John McNaughton Quotes

Never before has the gap between American power and its legitimacy been so great.

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

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

I think people took Grenada for what it turned out to be, which was a very specific incident and from which one couldn't necessarily make a lot of generalizations.

I believe that the American administration of Iraq has been arrogant, has pursued policies that are illegal in international law and has been ignorant and incompetent. I said this very forthrightly to the senators.

Where is the evidence that Washington's world view sways the multitude of nations? To enlist support for its wars in Korea, Vietnam and in the Gulf, the United States had to resort to a lot of bribery and threats. At the United Nations, the US has, with noteworthy regularity, been on the minority side in voting on resolutions.

The [foreign] policy of the United States is modeled on interventionism and aggression. It is logical that we should always be very suspicious.

Such recognition is not necessary in order to enable the United States to intervene and pacify the Island.

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.

It’s not a dictatorship in the United States. But it is dictatorial to the rest of the world. Who’s going to say no?

In the United Nations, the United States can almost always get its way…. The United States has the ability to make the United Nations work or not work---if it cares enough.

The policy of the United States in the Spanish war and since has given it a position of influence among the nations that it never had before.

People the world over now see democracy promotion as a dishonest, dangerous cover for the protection of U. S. power and influence.

We’re not the world’s policeman. Nor the world’s judge, jury and executioner.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

Great powers are granted the legitimacy to exercise power on the global stage, but the price is a willingness to act—at least at the margins and consistent with their self-interest—for the common good.

We were quite naïve about the use of American power.

However desirable the maintenance of ex-territorial rights hitherto enjoyed might be, it was obvious that the public opinion of this country would not countenance a war for the purpose of maintaining them.

People think that it only takes an American decision to solve this or that problem [in foreign affairs].

I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable.

Bush will keep up that policy that gives the United State the role of promoting freedom in the world.

Judge candidly what a wretched figure the American empire will exhibit in the eye of other nations, without a power to array and support a military force for its own protection.

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.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.