Had thought that

1.Please explain what the underlined means grammatially. Does it mean thath prior to that moment he thought that the cold war was over but at the very moment of confrontation with an interlocutor he ceased to think that? "As I stood up, mumbling something about my decision to forgo dessert, I suffered a brief spell of vertigo. I was suddenly not sure what decade I was in. I could have been having the same confrontation, more or less, in 1985 or 2015. I’d thought the Cold War had ended.

More importantly, I’d thought that the Cold War mindset had ended.

But as the science fiction writer William Gibson once wrote, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” I’d somehow stumbled into one of those pockets of the past that coexist with the present and the future".

2. Couldnt understad the underlined sentence.

Certainly we must avoid the misuse of human rights issues, through politically motivated “linkage,” to sabotage arms control agreements. But progressives have a distinguished record of upholding human rights issues even as we embrace pragmatic agreements — with Iran, with North Korea — that reduce the risk of war. The U.S. government is selective in its application of the human rights yardstick. Progressives should resist the temptation.

Thank you very much for you help. These sentences are from

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/the-kremlins-kool-aid_b_6854944.html