The Non-aggression Principle - Part 2

In part 1 of this article, a problem with the concepts of self-defense, initiation of force and retaliation was discussed, and the problems that can result from the lack of a proper philosophical foundation under Libertarian foreign policy. The agreements between Objectivists and Libertarians was introduced. Here in part 2 the comparison of these two schools of though is developed further, especially regarding foreign policy, concluding with a plea for joint political action to put an end to the destructive American war-making we see going on. [Note: while there is truth in the notion that Objectivists are Libertarians, this article follows the self-labeling that they themselves use.]

Foreign policy must be grounded in moral principles, specifically that peaceful trade should be the norm, and military action be strictly limited to self-defense. The same principles of self-defense and non-initiation of force that applies to individuals also apply to nations threatening one another. A military attack must be repelled, but should be prevented, if time permits, with diplomatic means.

However, if another nation that has made military strikes on others in the past and now threatens us with attack and begins mobilizing troops and armaments and testing rockets to determine how far they will reach, a defensive strike would be called for. The most threatening weapons and facilities should be destroyed, but an all-out war should not be launched unless the foreign attack proceeds. At this time, in October, 2007, the USA faces no such situation, and is unlikely to develop unless our government provokes it. Legislation or constitutional amendment is needed to avoid the American empire-building military idiocy we are seeing.

Objectivists and Libertarians have some common thinking on foreign policy. The question is whether their forces can join in implementing such a policy for our nation.

Libertarian and Objectivist thinking about foreign policy

The relationships between nations ought to be thoroughly oriented to peace and trade, and nothing else. However, rogue nations will at times seek the unearned, as do individuals. Attacks will happen when a people seek additional territory or the resources belonging to other people. The amount of territory and resources ought not to be be grounds for such actions, as witness the economic success of small, resource-poor nations such as Japan, Denmark and Switzerland. But a defensive war is thinkable for a Libertarian nation. It would be immoral to simply sit back and allow the seizure of land or other resources by force.

When should defensive action begin? It could either begin when an undeniable threat arises or after the attack has begun. Libertarian thinkers disagree on this. Objectivists sometimes opt for preemptive wars, but are careful to define the justness of the cause, insisting on the principle of undeniable threat. Some Objectivists favor a joint effort with Israel to wage total war against Islamic totalitarian states (Brock and Epstein). If we include Libertarians and Objectivists, then, the array of positions on this is rather wide, and I fear the various positions will be hard to reconcile.

There is common ground on conscription. Signing up for military service must be strictly voluntary. So also must individual participation in a war. One must be allowed to opt out of an objectionable war. How would a decision to go to war be made? There could be total agreement within government, but the feasibility would depend on whether sufficient volunteers for this proposed war were available. There could be disagreement on the undeniable threat. Thus objections from many strict Randians would prevent aggression before an attack has begun. A defensive war would then only be possible when the attack is underway and the threat of harm has become clear to everyone. So we see that even for the limited government camp of Objectivists and some Libertarians, complications can arise.

And then there are the more "anarchist" Libertarians. On the model of a polycentric constitutional order (Barnett, pp. 257-283, or Linda and Morris Tannehill, the Market for Liberty), the picture is different, one with multiple private defense agencies which would enlist subscribers. Here individual subscribers and corporations, who wish to defend their enterprises and homes, would pay an agency fees or insurance premiums for defense against aggression, and a less than national response would be possible, even before an attack has begun (enemy missiles, aircraft or naval forces nearing our borders or our waters).

The choice between taking action only when an attack has begun versus when a clear and credible threat of attack has been announced, could be a matter of policy, varying among the defense agencies. The unanimous consent of subscribers could enable a policy of allowing a defense agency to wait until an attack begins or to choose for them to begin military action based on the clear and credible threat. A meaningful defensive action might be possible only if many defense agencies join together And individual participation would remain voluntary. We see that complications persist.

How can we get together?

[A note on the principle of voluntary military service in any specific war. The contract that an enlistee signs should only commit him or her to serve for one specific war, not for any and all wars during a number of years. The effect would be the same under a single-power limited state and under a polycentric constitutional order (multiple defense agencies).]

In the preceding discussion were mentioned several different positions, which may be adopted by groups in absolute ways. For us all to join as one force to influence American foreign policy could be enormously difficult unless some higher level thinking is done, arriving at a broader principle. A future Libertarian position on war may very well best be described to be similar to the position they take on abortion. Women must have full reproductive rights, but forbidding government funding of abortion or preventing abortion for the whole country. Groups of people and their defense agencies must have full rights to defend themselves, but forcing all people in a geographic area to follow the same position on when to begin defensive action is ruled out.

