At the start of this debate on libertarians and foreign policy, I called the current state of libertarian foreign policy “pacifism combined with isolationism.” This was meant as hyperbole, to get under some people’s skin, and was met with a predictable amount of anger.
So, to be more precise, I would call libertarian foreign policy — to the extent it exists — minimalist. As I defined it in my TCS piece, that’s “using the least amount of force possible to respond only to the most imminent of threats.”
That probably sounds awfully appealing to a lot of libertarians, but that’s how Bill Clinton reacted to terrorism in the 1990s, and the terrorists took it as a sign of weakness — one that emboldened them to undertake 9/11.
That, to me, makes it an unacceptable stance. Most of the country has recognized this. The only ones who haven’t are on the far left, the pacifist wing of the libertarian movement and the Buchananite wing of the Republican Party.
Thanks for your various challenges, Ryan. I’ve addressed some of your points more generally at Liberty and Power Group Blog here:
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/8667.html
Our government leaders, through their foreign policy, have turned a deaf ear to the warnings of our founders. They ignore the wisdom in George Washington’s Farewell Address:
…”a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusion into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concession to the favorite nation or privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld”
George Washington called it retaliation but we, today, call it terrorism.
I’m surprised that the 9/11 retaliation didn’t come sooner. It was really so simple, wasn’t it? The pilots weren’t armed, the cockpit was unlocked… Since 9/11 I’ve thought about the numerous ways that a retaliating party could harm us. I’m sure there are think tanks that do nothing but play though scenarios on how the “bad guys” could get us one day. Perhaps they pass their recommendations on to the new “Homeland Security” agency and I guess we can hope that they do something behind the scenes to assure that that one scenario can’t occur. I’ve thought of dozens of ways in which we could be attacked and I’m a “friendly”. Think about those that really want to do us harm and have the time and patience to implement their plans over many years. Just a few guys with a blow torch some magnesium and time… They’ve got to have thousands of ideas on ways to harm us and a thousand years to think about it…
The only weakness that we have is the fact that we seem to be unable to stand up and admit that we were wrong. Despite our entry into the Middle East conflict in the early 1800’s it is not our war; it is a European war and they will ultimately need to settle it themselves. No amount of pre-emptive action on our part will get us out of it. We simply need to walk away and do the best we can to defend ourselves until the memories fade and we can go back to living as our founders had intended it. It may take another 200 years to return us to our ideals (or it may happen by default in the next 10 as the government bankrupts us). That isn’t being pacifist, it is truly patriotic.
Trusting Libertarians in matters of foreign policy is simply falling back to embrace our founders vision for America…Free trade with all, entangling alliances with none… That has got to be an easy argument to win if we can get the venue to voice it, again… Ryan, can we count on you to carry the torch of liberty?
Mr. Sager, you say you want a serious, honest debate about libertarianism and foreign policy post-9/11, yet you consider to go about it in the most unserious manner. Clinton was a libertarian on foreign policy? As I recall, instead of dealing with Al Qaeda he got the U.S. into three separate wars in which we had no national security interest at stake whatsoever.
Just because many libertarians believe that our approach to fighting the terrorist threat ought to deal with the actual threat (not hypothetical and diversionary ones such as Iraq) does not mean we support an ineffectual approach such as Clinton’s. Cato’s own writings on Afghanistan ought to be proof of that much. Who’s the one who needs to get serious here?
Mr. Wildboard: What say you to the Barbary Wars?
Whatever libertarian foreign policy is, I wouldn’t describe it as “pacifism,” i.e. turning the other cheek.
The vast majority of libertarians believe in self-defense, unlike pacifists, who form at most a rump of libertarianism, not a wing.
What you fail to understand is that, however unjustified the attackers of 9/11 were in assaulting innocent civilians and property owners, they had a long list of legitimate grievances against the U.S. going back at least to FDR’s promised support for the corrupt kingdom of Saudi Arabia in exchange for guaranteed access to Saudi oil, and to U.S. moral and financial support for the state of Israel going back to Truman. The U.S. has also aided other corrupt regimes in the Middle East and engineered the overthow of the Iranian government in 1953.
Bin Laden repeatedly has been very clear about what his political objective is: to free “Muslim lands” from Western dominance and occupation. Libertarians don’t agree that any land is “Muslim” or “Christian,” etc., but we do agree that the U.S. government has no business maintaining a military presence in them and should withdraw from the Middle East immediately.
If the U.S. throughout its history had pursued a foreign policy based on Washington’s vision of peace and free trade with no entangling political alliances, 9/11 would not have happened and there would be no war in Iraq.
I don’t know why Tom asked for my take on the Barbary Wars but I’ll reply here since his email address is bad.
I really agree with the position related to the Barbary Wars as written by Richard Maybury. BTW, I recommend his whole series of books as a fun, easy to read, anti-statist platform for learning.
Most of these quotes are directly from his book “The Thousand Year War in the Mideast”. I’ve made some changes and shortened parts to arrive at a brief of sorts:
The Inquisition evolved in the Barbary Wars, and the Barbary Wars evolved in the Europen colonial conquests during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
U.S. officials contend that the Gulf of Sidra is international waters but the Moslems have claimed that turf since the middle ages, long before international law was invented.
In those times, Moslems living in the Barbary States of N. Africa were either refugees from the European Inquisition or decendants of those killed by the Crusaders. They were taxing European vessels sailing along their coast.
European merchants somehow convinced their governments to pay the tax for them so the Moslems knew they could jack it up pretty high.
Resentful of the Crusades and Inquisition the Moslems really stuck it to the sailors and kept increasing the tax. In 1801, the tiny/new American government couldn’t pay the taxes any longer but U.S. merchants kept sailing through the area anyway. The Pasha of Tripoli captured and imprisioned the tax evaders.
The Europeans liked this whole scenario and they started calling the Moslems pirates and promoted the idea that America should teach them a lession.
Americans were generally ignorant of Europe’s continual war with the Moslems and believed the propaganda, never suspecting that this was just the latest chapter in the Crusades.
The U.S. government sent the Navy and Marines to attack Tripoli and I believe that the Europeans were now quite happy that the U.S. had entered the Crusades on the side of the Europeans.
The Barbary wars were the first time the American Miltary was suckered into fighting European wars for them. It hasn’t been the last time. Back then the enemies were called Pirates, now they are “terrorists”. The conflict remains the same as in 1815. It’s still the Crusades and we have given up our neutrality and sided with the Europeans against the Moslems.
Unfortunately, foreign policy is one area where the American founders were a lot better at theory than the application. Imagine how different and, in my opinion, better off we would be if we never gave up our neutrality.