The Inner Struggle

Timothy Sandefur on Jul 25th 2006

Brayton has asked for our thoughts on Ilya Somin’s comments regarding the division between libertarians regarding the Iraq War. I notice also that Brink Lindsey has some thoughts over at Cato’s blog that are worth reading.

At this point in the war, the issues have become so complicated that it’s very hard to say anything in a blog post that won’t raise a bunch of “but what about…?” comments. (In fact, not only are libertarians divided about the war, but even Objectivists are.) So I can only generalize. There are any number of reasons to be for or against America going into an armed conflict, but I think that among libertarians, anyway, the broad outlines are as follows.

There are people who believe that America should “mind its own business”—that America should not “force its ways on others,” or “try to export democracy” and so forth. If the people in Iran or Iraq or wherever want to live in a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, then it’s not our problem, and we shouldn’t be meddling. This group can be broadly associated with Murray Rothbard, whose views on foreign policy are neatly summed up by his claim that America is “the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government” in the world, and that the Soviet Union “adopted the theory of ‘peaceful coexistence’…[which is] what Libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy.” It is against this group, primarily, that I’ve aimed my attacks on the anti-war crowd. This group, I think, is not only profoundly wrong, but are not even properly described as libertarian. They take as their foundational premise the concept of “self-determination,” when libertarianism demands that the foundational premise be the individual’s natural right to liberty. If one begins from the premise of “self-determination”—i.e., that a collective has the “right” to create whatever (even oppressive) political institutions it pleases, without interference from another collective—well, then you end up making such arguments as that the south was right in the Civil War, and so forth. That may be a lot of things, but it is not libertarianism; it is paleoconservatism.

As I explain in my new article, How Libertarians Ought To Think About The U.S. Civil War, (available in the current issue of Reason Papers),

I suspect one reason libertarians are misled into embracing the Confederate cause is because of the formative event in the lives of many libertarians, as well as the Libertarian Political Party: The Vietnam War. The lessons that many Vietnam protestors drew from that experience were that war is never justified, and that it is simply “none of our business” what another country’s rulers do to the people of that country. If the Vietnamese “choose” to live under communism, other nations must not interfere. Likewise, this argument goes, if southerners in the 1860s chose to enslave blacks, that may have been wrong, but it was none of the Union’s business…. [S]uch a view obscures the ultimate values of libertarian political philosophy. Although it is true that Americans do not owe a duty to intervene when other nations’ rulers oppress their peoples, it is not true that other nations have the right to oppress their people. To say that another nation’s oppression of its people is “none of our business” is similar to what Lincoln described as the perverse notion “that ‘if one man would enslave another, no third man should object.’” The United States, and every other nation, does have the right, though not the duty, to liberate oppressed peoples held captive by dictatorships….

War is a terrible thing. But libertarianism holds that it is justified at times, when undertaken in defense of individual liberty. As Jefferson said, “all men know that war is a losing game to both parties. But they know also that if they do not resist encroachment at some point, all will be taken from them…. It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater….”

Other libertarians, including myself, argue that respecting and protecting individual rights is the only source of political legitimacy. A government that violates such rights as a matter of policy is not, in fact, a political institution, but is a criminal organization that has arrogated to itself the badges of office. Such a “government” has no legitimate sovereignty and may be overthrown legitimately in defense of individual rights, either by the people living in that nation, or by another nation. Thus military “aggression” against a foreign power is justified when it is done in defense of the individual rights of the people subjected to that foreign power. America has the right to liberate Cuba or North Korea at any time, for the exact same reason that a good Samaritan has the right to interfere and stop a robbery he finds in progress on the sidewalk. Neither the good Samaritan nor the United States has the duty to intervene in such circumstances, of course, and they should only do so when all other considerations make it appropriate to do so. But there is no grounds for accusing either of “interfering” and “imperialism” and “aggression” and whatnot when they make that choice. Rose Friedman is correct.

That being said, there are still perfectly valid libertarian (not paleo-conservative) reasons for opposing American involvement in Iraq. I’ve stated my reasons for supporting our attacking Iraq several times, so I won’t do so again; I think Brink Lindsey sums it up fairly nicely, although I’m not quite as shaken as he is (yet!). I’ll just restate two points. First, I do not think the Iraq war was about weapons of mass destruction; I never did think that, and I still do not. I am therefore not as furious about the failure to locate (many of) them as others are. Nevertheless, I think it is not only correct and proper for the President to take preemptive action when he has reason to believe that America is in danger, but also that it is important to preserve that very principle. What we don’t want is for our next president to be so shaken by American public reaction against Bush that he hesitates too long the next time there is a crisis that justifies American military action.

Filed in The Barracks

One Response to “The Inner Struggle”

  1. [...] In response to Brayton’s question on libertarians and the Iraq war: I am — at long last — uninterested in the Great Iraq War Question. [...]

Trackback URI |