninterventionism realpolitik
That war [Bosnian war] in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position - leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.
Christopher HitchensTags: war genocide pacifism anti-war isolationism leftism neocons noninterventionism bosnian-war ethnic-cleansing bosnia-and-herzegovina interventionism humanitarian-intervention neoconservatism
It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.
Niall FergusonTags: war isolationism sovereignty noninterventionism interventionism realpolitik humanitarian-intervention
The debacle in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any given place. But the experience in the Balkans reinforced an idealist dictum that is equally true: One should always work near the limits of what is possible rather than cynically give up on any place. In this decade idealists went too far; in the previous one, it was realists who did not go far enough.
Robert D. KaplanTags: war idealism iraq noninterventionism bosnia interventionism realpolitik humanitarian-intervention
Liberty is the first condition of growth. It is wrong, a thousand times wrong, if any of you dares to say, 'I will work out the salvation of this woman or child.
Swami VivekanandaTags: liberty thelema 1897 india noninterventionism vedanta madras
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