War is not a form of relationship. War is a form of isolation.
Libertarians commonly use these words…
- Interventionist: People who use military violence to intervene in foreign countries.
- Non-interventionist: People who refrain from using military violence to meddle with others.
Statists routinely describe non-interventionists as isolationists. This strongly suggests that statists view military violence as a form of relationship. How odd. In reality…
War is the absence of relationship!
Even if we assumed, contrary to the facts, that politicians mainly intervene to protect the victimized weak against the predatory strong, it doesn’t follow that…
- Such violence is a high form of relationship
- Those who refrain from war are somehow isolated from the world
Is Switzerland isolated because it refuses to join foreign conflicts? Of course not. Switzerland is a crossroads of travel and trade, the highest forms of cultural engagement.
It should be perfectly obvious that…
- Military violence is not a form of relationship
- Trade and travel are forms of relationship
Thus…
- Those who favor peace, free trade and free migration reject isolation
- Those who embrace war while opposing free trade and free movement are embracing isolation
Said differently…
- Statists are isolationists because nearly all of them want to control trade and travel, and most have a bias for war
- Only libertarians favor full cultural engagement
Strategic advice: Libertarians should…
- Make a habit of speaking about and opposing statist isolationism
- Advocate cultural engagement as the preferred form of international involvement
By Perry Willis & Jim Babka
Jim Babka
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Perry Willis
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Show Comments 3
Are you suggesting we become more like the Swiss?
We’re suggesting less military action combined with more free trade and immigration. That would make us more like the Swiss than our current policy.
Even federalist leaning Founding Fathers warned against a standing army (military). Today this would mean closing all foreign bases and turning over the military to the states. I would hope the people would force the states to disband all but voluntary civilian militia.
Foreign aid is intervention in politics in the name of aiding the poor, but in fact it hurts the poor, as Food First found out when they did a study decades ago.
However, these two evils (threats to freedom), are just symptoms of authoritarianism, as is taxation. Remove the faith in force, the worship of a monopoly of violence/morality, and a civil political paradigm may emerge.