Peace, War, and Liberty

Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy

Christopher A. Preble

• Éditeur: Cato Institute
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781948647175
• Sujet: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Sous-sujet: Internationale Beziehungen

In its dealings with the broader world, has the United States been a force for liberty? Should it be? And if so, how?

To answer these questions, Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy traces the history of United States foreign policy and the ideas that have animated it, and considers not only whether America's policy choices have made the world safer and freer but also the impact of those choices on freedom at home.

In this evenhanded but uncompromising commentary, Christopher A. Preble considers the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy: why policymakers in the past made certain choices, the consequences of those choices, and how the world might look if America chose a different path for the future. Would America—and the world—be freer if America's foreign policy were more restrained?

1
Introduction: War Is the Health of the State

Human liberty is the foundation of a good and just society. Men and women flourish when they are able to live, work, and play where they desire. People live better, more fulfilling lives when they are free to associate with the people they choose, and how they choose. The presumption of liberty, against the use of force to coerce or compel a person to behave in a particular way, defines the modern philosophy known today as libertarianism or, in an earlier era, liberalism.

Legitimate governments possess limited and enumerated powers to defend and protect basic human rights on behalf of their citizens. Governments provide a system for adjudicating disputes, and they impose sanctions or punishments on those who would transgress the rights of others either willfully or through negligence. Governments should adhere to the powers granted to them and otherwise interfere as little as possible with their citizens’ ability to make honest livings and enjoy the fruits of their labors. In domestic affairs, therefore, libertarians believe that the best governments are small governments.

The same principle of limited and enumerated powers applies when a government turns its attention abroad. People should generally be able to buy or sell goods or services, to study and travel, and to otherwise interact with others in a foreign country unencumbered by the intrusions of government. In other words, as a general rule, libertarians believe in the free movement of people and goods across borders and artificial boundaries that are often no more than lines on a map.

But a country’s foreign policy goes well beyond what its government allows its citizens to do. Governments can choose to have formal relationships with other governments and peoples through diplomacy and the exchange of ambassadors. These agents, acting on behalf of a government and representing the interests of its constituents, may negotiate treaties of friendship or ones governing the terms of trade. Such activities are wise and just to the extent that they facilitate the individual’s ability to live freely and prosper, both inside and outside the country in which he or she resides or was born.

Libertarians are skeptical, however, of government actions that depart from this narrow and well-defined mandate. Take, for example, the case of foreign aid—when a government provides direct financial assistance to a foreign government or people. Humanitarian assistance, especially in response to natural disasters, enjoys relatively broad support, even among some libertarians. But undemocratic governments can use foreign assistance—especially the military kind—to quell popular dissent. Some people, not just libertarians, may bristle at the idea that their government might tax them in order to provide public goods such as schools, roads, and bridges in a foreign land because the government there is unable or unwilling to do so. By contrast, few would object to nongovernmental entities performing similar services based on voluntary contributions of time or resources. After all, the ability of individuals to interact freely, including mutually beneficial trade and private charity, is a basic human right cherished by libertarians and nonlibertarians alike.

But while trade and other forms of voluntary engagement are essential elements of a country’s foreign policy, war remains the most significant. Defense against threats, foreign and domestic, is one of the main reasons governments exist in the first place. While we should not define a country’s foreign policy solely by the wars that it does or does not fight, the decisions on whether to initiate a war, or to engage in certain acts that may lead to war, are among the most important that a country and its leaders make. And while most people abhor war, libertarians have always had special reasons for doing so because of the unique threat that wars pose to liberty, including the loss of life and property.

A further reason libertarians fear war is because war grows the power of the state. As James Madison explained, “War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”1

Wars impede the free movement of goods, capital, and labor. Restrictions on such exchanges constitute an assault on fundamental human rights. And governments regularly abridge other rights during wartime in the service of a purportedly higher purpose. A government at war confiscates resources, undermining and circumventing the market with a degree of regimentation and central planning that would never be tolerated in peacetime.

