Earlier, I linked to and quoted Mark (“Fair and Balanced”) Kleiman’s challenge to Libertarians to reconcile their concern for individual rights with warfare. Mark’s question (found here and here) presupposes that there is a unique Libertarian “doctrine” on these sorts of issues, when the very point of MY initial blog challenge was to provoke a debate AMONG Libertarians on the issue of warfare and foreign policy.
Here in Gummersbach, I showed Mark’s post to my colleague in the seminar, English historian Stephen Davies. Steve offered the following thoughts, which I asked him to write up for the benefit of Volokh readers. [Notice that Steve does not capitalize “libertarian” and “libertarianism,” a practice to which I may return.]
Thanks for the interesting comments you passed on to me regarding the question of the implications of libertarian thinking for the question of whether war can ever be legitimate. (I think making a distinction between modern and pre-modern war is irrelevant and otiose here btw). I was struck most by this passage, the core of the response to you:
There are two possible conclusions here: either (1) war is always wrong, or (2) Libertarianism as a moral philosophy (as opposed to the libertarian tendency in politics) is not merely false but transparently silly, since no actual group of people could live under Libertarian principles unless some other group of people did the dirty work of collective self-defense for them.
I’d make the following points.
1. Because things are done by the state that doesn’t make the activity itself illegitimate (e.g. health care, education) the activity in this case being self-defense (I think all libertarians are opposed to wars of conquest.)
2. However that doesn’t address the question of what to do if the activity in question necessarily involves large scale and systematic rights violations for third parties such as non-combatants, particularly those such as children who cannot even be counted as “indirectly combatant” by virtue of being involved in the productive process in the combatant nation. (I should make it clear that I think that this particular justification for total war is bogus.)
3. There are indeed libertarians who, adopting a position of strict individualism, argue that libertarianism does preclude war (other than perhaps a very strictly defensive one fought on one’s own real estate). Wendy McElroy and Neill Smith would be examples of this. This doesn’t mean pacifism since this position does not entail rejection of the use of defensive force per se, just the organised use of force that must inevitably impact on innocent third parties.
4. This does raise the question of whether there is some alternative to the large scale organised use of force (i.e. war) to defend against aggression, whether direct or indirect, and to assist others in resisting oppression or aggression. There are a number of possibilities that have classically been floated or even used such as a Swiss style militia, the use of organised passive resistance, assasination of targeted rights violators, sabotage and subversion by various means. This all draws on notions such as Gene Sharp’s idea of “social power” derived from voluntaristic action.
5. Alternatively many libertarians believe that because of public goods problems there has to be provision of the good of collective defense by a limited state and that this will inevitably involve some kind of rights violation in the process of collective self defense due to externality problems. This then comes under the heading of regrettable necessity. The justification would be consequentialist or involve the argument that such violations are needed to prevent even greater violations in the long run. This would mean however applying a very strict set of “just war” arguments, meaning that for libertarians who took this position a war to be justified would have to pass very high barriers and could only be fought in a certain way. It would IMHO certainly preclude such tactics as blockade and aerial bombing. I strongly reject the idea that such tactics are an inevitable feature of modern warfare, I think they’re a product rather of modern military doctrine and the current political economy of warfare which are not fixed or inevitable. The current shift to “fourth generation warfare” will have a big impact on this argument.
6. The third position one could take would be a pragmatic one. Here the argument would be that in an ideal world one of the other two positions would apply (probably 3 above) but in the actual world we inhabit we have to perform a cost-benefit analysis and follow the course that we judge will maximise liberty in the long run. This does not mean that there is a fixed, permanent gap between the real and the ideal (i.e. that libertarianism is an inconsequential fantasy that cannot be realised). The aim must be to act in such a way as to reduce the gap and to make the actual ever more coincident with the ideal. One can than argue that in some circumstances, such as a clear and profound physical and ideological threat to liberty on a large scale, the use of military force is sadly justified, although other options should be explored first. The question for libertarians is then one of prudence or practical judgement about the effects and implications of a particular policy choice. This was broadly J. S. Mill’s position for example.
7. I certainly agree with you that libertarianism does not imply a particular take on international relations. Apart from the fact that not all libertarianism is derived from rights theory (there’s also consequentialist and human flourishing derivations) it seems to me that libertarianism only leads to clear conclusions about international relations and particular policy choices if it is also combined with other judgements or assumptions, such as whether all public goods problems are soluble without coercion or whether one should hew always to the theory or take notice of real historical conditions. This is true for any political philosophy that has a strongly normative element, socialism being a case in point.
What Mark seems not to realize, perhaps due to his relucant imaginings that Libertarians are closet racists, is that because Libertarians are seriously concerned with the individual rights of all, they struggle more with these difficult moral questions than those statists (whether of the left or right) whose instincts are simply to support any state “policy” that the intelligensia currently thinks will lead to better results for “society.”
A much much more respectful and nuanced critique is provided by John Quiggin over at Crooked Timber in his post, Libertarians and War. John’s post and most of the comments that follow, some of which are are quite insightful, display the tone I have come to expect from that blog. Commentators there also provide some useful links to other posts on the subject.
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