Freedom, Restraint, and the Ukraine Crisis (a response by the Cato Institute)

A response to "A letter to the Cato Institute on Ukraine and Russia"

Alongside its promotion of freedom across the world, the Cato Institute has long argued for a U.S. foreign policy of restraint. War and elevated national security concerns have always and everywhere promoted the growth of the state. Military intervention should only be used to counter true security threats to the nation, while restraint is critical to maintaining a free society in the United States and to avoiding reckless and costly foreign entanglements. Frequent military interventions by the United States in recent decades have constrained liberty at home, while thousands of young American servicemembers and a larger number of overseas civilians have paid a terrible price with their bodies and lives.

Consistent with this history, as the crisis in Ukraine raises the possibility of a military invasion by Russia, Cato Institute experts have argued against military intervention by the United States in any conflict in Ukraine. Such a conflict, while tragic, would not represent a national security threat to the United States.

Advocating for military restraint, of course, does not weaken our support for liberty nor our opposition to tyranny everywhere. The Cato Institute reaffirms its steadfast support for the liberty, human rights, and self-determination of the people of Ukraine – and indeed of people in Russia and around the world. Cato has long promoted these ideals internationally, including through the sponsorship of major conferences in Kyiv, Moscow, and St. Petersburg beginning in the early 1990s.

Some pro-liberty advocates have insisted that a non-interventionist foreign policy cannot be reconciled with US obligations as a world power. Paradoxically, those same advocates, who are justifiably skeptical about the efficacy of government in domestic matters, are eager to embrace a more expansive role for government overseas, urging military responses to crises that do not threaten US national security. The result has been imperial wars, lost American lives, squandered resources, and the erosion of civil liberties. Moreover, US interventions have often been ineffective or even antithetical to security, stability, and democracy. That’s not a foreign policy a libertarian can support.

As John Quincy Adams wrote of the United States in 1821, “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Reprinted with permission from the Cato Institute.