Libertarianism Is Antiwar

I make the argument at LewRockwell.com.

I address the effects of war on liberty, the futility of intervention and other matters. But here I take on the nationalist ethics implicit in pro-war libertarians, thereby circumventing the charge that we peaceniks are"sovereigntarians" who believe in the sovereignty of foreign governments. All governments, and this certainly includes the US government, have no rights. It's my concern for individual rights, first and foremost, that leads me to oppose war:

Most of the killing is just part of the policy. Bombing Baghdad or Belgrade has what legal theorists might call a"substantial certainty" of killing innocent people. Modern war is in fact in practically every case an example of mass murder. It must be opposed by the libertarian first and foremost for this reason. For not just Americans have individual rights to life, liberty and property; so too do all foreign non-aggressors, and so killing them, which is a predictable outcome of today’s typical military tactics, is gravely immoral according to libertarian ethics.

Some argue that when the fight is against a truly ghastly foreign regime, any innocents killed by the supposedly"good" government of the U.S. are" collateral damage." The true aggressor, according to this argument, is the enemy regime, not the U.S. government, which is acting in supposed defense of Americans.

One response is that historically, in most of its wars, the U.S. government has invaded or attacked a country that never attacked or credibly threatened to attack Americans on U.S. soil. Even by a collectivist analysis, whereby we look at nations, rather than individuals, when assigning guilt, the U.S. has more often than not been an aggressor.

However, to the libertarian, this is all of secondary importance. Libertarianism concerns individual rights and individual actions. States, nations, communities and so forth are abstractions and social constructs which do not act independently of the individuals they comprise. Only individuals act and only individuals have ethics or rights, and so it is a violation of an innocent person’s rights to bomb him, even if the government he lives under is aggressive and tyrannical. Certainly, the U.S. government was itself quite aggressive in the Middle East before 9/11, yet that in no way legitimized the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed innocent Americans for the crimes of their government. So, too, is it immoral to bomb a country with the substantial certainty that it will kill innocent foreigners, even if their government is aggressive.

Read the rest.