Comparing Objectivism and Libertarianism on Non-aggression

When it comes to the fine points, thinkers among Objectivists and Libertarians are divided about the proper allowable response to a credible threat of violating another person's rights. Some appear to go as far as ascribing to a theory of extended self-defense, whereby taking pre-emptive action is permitted. When someone announces that he will do physical harm to you, you would, on this theory, have the right to use force to prevent it. (See Reference dot com) Initiating a war of liberation is permissible to some Objectivists. (See Capitalism Magazine)

Ayn Rand herself was a non-interventionist or isolationist. In her essay, 'The Roots of War' in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal she condemns U.S. interventions entered into in her lifetime, including U.S. involvement in World Wars I & II, and the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In another essay called 'The Chickens Homecoming' in Return of The Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, she specifically attacks 'interventionism' and defends 'isolationism.'

She said, in “The Roots of War”

“If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) can justify it – there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.”

When another country makes war with us, however, Ms. Rand would have invoked the principle of self-defense. Some Objectivists since her have gone farther. A fairly balanced position was heard from an Objectivist in a Q&A session after a lecture by Yaron Brock, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, where he said,

"The only justification for war is when the United States is attacked or there is undeniable proof of an imminent attack."

Not all Libertarians are Anti-war

Not all on board at the Ayn Rand Institute are as clear as that. Some have justified the attack on Iraq. Some have said that we should rather have gone to war with Iran. There is a “healthy dissent” among Objectivists! (see this blog). However, neither Iraq nor Iran has shown undeniable evidence of imminent attack on us.

Libertarians usually oppose aggression, but there have been dissenters in their ranks as well. They recognize self-defense, but usually not the "extended right" which allows attacking someone who threatens before action to cause physical harm is clearly being started (an armed person enters your property, the gun is aimed at you, or the missile is launched at you).

Treading the fine line, Libertarians could endorse action on a credible threat. Randy Barnett is such a thinker, along with Yaron Brock. This writer thinks they are right. Why wait for the actual attack?

“The right of self-defense permits the use of force against those who communicate a credible threat to violate the rights of another," particularly if past conduct shows they are somewhat prone to carry out such threats. (Barnett, pp.190f and 213f) Barnett writes primarily about this as government using force to prevent future rights violations, based on actual past crimes, limited by the Rule of law. (p. 213). Barnett also proposes important constraints, requiring proof that the enemy threat is certain, based on past conduct, and requiring that the defensive action be proportionate to the risk.

When it comes to aggression outside of the sphere of individuals, such as military action by one nation against another, other Libertarian positions, such as that of Murray Rothbard's, sometimes sound isolationist and pacifistic. (See Antiwar dot com's interview with Murray Rothbard)

Barnett, on the other had, in an article asserted that Republican Libertarian candidate for President, Ron Paul, does not speak for all Libertarians (Wall Street Journal) He reminded the readers that while Libertarians generally oppose the current war in Iraq, they supported the military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan, who were harboring Al Qaeda. He did not cite sources on another claim that some Libertarians saw military action in Iraq as a legitimate part of a war against Islamist Jihadism. Walter Block wrote a response to this, in which he accused Barnett of not being a Libertarian at all (see blog citation, above). Can't we get along?

Wars of liberation

Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? There are Libertarian and Objectivist thinkers who view helping friendly nations deal with enemy attacks as a form of indirect self-defense.

Some thinkers consider helping another country fight off enemy attacks as interventionist and would forbid it. We should perhaps have tolerated a new socialist government in Grenada just as we tolerate Cuba.

But would the US have won its War of Independence without the help of France, Spain and the Netherlands?

Can we end the disagreements?

How can we make sense of this? Is a rapprochement possible, at least among the Libertarians? The Objectivist literature currently is putting a strong emphasis on the immorality of the limitations that the Geneva Conventions place on effectively carrying out national self-defense, as if the current wars were Just wars. They oppose the policy of preventing full-out engagement of the enemy in order to avoid killing civilians.

The Objectivist position on non-aggression when it comes to initiating war is not as clear. While the writings of Ayn Rand and her heir, Leonard Peikoff, adhere strictly to the principle that the initiation of force against others is evil, but retaliation is permissible, other Objectivists seem to deviate. See various articles on “war” (do a search) in Capitalism Magazine. Some of them find justification for broad military action against Osama bin Laden, Hezbullah, Hamas, and others. This would be stepping over the line in the minds of most Libertarians.

