Comments on: Libertarians and war

By: Adam Stephanides

Adam Stephanides — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 17:28:16 +0000

” The two favourite historical examples of non-minimal-state libertarianism – pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon England and the Icelandic commonwealth…” Eh? While I’m no expert on medieval history, when I have seen Anglo-Saxon England discussed, it’s usually said to have one of the strongest central governments of its time (after it was unified, of course).

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 18:46:38 +0000

Why libertarianism has a lot to say about foreign policy

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 01:27:10 +0000

I tried the HTML code for straight quotes, but it didn’t work. Sorry.

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 01:24:14 +0000

Testing 2.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:32:23 +0000

Lindsay, you’re nearly there. You just need to enclose the URL in straight quotes. Unfortunately, MT converted the quotes in my example into curly quotes, which wasn’t helpful. Can someone point me to a link on managing quotes in comment boxes?

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:13:11 +0000

testing

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:30:42 +0000

Lindsay, it’s hard to demonstrate, but if you put your URL in the standard HTML for a hyperlink, it will work. Example In angle brackets a href=”http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2004/07/where_have_all_.html” then link text then close tag which is /a in angle brackets

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:13:21 +0000

Jim, I like the Hayek point. I observed something similar, in relation to Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns. I’m not convinced by Mark Kleiman’s claim that libertarians must be absolutely opposed to war because of the potential for harm to innocent bystanders. Police forces, for example, occasionally kill innocent bystanders, but are presumably considered legitimate by most libertarians. OTOH, this is an important reason for being reluctant to go to war, especially if you include conscripted enemy troops in the innocent bystander category.

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 20:09:23 +0000

How does one post a follow up to a CT post? This is the URL of the follow up post. http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2004/07/where_have_all_.html

By: Decnavda

Decnavda — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:46:26 +0000

I think this is entirely a means vs. ends problem, in two senses: 1. Libertarians (NOT anarcho-capitalists) believe in strong police enforcement of property rights, but their belief in these property rights places many restrictions on HOW the police can engage in this strong enforcement. The same would apply to war. You can believe that a war against a dictator is justified – indeed, the very fact that he is a dictator makes it justified – but also believe in major restrictions on how that war is fought. Thus, a privately owned power plant may be an illegitimate target, while actual military bases would undoubtedly be legitimate. It may be that a libertarian legitimate war is IMPOSSIBLE to fight on PRACTICAL grounds. 2. There are two types of libertarianism: “pure” deontological libertarianism and consequentialist libertarianism. Libertarianism is a political “stance” that can be justified on either grounds. The comments in this post apply only to the deontologists. A consequentialist libertarian could easily conclude (wrongly, in this case, but legitimately) that a war against a dictator, although inevitably resulting in the deaths of innocents, will advance the overall cause of freedom. Indeed, expanding on point 2, it seems to me that the problem discussed here is not with libertarianism, but with deontology. Not only could a consequentialist libertarian easily support a war against a dictator, but ANY deontologist would have to oppose any modern war except to repel invasion. Is there ANY deontological moral code that would authorize the intentional killing of innocent workers at power plants?

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:12:13 +0000

I emailed Prof. Barnett on this topic. Here’s the email: I think your Volokh post makes sense amongst the things that you include, but I tend to believe you left one-elephant-in-the-room undiscussed, which doesn’t seem to be TOO big a deal pragmatically but IS a huge deal (though perhaps not a dealbreaker) in liberterian first: who pays? If taxing is not simply a “bad thing” but a theft of the state on the private rights of its citizenships, that humanitarian military intervention seems like it is as much a theft of those that opposed the intervention (or, more to the point, paying for the intervention) than, say, universal health care. Now, granted, I am not a liberterian, but I also think some of my own views on war show the more pragmatic problems with your hypothesis. I supported Afghanistan (on defense principles), after some thought opposed Iraq (because I believe the harm outweighed the good), and would support a military intervention in Sudan (as I did Rwanda), once again for humanitarian purposes. But I think there’s a fair argument that against any non-Western democracy, you’re going to be able to use your principles to avoid dealing with any serious issues of liberterianism. For instance, Iraq certainly was NOT, at the time of invasion, the most abusive regime in terms of total harm done or in terms of harm-done-per-individual; now was it, on any measure of effort, the best uses of our resources in ending abusive regimes. In fact, arguments have been made that more rights were violated by our actions in Iraq than by keeping Saddam in power (see http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001994.html). While this can be debated, it of course could be debated for China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, even Russia….which means that, without additional principles, it is possible that your formulation, other than showing that there may be no explicit theory of liberterianism in foreign policy, has absolutely no safeguards and allows all wars to be treated as pro-liberterian first principles.

