Copyright 2003. Keith Preston. American Revolutionary Vanguard. All rights reserved.

Why “Libertarian” Imperialists Are Wrong

One thing I am known for among anarchists and libertarians is my advocacy of the building of strategic alliances, transcending conventional cultural or ideological boundaries,  among dissident political factions around common anti-state issues. Sometimes I am asked, by critics and supporters of my approach alike, if there are any political groups that I consider to be so repulsive or in error that I would not want to enter into coalitions with them. I typically reply with a resounding “Yes!”, aknowledging strenuously that such a faction does exist. I am talking about that species of “libertarians” that Joseph Stromberg calls “Liberventionists” or what I call “Libertarian Imperialists”.  These “libertarians” support not only US imperialism abroad but typically regard the US Constitution (the result of a coup against the far more libertarian Articles of Confederation) as Holy Writ, believe that the crushing of the southern independence movement by the Lincoln regime was a righteous crusade against slavery, favor the use of state social insurance programs for purposes of corporate welfare (“social security privatization”) along with subsidies to private educational institutions (“school vouchers”), the strengthening of central government as a means of eliminating non-libertarian local laws and the creation of a massive corporate-mercantilist international bureaucracy under the guise of “free trade”.

Recently, an article appeared on the web site of the allegedly libertarian publication “Reason” that attempted to make a rather pathetic argument for an American invasion of Iraq. This article, by one Ronald Bailey, has already been addressed and effectively rebutted by Matthew Barganier at Antiwar.com so I will not focus so much on the specific claims made by Mr. Bailey. Instead, I will use this particular article as an illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of the “Libertarian Imperialist” position. Mr. Bailey’s assertions are fairly typical of what one finds among those of his ideological inclination. When I first read the article in question I found its claims to be so absurd that I had trouble believing any professed “libertarian” could have reached such conclusions honestly. I suspect the enthusiasm for war among certain shades of libertarians may have more to do with the sources of funding for their respective publications and think tanks rather than actual ideological conviction. But I will leave such speculation and ad hominem arguments for others to pursue.

The most striking characteristic of Mr. Bailey’s article is his dualistic, almost Manichean world view. He describes our world as “half-free” and contrasts “free societies”, presumably the state-corporate welfare-warfare mass democracies of the West and other similar nations, with their supposed polar opposites, namely, those “regimes” that are “un-free”, presumably Islamic nations and other countries where the Western system has not taken root.  Notice here the Orwellian language. The democratic nations are simply “societies”, as if they had no state controlled by self-interested rulers at all, whereas other nations are ruled by “regimes”. What exactly is it about the democratic nations that makes them free as opposed to other countries? The mere existence of a Congress or Parliament? Iran and Kuwait have elected parliaments. Saudi Arabia maintains tribal councils that serve as consultants to the monarchy. Egypt and Lebanon are relatively modern nations. Even Iraq is not totalitarian in the same way that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao were. Iraq is a gangster state but does not attempt to micro-manage every detail of its subjects lives.

Bailey’s article is so ridden with inanities, contradictions and incoherence that it more closely resembles an official statement of the ministry of propaganda some of bizarre, outlandish totalitarian state like North Korea than something one would expect to find in a publication with the misnomer “Reason”. After rightfully describing the warfare state as a threat to liberty, Bailey calls for expanding the warfare state. After explaining how US intervention abroad inspires hatred for this country among foreign peoples, he calls for more US intervention abroad. This is akin to arguing that the best way to overcome one’s fear of death is to commit suicide. After berating the Europeans for their reluctance to sign on to Bush’s war plans, Bailey then holds up Western Europe with its bloated welfare states, exorbitant taxes, totalitarian speech codes and gun control legistlation, escalating crime and ethnic conflict and creeping superstate in the person of the European Union as a libertarian model. Again, I have trouble believing anyone could come by such conclusions honestly.

Bailey alleges that “free market democracy” was imposed on much of the world “by force of arms”, citing Germany and Japan as examples. First of all, free markets and democracy are antithetical to one another. Free markets imply individual autonomy and voluntary association. Democracy is majoritarian mob rule. “Free market democracy” is an oxymoron along the same lines as “half pregnant”. American-style corporate-mercantilist/state-capitalist/social democracy was indeed imposed on Europe and Japan “by force of arms”. So much the worse for Bailey’s “free market democracy”. What he is essentially arguing is that large scale slaughter of innocent civilians (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) is an acceptable method of promoting US state-capitalism. He goes on to praise the “Reagan Doctrine”, including Reagan’s Central American policy. I was in the anti-Central American war movement in the 80s. I met plenty of refugees from those countries who got to experience the joys of the “Reagan Doctrine” first hand. Some of these people had seen their entire families, sometimes their whole village, slaughtered by death squads and mercenary terrorists backed by the US regime.

