by Stephen R. Shalom

About the author: Stephen R. Shalom is a professor of political science at William Paterson College in New Jersey and is the author of Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War.

A debate currently rages over the issue of U.S. military intervention abroad. Unlike previous debates on this issue over the past fifty years, today the Left is sharply divided. There have been calls for particular intervention in In These Times and Dissent and exchanges in the pages of The Nation, The Boston Review, Peace and Democracy News, and The Progressive. Left conferences in New York and Washington have grappled with the issue, as have many panels at the recent Socialist Scholars’ Conference and numerous radio debates.

Bad Interventions During the Cold War

It is...