Self-Determination of Nations
"The right of "the self-determination of nations" applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships. Just as an individual's right of free action does not include the "right" to commit crimes (that is, to violate the rights of others), so the right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as "the right to enslave." A nation can do it, just as man can become a criminal - but neither can do it by right.
Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation Chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent "rights' of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.
~ Found at Ayn Rand Lexicon - Self-Determination of Nations
Foreign Policy
"We do need a policy based on long-range principles, i.e., an ideology. But a revision of our foreign policy, from its basic premises on up, is what today's anti-ideologists dare not contemplate. The worse its results, the louder our public leaders proclaim that our foreign policy is bipartisan.
A proper solution would be to elect statesmen - if such appeared - with a radically different foreign policy, a policy explicitly and proudly dedicated to the defense of America's rights and national self-interests, repudiating foreign aid and all forms of international self-immolation."
~ Found at Ayn Rand Lexicon - Foreign Policy
United Nations
"Psychologically, the U.N. has contributed a great deal to the gray swamp of demoralization - of cynicism, bitterness, hopelessness, fear and nameless guilt - which is swallowing the Western world. But the communist world has gained a moral sanction, a stamp of civilized respectability from the Western world - it has gained the West's assistance in deceiving its victims
- it has gained the status and prestige of an equal partner,
thus enabling the notion that the difference between human rights and mass slaughter is merely a difference of political opinion.
The declared goal of the communist countries is the conquest of the world. What they stand to gain from a collaboration with the (relatively) free countries is the latter's material, financial, scientific, and intellectual resources;
- the free countries have nothing to gain from the communist countries.
Therefore, the only form of common policy or compromise possible between two such parties is the policy of property owners who make piecemeal concessions to an armed thug in exchange for his promise not to rob them.
~ Found at Ayn Rand Lexicon - United Nations