The arguments for a “preemptive strike” utilized by Bailey are remarkably similar to arguments often employed by drug prohibitionists and gun controllers. Drug warriors will claim that because some users become addicts, and some addicts commit crimes (largely because of economic incentives created by the prohibition system), then drug use must be barred for everyone. Likewise, proponents of gun control will argue that honest people must not be allowed to have guns because their guns might eventually fall into the hands of criminals. Similarly, Bailey argues that while it is true that there is no imminent threat of attack by Iraq, Saddam Hussein or his sons, or his successors, or perhaps his food tasters, or maybe the guy who trims his mustache, might some day provide “weapons of mass destruction” to terrorists, assuming that Saddam actually has such weapons, who will then use them on the US. By this logic, the US should invade Pakistan. After all, there is no doubt Pakistan is nuclear armed and that country is a coup away from having its weapons fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Of course, Bailey ignores the fact that the US brought its problems with Iraq on itself with its endless efforts to exercise hegemony over the Middle East.

What is Bailey’s “libertarian” vision? He thinks the US should attempt to reconstruct all of the earth’s nations as “commercial republics”. This is to be done through “free trade” ( more corporate-mercantilist arrangements of the NAFTA and GATT variety), arming and training insurgent movements similar to Reagans’s Contra and UNITA terrorists all over the world and bringing these aspiring puppet rulers to this country to teach them in the ways of “our free institutions”. Say what??!! Free institutions? Perhaps Bailey is referring to our War on Drugs and its accompanying prison-industrial complex and world’s largest prison population. Perhaps our BATF and DEA can instruct statists-in-waiting from other countries on how to operate their secret police forces more efficiently. Perhaps they can learn how to accumulate the world’s largest public debts or maintain the world’s largest, most exorbitant and most aggressive military machine.  Maybe they can learn about the fine art of sophisticated propaganda from our state-licensed media or how to maintain a handy supply of court intellectuals from our state-subsidized universities. If this be libertarianism, may God save us from it.

Of course, “Libertarian Imperialism” is everything but libertarian. The perspective of this sorry lot is simply a variation of Wilsonian globalism or old-style British Liberal imperialism with a token nod to the Hayekian critique of centralized economic planning. Their ambitions are simply a continuation of the efforts of mercantilists of an earlier era to colonize other societies and justify this aggression by portraying it as a noble effort to bring civilization and modernity to allegedly backward and uncivilized peoples. The “white man’s burden” and all that. I consider this to be one of the most insidious doctrines out there. Left-liberals and social democrats are at least honest about their statism. But to wrap militarism, imperialism, mercantilism and statism in the banner of liberty strikes me as the ultimate in mendacious deceit and hypocrisy. If this foolishness were to ever become genuinely powerful, irreparable damage might be done to the libertarian cause as the rhetoric of these people seemingly proves the false claim of leftwing statists that libertarianism is simply an apology for the vested interests of the state-capitalist “ruling class”.

Authentic libertarianism recognizes the primacy of individual autonomy. The resultant overriding social principle is voluntary association. This implies a decentralized social system, an economy ordered on voluntary exchange of goods, services and labor between consenting individuals and groups, a non-aggression axiom and respect for the sovereignty of other communities, cultures and nations. How might these principles be applied to the contemporary Middle East? First and foremost, we might consider the Lockean-Jeffersonian dictums concerning the “inalienable” rights of life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness that libertarians, including many libertarian imperialists, are so fond of alluding to. The “right to life” would certainly include the right of the Iraqi people not to be killed by American bombs and bullets. The right of property would include the right of the people of Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations to be secure in their homes and streets, businesses and marketplaces, mosques and churches, villages and towns from American aerial bombardiers and marauding invaders. The right of liberty would include the right of these people to be sovereign in their own national communities without the arbitrary rule of foreign military governors. The right of pursuit of happiness would include their right not to see their communities invaded, their homes destroyed and their families, friends and neighbors killed by foreign aggressors.

Contrary to Ronald Bailey’s “libertarian” desire for universal “commercial republics” to be imposed unilaterally and coercively by an imperialist superpower, the United States should withdraw completely from the Middle East and adopt a “hands off” policy towards that region. Ideally, political institutions should arise that reflect the indigenous cultures of the Middle East. This would obviously necessitate the overthrow of most of the current governments in the region. The borders of the nation-states of the Middle East are completely arbitrary and illegitimate as they are the result of the carving up of the region by the conquering imperialist powers of the West following the defeat in World War One of the old Ottoman Empire that had ruled Muslim world for centuries. The journalist William Pfaff , drawing upon the work of the British scholar of the Middle East Sami Zubaida, describes the political culture of the region during the Ottoman era:

“Real authority in most matters was exercised by ‘more or less self-sufficient communities ruled by their own forces, authorities and hierarchies, with the Ottoman state as a remote imposition with a predominately fiscal concern’…The state collected taxes, and imposed military conscription, ‘a particularly detested and resisted practice’.”(1)

In all likelihood, most of the new political systems that would arise in a post-imperialist Middle East would be theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies or systems of rule based on local tribal customs. So be it. Cultural evolution cannot be forced at a rate that it will not go. Preferably, the various ethnic, religious or linguistic groups to be found in the Middle East would achieve sovereignty within their own areas although there is no way to guarantee that this will happen.  From there, indigenous economic institutions and trade arrangements should evolve on their own in the manner Hayek described as “spontaneous order”. The best hope for the future of the Middle East would be for the Islamic world to experience an Enlightenment similar to that experienced by Christian Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with its emphasis on science, reason and individualism.  Islam is a much newer religion than Christianity and consequently has not had as much time to develop. Such development on the part of Islam may be desirable but it has to occur at its own pace and with no aggressive interference from foreign imperial powers.

