Politics & Power Quote by Douglas Feith

Faith in alliances is doing a lot of work here, and that’s the point. Feith’s line leans on a distinctly post-Cold War, post-9/11 assumption: that “the community of free nations” is not just a moral club but a power system capable of deterring threats before they become existential. It’s diplomatic language with a security bureaucrat’s hard edge. “Hoping” softens the claim, but the sentence quickly shifts into an assertion of collective muscle, as if optimism itself can be a strategic asset.

The key move is how he fuses sovereignty with openness. Traditionally, sovereignty is about border control and state prerogative; openness is about permeability, trade, immigration, information flows. Feith knots them together so that defending liberal society becomes synonymous with defending the state. That framing matters: it justifies security policies not as departures from liberal values but as their necessary guardians. “Undermine” is elastic enough to cover terrorists, rival states, cyber actors, propaganda networks, even economic coercion. It’s a threat word that invites broad interpretation while avoiding naming a specific enemy.

The cadence is revealing, too: “sovereignty our rights” tumbles out without commas, a rhetorical pile-on meant to feel comprehensive and non-negotiable. The unnamed “anybody” is a deliberate universalizer, signaling resolve without locking into a single adversary. In context, Feith’s era in U.S. defense policy prized preemption and coalition legitimacy; this sentence performs that balancing act - projecting confidence in liberal solidarity while leaving room for aggressive measures in the name of keeping societies “open” and “secure.”