Thomas Fleming Quotes

We never make conquests or ask any other nation to let us establish ourselves in their country as the English, the French and the Dutch have done.

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres - economic, political and humanitarian - and has imposed itself on other states.

I'm not a wide-eyed imperialist who wants to see Americans manning outposts all over the world. Not outposts to freedom in the cold war cliche, but islands of stability and seas of ethnic strife. That is not what anyone should feel comfortable seeing Americans doing.

So is it always nationalist to resist US globalization? The US thinks it is, and wants you to agree; and, moreover, to consider US interests as being universal ones.

I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the plaything of one small corner of the world.

I think that there is a limit on how far you can export democracy.

[America] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom …. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.

The government should not present the anomaly which it now presents—a government the freest, perhaps the most democratic in the world with reference to local and domestic matters in which you rule yourselves as fully as any people in the world, while in your foreign affairs, your relations with other countries, whether peaceful or warlike, commercial, financial, or otherwise, you may have no more voice than the people of Japan.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t consider ourselves an empire. Others see us as impinging on their lives, their way of life.

Perhaps we have already intervened too much in the affairs of other peoples.

The World Doesn’t Want to Be American

Unilateralism and isolationism are ideological twins.

The best American internationalists reject the idea that their nation holds a global copyright that gives it a mandate to churn out replicas dotting the world.

The United States, of course, is determined to diversify Europe to such an extent that it becomes a meaningless entity.

Wherever people are free, foreign and domestic policy are inseparable.

The separation of the Western man from the seaboard, and his environment, made him in a large degree free from European precedents and forces. He looked at things independently and with small regard or appreciation for the best Old World experience. He had no ideal of a philosophical, eclectic nation, that should advance civilization by intercourse with foreigners and familiarity with their point of view, and readiness to adopt whatever is best and most suitable in their ideas, manners, and customs

U. S. foreign policy in the 20th century was characterized by disastrous oscillations between over-commitment and isolation

What takes place in America today was caused by the flagrant interference on the part of successive American governments into others’ business. These governments imposed regimes that contradict the faith, values, and lifestyle of the people.

It was my duty to protect the people of America from the impossible burden of annexing Mexico

This deep-rooted view [of the American government] is based on the view that the West not only seeks to continue geopolitical expansion in its classical form but also wants to make everyone do things it's way, by persiusion and example when possible, and by force when necessary.