The principal danger to life and liberty is the centralization and concentration of power. Paraphrasing Acton, R.J. Rummel reminds us that “power kills and absolute power kills absolutely”. Currently, neoconservatives, left-liberals and libertarian imperialists alike seek to establish a global order with either formal or de facto world government, a managed economy regulated by byzantine international bureaucracies, the use of the US armed forces as a global police force and a universal monoculture synthesizing political correctness and the economic dominance of First World business corporations. As an antidote to this threat, libertarians should attempt to develop a world view that emphasizes decentralization and localism. To the greatest degree possible, the individual should, of course, be sovereign. Individual sovereignty should be followed by the sovereignty of the family, neighborhood, community, town, city, region or province and the nation. Similarly, particularlism should be emphasized as a counter to the universalism and globalism of the proponents of the so-called New World Order. Individuals tend to seek security, identity and self-actualization in groups. Those who cannot find such actualization in intermediary institutions and voluntary associations or particularistic attachments to family, community, culture, religion, ethnic or linguistic group and nationality will seek it from an ever more centralized state apparatus of the type that globalist social engineers and bureaucrats seek to impose on all of humanity.

Authentic libertarianism involves principles far more solid and enduring than the Libertarian Imperialist vision of a whole world reshaped in the image of US state-capitalism with a McDonald’s at the top of the Himalayas and a porn shop in the Afghan caves. Libertarianism is compatible with a wide range of political, economic and cultural arrangements. The standard by which a particular society’s degree of libertarianism should be evaluated is the amount of voluntarism to be found in that society. A society where most people voluntarily agree to live in tribal or clannish arrangements according to evolved traditions and customs and kneel towards Mecca five times a day, or where most people agree to live in trees or caves and hunt and gather for subsistence, can theoretically be just as “libertarian” as a high tech society dominated by commercial values freely chosen by its inhabitants. Whether any of these models is good or bad may well be an individual value judgement.

A standard of this type helps us to evaluate the world’s political systems more objectively. Residents of the democratic states typically have more political rights (free speech, due process, suffrage) but are also subject to a good deal more bureaucratic regulation of society than what is often found in non-democracies. Taxes are more exorbitant in democracies than in traditional oligarchies although the level of aggregate wealth is also higher. I believe this will change as the high living standards of the democracies are largely a residual effect of the prosperity and innovation that emerged prior to the full consolidation of the modern welfare states. The democratic states are typically burdened by grotesque public debts, ongoing currency devaluation, inflation, social deterioration, economic stagnation and the other characteristics that usually signal eventual economic and civilizational collapse.

Non-democracies frequently engage in the more traditional forms of oppression-racism, misogyny, religious persecution, repression of political dissidents. However, democracies have invented new forms of oppression to replace the older ones under the cover of the egalitarian-therapeutic-welfare state. The mass imprisonment of users of culturally disfavored psychoactive drugs is an obvious example. Ditto the involuntary civil committment of the so-called “mentally ill”. The US may have the world’s largest prison population but its number of psychiatric prisoners is even higher according to Dr. Thomas Szasz, an expert on such matters. Virtually every aspect of modern life is controlled or regulated by agents, inspectors, bureaucrats, social workers and others representing the state. I have heard that, in Iraq, shoplifters are sometimes given fifteen year prison terms. Yet, on the day this is being written, I heard that a mother and father in a jurisdiction near where I live were sentenced to eight years imprisonment for the “crime” of providing their teenage son and his friends with alcoholic beverages on the occasion of his birthday-something that would not even be illegal in many parts of the world. The matter of who is the more draconian may well be a flip of a coin.

The unpleasant reality is that virtually every corner of the globe, excepting the most remote areas, is now under the control of one or another tyrannical state. Indeed, it is doubtful that tyranny has ever been quite so prevalent as it is at this point in history. We have recently emerged from a century that saw the worst wars and genocides yet to occur and the current century is not getting off to a very good start. Given these circumstances, it becomes clear that a genuine libertarianism is a revolutionary doctrine of the first order with much more far-reaching implications that even eighteenth century liberalism. Among those with the most to lose in the event of a libertarian triumph are the globalists, imperialists and militarists of the likes of George W. Bush and his cronies along with their left-liberal, social democratic and libertarian imperialist partners in crime. I am not “anti-American” in the knee-jerk, reflexive way that many leftist fanatics are. Contrary to the apparent beliefs of some, evil did not begin with the USA. America is just as good a place to live as most other places. However, those “libertarians” who equate liberty with Pax Americana not only do not understand liberty, but are its active opponents.

Note:

(1) William Pfaff, “U.S. Plans Ignore Iraq’s Clans”, International Herald Tribune, February 15, 2003.