War and Peace in the Classical Liberal Tradition

BW: On the supposed opposition to war that is a key element of the classical liberal tradition—Bush, like just about everyone in the U.S., fits.

Few argue that war is a positive good—providing the best field for man to exemplify his martial virtues. Few argue that the U.S. needs an Empire so that our nation will be glorified in History.

Similarly, few argue that we should have an Empire to collect loot or tribute. Or even to impose favorable trade or investment policies so that the U.S. can gain or maintain prosperity at the expense of the rest of the world. The conventional wisdom today is that the trade and investment policies we favor for other countries would benefit them and the rest of the wold too.

All the sorts of bizzare pro-war notions that the classical liberals opposed have almost entirely been defeated in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, we have competing ideas about how best to apply liberal (or libertarian) values to foreign policy.

MB: Many of us believe that the lessons of the past have not been learned by contemporary nation-states and in particular by the United States. There seem to be few limits to the hubris of the Bush administration. I assert that current U.S. policy can be meaningfully described as imperialism, although of course it is somewhat different in character from the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

BW: Isolationism isn't the only libertarian approach. The notion that it is, is just that sectarian approach that those libertarians who disagree with my view aren't really libertarians. Not unusual, but innacurate.

MB: Isolationism is not—and has never been—a libertarian approach. The classical liberal tradition has always emphasized peaceful relations between the residents of different states. And a diplomatic policy of genuine neutrality is not the same thing as isolationism.

BW: Liberal (or libertarian) imperialism isn't a very plausible approach, but some libertarians do hold to it. Creating a libertarian world is one way to provide for national defense, and one way to create a libertarian world is to impose it by military force.

MB: I agree that imperialism isn’t a very plausible approach for libertarians and classical liberals to adopt, but more to the point it’s fundamentally antithetical to their ideology. The word ‘libertarian’ looses a vital part of its meaning if ‘libertarians’ can advocate imperialism—just as it would loose a crucial part of its meaning if ‘libertarians’ included those in favor of a mixed economy or limited government censorship. Can Professor Woolsey provide even one example of how a nation-state has successfully promoted libertarian values at the point of a gun?

BW: While it seems to me to be unlikely to work, could easily be counter-productive towards geting a libertarian world or for national security for some regime trying to implement the strategy, and would likely have unnacceptable collateral casulties and create an unreasonable tax burden, it isn't incompatible with libertarian values.

MB: What Bill Woolsey considers likely I see as well nigh inevitable. Moreover, they call into question how libertarian such a policy could ever be. Where I disagree with him is with regard to his implicit assumption that the mindset behind such a policy is compatible with libertarian values.

BW: Of course, Bush isn't working fo a libertarian world, but rather a democratic capitalist one.

MB: What exactly is a “democratic capitalist world”? Democracy may well be incompatible with what I understand Bill Woolsey to mean by capitalism.

BW: But then, the claim isn't that Bush is a libertarian. Rather that he shows libertarian tendencies. While what I like least about Bush is his foriegn policy, I can't agree that it is obviously unlibertarian. Some libertarians support it.

MB: Where does Bill Woolsey draw the line and assert that a position is so antithetical to the libertarian ideology that a libertarian cannot support it and remain a libertarian? How about advocacy of a mixed economy? Or limited government censorship? Or is his ecumenical approach prepared to include such people within the libertarian tent? It’s not that I am a narrow sectarian seeking to crush deviationism but words do have meanings and a non-interventionist foreign policy has always been at the core of the (evolving) classical liberal tradition.