New America's Whitehead Senior Fellow Michael Lind was a featured guest on CNN's Oct. 16 edition of "Lou Dobbs Tonight." Lind discussed his new book, The American Way of Strategy, and its contention that U.S. foreign policy has drifted dangerously off course.

The topics covered by Lind and CNN host Kitty Pilgrim included defense spending, immigration and President Bush's "radical and unwise departure from the historic American way of strategy."

Video of Lind's appearance is available at right, and a brief excerpt is included below. For a complete transcript, please see the CNN website.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT," OCT. 16, 2006
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN: ...a provocative new book says the United States foreign policy has been a dangerous failure for more than a decade. It says this country's desire for international dominance is a direct threat to the future of this nation and its democracy.

The book is called "The American Way of Strategy." The author is Michael Lind and he joins me tonight. Thanks for being with us....

Let me quote from your book for a second. Americans beginning with the 18th century founders have believed that a democratic republic is most likely to flourish where the majority of people belong to a prosperous middle class.

How is our foreign policy damaging our middle class?

MICHAEL LIND, AUTHOR: Well, Kitty, our goal in the two world wars and the Cold War was to create an international environment that was safe enough that we did not have to create a garrison state, a fortress America, in which the government for defense expenditures took up so much of the economy that it saps the resources available for healthy civilian middle class.

PILGRIM: Well, how do defense expenditures in World War II compare to the defense expenditures now?

LIND: Well, the defense expenditures in World War II were half of GDP. Right now, since the Bush administration, we have raised our defense expenditures as a share of GDP to the average during the Cold War, apart from the spikes in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. This is a period when despite the al Qaeda threat and the jihadist threat, we face no imminent great power threats, and nevertheless we're spending money at Cold War levels, largely for a conventional military that is irrelevant when it comes to fighting terrorism....