Libertarians hold to a stronger concept of the limits of government power. Some of the authors have studied the "ins and outs" of attempts at effectively limiting government powers. Some even take a completely anti-political or anarchist (anarcho-capitalist) position, rejecting any agency that is given a monopoly on the use of force. Incidentally, even though he now sounds rather hawkish (in our current context of living under a single "limited" government), Randy Barnett has taken a somewhat "anarchist" positron (Barnett, pp. 284ff) in proposing a “polycentric constitutional order.” The tax system that so easily funds military actions would be replaced with other, voluntary, means of financing government. Some Libertarians, of the anarchist variety, see national defense as the function of businesses who provide personal and societal security (multiple defense agencies).

Supporters of free market defense:

Randy Barnett, The Structure of Liberty.

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia.

Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty.

Murray Rothbard, Defense Services on the Free Market (article).

Roy Childs, An Open Letter to Ayn Rand.

In the meantime, the Libertarian Party position against military interventionism remains, favoring a near-isolationist position. It means pulling our troops out of every country and having a military force sufficient only to carry out defense against attacks by foreign aggressors.

Do we need a constitutional amendment?

This is reminiscent of at least one earlier American general.

General Smedley Butler, in a speech to the House of Representatives, 1934, proposed a constitutional amendment:

“[N]o American soldier, Sailor[, Airman] or Marine [shall] be used for any purpose except to protect the coastline of the United States, and protect his home, not an oil well in Iraq, a British investment in China, a sugar plantation in Cuba, a silver mine in Mexico, a glass factory in Japan, an American-owned share of stock in any European factory—in short, not an American investment anywhere except at home.”

Stricter control of spending would be needed to prevent sneaking around this. We need a better way of managing the government's foreign policy, directions to what the military forces do, and how supplies are procured for military purposes. We need efforts aimed at preventing the buying of 200-dollar hammers. We need competitive bidding in all government contracting.

This might remind one of the farewell speech by President Eisenhower, in which he warned America about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” What probably drives politicians to provoke or even initiate wars abroad is the collusion between weapons-makers with the politicians to find ways to use the weapons. An example of this is the vote by the US Senate on Sept 28, 2007 urging the President to add the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an arm of the Iranian state, to the list of international terrorist organizations.

We need more than a constitutional amendment specifically on war or foreign policy.

So far this discussion has largely dealt with the moral right or wrong of war. Is it ever good in any other way, or is it always evil – is it impractical, a total waste?

Economic interventionism and welfare statism always harms us. Government meddling with the economy always shrinks liberty. Anthony Gregory, in an article at Lew Rockwell dot com, asserts that such internal and direct interference with our affairs is less harmful to liberty than war is.

The money expropriated for welfare may do some good, but war spending is a total waste. In order to wage a war, the government also usually under-takes more central planning, Gregory says:

“The Progressive Era and even the New Deal did not do as much as war to move America away from its relatively libertarian heritage of limited, checked and balanced government, free markets and individual liberty. The Civil War brought with it draconian censorship, a draft, inflation, the suspension of habeas corpus and the consolidated national government that signaled the end of true federalism.”

This got worse again during the World Wars, and has reached new lows under the War on Terror and the PATRIOT Act. Going to war is impractical and destructive at home even when done with good intentions.

War must be avoided by a policy of encouragement of trade and non-interventionism. It is time to consider the General Smedley Butler amendment and make the Department of Defense a purely defensive agency instead of a Department of Aggression.

Conclusion

War is awful business and ought to be avoided. Diplomacy has to be employed to direct everyone toward peaceful trade relations. But since wars do happen, a unified Libertarian position is needed. This will have to be a well-thought out position, rather than the knee-jerk pacifist position heard in many libertarian quarters. It needs to be a realistic and rational position, which makes going to war difficult (promote a "declare peace" amendment and establish real hurdles to legally starting a war). Then, when war is about to break out and diplomacy fails, a military strike to discourage aggression may have to be included in the Libertarian position. Concessions and appeasement may fail, and often has. Allowing time to pass without doing anything more could make all-out war a certainty. That may be the time for a pre-emptive strike.

At this time, October 2007, the USA is nowhere near such a situation. There is no country ready to or making moves to attack our land. There is no moral and therefore no political reason why more nations ought not to develop nuclear power, even for defense purposes. Diplomacy must be primary. Peace and trade must be the goal of our foreign policy.