We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

I think we do have an interest in combating states that try to cross borders and steal parts of other people's country.

My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed.

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued.... America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

As even a democracy like the United States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic times, and it can enrich a country's elites.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.