When I began thinking seriously about public policy in the 1950s, being an “internationalist” was for good liberals a no-brainer.

There were two competing doctrines. One was isolationism. Isolationists opposed the formation of the United Nations and rejected the idea that we should help rebuild the economies of allied nations after World War II through the Marshall Plan in Europe and later by John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in Latin America. The reality of the Soviet threat undermined the support that approach had among conservatives, who turned instead to the view that our foreign policy should consist largely of building up an overpowering military counter to the evil empire of communism – our own and that of any nation with which we could form an alliance. This view had in common with isolationism the dismissal of any notion that we should be concerned with whether or not our allies adhered to democratic norms or showed any respect for the human rights of their populations.

Liberal internationalists, by contrast, agreed that the Soviet Union was a threat both to our security and to the values in which we believed. There were some on the left who seemed to me then and now insufficiently committed to the latter aspect. Personally, I think Ronald Reagan was correct in describing it as an “evil empire” maintaining domination over their Eastern European neighbors by brutal force – including their butchery of Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956. But he weakened the moral force of his position by his indifference to oppression imposed by our allies – including his effort to block the adoption of sanctions against South Africa and his unsuccessful attempt to perpetuate the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.

Our major difference with the right came in our view that military force alone was an incomplete foreign policy. We supported programs to combat poverty and promote democracy elsewhere, both for moral reasons and because they were more effective in strengthening resistance to communism.

This led us to support not just worldwide military alliances but also support for those resisting oppressive governments in their own countries. And we agreed that our great wealth should be used for economic progress, both through expanded trade and monetary assistance.

Two major shifts have occurred that require an adjustment in the approach liberal internationalists should adopt. First, it no longer makes sense for us to provide physical protection for the entire world on the scale we now maintain. Putin’s Russia is a troubling place, but fortunately he does not command the armed force to threaten our security that his Soviet predecessors had. And it is long past time for those who might be endangered by him – our European allies – to build their own defenses rather than rely almost entirely on ours. As for China, we also should support the ability of Asian nations to protect themselves – with our help, but not in near total reliance on us.

Second, the great disparity between our wealth and that of the rest of the world has substantially – and inevitably – diminished since the ’70s. In particular, the way in which the global economy has evolved is a major factor in the increased wealth gap within our own country. For the 30 years after World War II, we could make almost anything and sell it almost anywhere. Americans with no specialized skills or advanced education who were willing to work – especially white men who faced neither racial nor gender discrimination – could earn their way into the middle class.

Today the benefits of trade go disproportionately to high-end occupations, while millions have seen their wages depressed by international competition.

The failure to take these two developments into account imposes serious strains on our society. Maintaining a Cold War level of military spending constrains our ability to spend money at home that could alleviate excessive inequality. And trade in the absence of such policies exacerbates the unhealthy concentration of wealth from which we suffer.

Those who argue for continuing the current patterns in both cases do so primarily on the basis that they are necessary to protect our role as the pre-eminent global power. They preach that we must be the leader of the world in substantial part as an end in itself, beyond what would be required by our economic or security needs.

I disagree that we should impose this obligation on ourselves, with the great material and social costs that it entails. That may be a legitimate debate. But we should be able to agree that if America is to play this role, it should only do so if the burdens involved are more fairly shared.

Cutting back on programs that benefit middle- and working-class people while financing worldwide military adventures by an unfair tax system and trading economic security for those groups for the benefit of the much smaller number who prosper as trade expands is a perverted version of internationalism.

Barney Frank is a retired congressman and the author of landmark legislation. He divides his time between Maine and Massachusetts.

Twitter: BarneyFrank