War is the largest and most far-reaching of all government-run enterprises, and citizens’ views of the state subtly but perceptively shift during wartime. “Individualism . . . flourishes during peacetime,” explains Ronald Hamowy in The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, “but clashes with the collectivism, regimentation, and herd mentality that war fosters.”2 Citizens who would typically demand an explicit justification for a particular government action grow quiescent during times of war. Those in uniform are bound by honor and law to obey the state’s orders, as conveyed by the chain of command.

Civilians back on the home front are reluctant to go against authority for other reasons. War often brings violence, or the threat of violence, against dissenters. The safer course is to go along. And the social stigma of opposing a war, or the measures instituted to prosecute it, is also burdensome. Dissent can appear greedy or self-interested when one’s fellow citizens are making heroic sacrifices. It seems particularly petty to complain that your taxes are too high, or that certain foods are less available, to a neighbor who has lost a son or daughter in combat. Your own sacrifices and privations pale in comparison.

In his sweeping survey, War and the Rise of the State, Bruce Porter summarizes the problem:

A government at war is a juggernaut of centralization determined to crush any internal opposition that impedes the mobilization of militarily vital resources. This centralizing tendency of war has made the rise of the state throughout much of history a disaster for human liberty and rights.3

Classical liberals jealously protect the rights of the individual and are committed to limiting the arbitrary powers of the state. Unsurprisingly, they are nearly unanimous in their opposition to war. Their ideology, Hamowy explains, looks “at war as a reactionary undertaking at odds with the social progress that springs, in large part, from the unhampered movement of goods, capital, and labor across national borders, and from international and scientific cooperation.”4 Adam Smith taught that “peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice”5 were the essential ingredients of good government. Others excoriated war as inconsistent with social progress. A classical liberal, according to Ludwig von Mises, “is convinced that victorious war is an evil even for the victor, that peace is always better than war.”6

About a year before his death, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman warned that progress toward his goal of rolling back the federal government’s power was being thwarted by the United States’ overly ambitious and costly foreign policy. This included the idea that the United States had “a mission to promote democracy around the world.” Friedman told the San Francisco Chronicle, “War is a friend of the state.” It is always expensive, requiring higher taxes, and “in time of war, government will take powers and do things that it would not ordinarily do.”7

The evidence is irrefutable: throughout human history, government has grown during wartime or during periods of great anxiety when war is in the offing, and it rarely surrenders these powers when the guns fall silent or when the crisis abates. Some instances are seemingly small but have far-reaching consequences. The first income tax in the United States was imposed during the Civil War. The first estate tax was collected to pay for the Spanish–American War. And the U.S. government implemented federal income tax withholding during World War II, increasing dramatically the government’s ability to raise revenue while obscuring the true costs of government for most workers.

Other seemingly innocuous taxes or regulations linger long after their stated purposes with no good effect. The tax on long-distance telephone calls imposed to pay for the Spanish–American War lasted 108 years; the war lasted six months. Major American cities imposed rent controls during World War II, and some of these restrictions remain in place, most notably in New York City. Bruce Porter notes “the nonmilitary sectors of the federal government actually grew at a faster rate during World War II than under the impetus of the New Deal.”8 In other words, all aspects of state power expand during times of war, including those that have nothing to do with actually fighting and winning battles. The essential Crisis and Leviathan by the libertarian scholar Robert Higgs documents the phenomenon in great detail.9 The litany of government abuses and usurpations that originated during wartime and persist to this day includes federal regulation of marriages, wage and price controls, the Internal Revenue Service, distortion of the health care market, inflation, bank bailouts, and morality crusades against alcohol and prostitution.10

It is demonstrably true that the state’s power grows during wartime. War therefore always has the potential to undermine individual liberty, especially in the near term. It might be true that on balance, preparing for war in order to deter war, or waging a war now to prevent a worse one later, serves the cause of liberty and human rights. World War II falls into that category, given the unspeakable horror committed by Hitler’s Germany in occupied Europe. (Imperial Japan’s conduct in the Asia-Pacific, especially in China, was nearly as bad.) It seems clear in retrospect that war, and war alone, was necessary to stop those aggressors.

But ascertaining ahead of time that war is the last best hope for preserving liberty is always difficult, and it may be impossible. One country’s preventive action may look like mere aggression to a disinterested third party. That is why the German statesman Otto von Bismarck is reported to have likened preventive w...