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:10:32 +0000

I emailed Professor Barnett about this very post, and so I will just repost my response in it’s entirety. I think your Volokh post makes sense amongst the things that you include, but I tend to believe you left one-elephant-in-the-room undiscussed, which doesn’t seem to be TOO big a deal pragmatically but IS a huge deal (though perhaps not a dealbreaker) in liberterian first: who pays? If taxing is not simply a “bad thing” but a theft of the state on the private rights of its citizenships, that humanitarian military intervention seems like it is as much a theft of those that opposed the intervention (or, more to the point, paying for the intervention) than, say, universal health care. Now, granted, I am not a liberterian, but I also think some of my own views on war show the more pragmatic problems with your hypothesis. I supported Afghanistan (on defense principles), after some thought opposed Iraq (because I believe the harm outweighed the good), and would support a military intervention in Sudan (as I did Rwanda), once again for humanitarian purposes. But I think there’s a fair argument that against any non-Western democracy, you’re going to be able to use your principles to avoid dealing with any serious issues of liberterianism. For instance, Iraq certainly was NOT, at the time of invasion, the most abusive regime in terms of total harm done or in terms of harm-done-per-individual; now was it, on any measure of effort, the best uses of our resources in ending abusive regimes. In fact, arguments have been made that more rights were violated by our actions in Iraq than by keeping Saddam in power (see http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001994.html). While this can be debated, it of course could be debated for China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, even Russia….which means that, without additional principles, it is possible that your formulation, other than showing that there may be no explicit theory of liberterianism in foreign policy, has absolutely no safeguards and allows all wars to be treated as pro-liberterian first principles.

By: son volt

son volt — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:50:57 +0000

If a libertarian can justify the Iraq war, then there’s a hole in his philosophy big enough for any Wilsonian do-gooder to drive a million troops and a trillion dollars through.

By: Mike Huben

Mike Huben — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:46:58 +0000

There’s no one libertarian political philosophy to be underde terminate. There are many, founded on many different principles, They wouldn’t be coherent on this issue, (which is actually their hardest problem, and which they evade as glibly as possible.) Four years ago, I heard Harold Browne, their presidential candidate bloviate about how his defense policy would be to offer large bounties on the heads of any leaders of any attack on the USA. He thought that would be plenty to deter nuclear attacks. Pathetic in hindsight, isn’t it. Bounties didn’t work for Saddam or Bin Laden. Libertarian isolationism is another glib answer, and about as realistic as pretending there are no externalities. Libertarian attempts to weigh injustice versus benefits (for interventions and any other action) flounder on the fact that they abhor any ways of comparing utilities except through market interactions. Instead they tend to pick favorable examples and use a lot of hand waving to claim non-intervention has to be better. WWII is one counterexample that destructively tests nonintervention ideology.

By: David T. Beito

David T. Beito — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:45:45 +0000

David Theroux yet a third perspective on this debate over at Liberty and Power

. He criticizes those "defensist" libertarians (including myself)who criticized the Iraq war but supported the Afghan War. I must admit that he makes a strong case. The Afghan war not only failed to capture Bin Laden but it has turned into a quagmire.