"I opposed annexing in areas around our city borders, because I knew that if neighborhoods wanted to be a part of the city, well, they would mandate themselves in and invite themselves into a city. That's just one example of even on a local level how dangerous it is for a politician to start thinking they know more than that individual family, that individual business."

Next Quote

The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we [USA] provoke them to it or not. Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism.

— Christopher Hitchens