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FOREWORD

by John Feffer

Polish revolutionaries lived by a powerful motto: for our freedom and yours. When Polish nobleman Tadeusz Kosciuszko fought in the American Revolution, he did so on behalf of universalist values: human dignity, equality and, of course, freedom. He was not doing Americans a favor. He saw the struggle of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine as his struggle as well, the struggle of Poles to overthrow their colonial oppressor. He took up arms in the Continental Army as a form of solidarity, and he expected others to similarly fight in the Polish struggle.

This spirit of international solidarity has long animated the Left. It inspired American leftists to fight in the Abraham Lincoln brigade in the Spanish Civil War. It prompted the Left to support national liberation struggles in Vietnam, South Africa, and Nicaragua. It also motivated progressives to work hand in hand with movements for human rights, which sometimes produced some odd bedfellows, for instance in the Communist world or the Middle East.

But American leftists have had to reckon with the policy of the US government as well. It was one thing to support the anti-Marcos struggle in the Philippines or the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina in opposition to official US government policy. But what happened when the US government was also supporting Poland’s Solidarity movement? Or, later, when it proposed launching humanitarian interventions against Slobodan Milošević in Serbia to prevent genocide in Kosovo or Muammar Qadafi for the same stated purpose in Libya? The United States has had a terrible foreign-policy record of starting horrible wars, supporting authoritarian regimes, and instigating military coups. Can it ever act in the world for good reasons? Can progressives nowadays ever support a military intervention?

In this invaluable collection of interviews, Andy Heintz talks to critical intellectuals all over the world in an effort to illuminate this critical debate. It was a no-brainer for freedom lovers to side with Poland against the Russian empire or America against the British empire. It didn’t require a lot of reflection for leftists to take a stand against Franco or Marcos. Today, however, the geopolitical landscape has become considerably more difficult to navigate. The thinkers and activists who speak through this book are invaluable guides to this new intellectual terrain.

Intervention is not the only issue covered in this book. Activists around the globe are fighting neoliberal economics, corrupt politicians, sexism and homophobia, climate change, and much more. And they are not just oppositionists. They are also trying to articulate a positive agenda that can form a viable politics.

Here, too, this book illuminates many possible paths forward. This is, as Heintz points out, both a collective effort and an international one. We have to work together, and we have to link arms across borders – because so many of the problems we face today are global.

In this way, the discussions in this book can be a model for our future course. It provides an example of the best kind of globalization: globalization from below. Tadeusz Kosciuszko would have approved.

John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.