In a wide-ranging interview Mary Kaldor argues that peace and human rights are the twin foundations of a progressive foreign policy. She maps the terrain of contemporary politics: as she sees it, a global mismatch between the ‘militarised unilateralist character of American power’ and the new global socio-economic reality ushered in by the shocks of globalisation and the end of the Cold War, the spreading virus of ‘new wars,’ the crises of humanitarian interventionism, the disastrous consequences of the ‘war on terror’ and the Iraq conflict. Kaldor also set out her positive alternative – a cosmopolitan political project based on the rise of a global civil society and the doctrine of human security. She answers criticisms of her work as relativist and pacifist.