The Presumption of Peace

This originally ran on this blog right after Randy Barnett’s article in the WSJ came out. It was pulled to make sure the letter would be published in the paper. Now that a severely edited version has been, here is the original:

Randy Barnett argues (“Libertarians and the War,” July 17) that libertarianism does not imply any particular stance toward the Iraq War. He contends that as long as the U.S. government is delegated the task of protecting the American people from foreign aggression of one sort or another, there could be a reasonable libertarian argument in favor of the war – or, at least in favor of some proper management of the war.

As with most sophistic arguments there is a kernel of truth here. There is some configuration of facts that can, within libertarian principles, justify an attack on another country including Iraq. Nevertheless, Barnett does grave injury to the classical liberal and libertarian tradition by ignoring its strong Presumption of Peace.

In his trenchant analysis of America’s entry into the First World War, Randolph Bourne captured the essence of the classical liberal critique of war: “War is the health of the State….The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes…and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men.” This pervasive effect of war was stressed by the nineteenth century libertarian Herbert Spencer who saw the evolution of society as a conflict between the peaceful voluntary structures of industrial society and the regimentation and bias toward state action inherent in war and militarism. War is a both an activity and frame of mind that values conformity and the acceptance of orders over the primacy of the individual. This is the primary cost of war.

Of course, no classical liberal objects to self-defense. But where was the evidence of the threat from Iraq? We all now know that the “evidence” was unforgivably poor. The real motivation was regime change in the hope of making the Middle East more amenable to particular foreign policy goals. Furthermore, the U.S. government, as a signer of the U.N. Charter, had no authorization to invade, regardless of Saddam’s resistance to inspections. The immediate defense of the nation was not at stake so the “right” of every nation to self-defense cannot be honestly invoked. And to say, as some have, that the present disastrous consequences of the invasion were not reasonably foreseeable makes a mockery of foreign policy expertise.

Can libertarians of good will disagree with the above? Perhaps. But an adequate libertarian case for war in Iraq would have to overcome the heavy burden imposed by the Presumption of Peace. No libertarian I know or heard of has even begun this task.