Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy has two new posts on the subject of libertarianism and war, here and here. Barnett’s posts, the posts he links to, and the comments on some of those posts have highlighted the need for a clear definition of libertarianism. In particular, we need a definition of libertarianism as it applies to the defense of America. I will offer that definition here, then (in a later post) I will offer a doctrine of pre-emptive war that is consistent with my view of libertarianism.

According to Wikipedia,

Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon what they believe to be the equal rights of others. In this respect they agree with many other modern political ideologies. The difference arises from the definition of “rights”. For libertarians, there are no ‘positive rights’ (such as to food or shelter or health care), only ‘negative rights’ (such as to not be assaulted, abused, robbed or censored). They further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect those rights.

That’s consistent with this passage from the Libertarian Party’s introductory statement:

The Libertarian way is a logically consistent approach to politics based on the moral principle of self-ownership. Each individual has the right to control his or her own body, action, speech, and property. Government’s only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud.

Note that Wikipedia‘s definition and the Libertarian Party’s statement both acknowledge a role for government. It can’t be said often enough: Liberty is not anarchy. The state is legitimate, though not everything the state does is legitimate.

That statement may not seem to say much about libertarianism, but it does when libertarianism is contrasted with its alternatives. There are four main points on the political compass:

• Anarchy is the stateless solution, in which individuals, families, clans, and bands may or may not cooperate to defend their lives and property from others. Of course, anarchy inevitably gives way to a state, a rather powerful and oppressive one at that, because under anarchy “might makes right.”

• Libertarianism admits a minimal, neutral state to protect life and property, and therefore the liberty to enjoy them.

• Communitarianism uses the power of the state to regulate private institutions for the sake of “desirable” outcomes in such realms as income distribution, health, safety, education, and the environment

• Statism consists of outright state control of most institutions, including religion (which may be banned or allowed in only one form). Statism may be reached either as an extension of communitarianism or via anarchy or near-anarchy, as in Soviet Russia, the Third Reich, and Communist China.

In sum, those who say that the state is inherently unjust — be they anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, and anarcho-libertarians — are not libertarians, they are simply anarchists by various names. All of them must accept the logical consequences of their ideology: They have no right to life, liberty, or property; they must prey upon others or be preyed upon. Luckily for most of them, their proclaimed belief in anarchy is a cloistered virtue, cosseted in the United States by a state that is far more benevolent than the one that would arise from anarchy.

Libertarians, having a firmer grasp of reality, understand that living under anarchy, in what amounts to a constant state of warfare, diminishes liberty — the ability to enjoy life and property — for all but the strongest or most ruthless. They understand, further, that there is less to enjoy under anarchy, communitarianism, and statism because those ideologies are inimical to free markets and property rights. Libertarians therefore willingly accept a neutral state for defense from force and fraud. Libertarians understand that the presence of such a state actually makes life better for everyone but predators.

Libertarians can and do argue about how the state should go about protecting individuals from force and fraud, but one cannot be a libertarian and argue that the state is inherently an unjust institution. That untenable position is reserved for anarchists and crypto-anarchists. As “Decnavda” says in a comment on a post by John Quiggin at Crooked Timber:

I think this is entirely a means vs. ends problem, in two senses:

1. Libertarians (NOT anarcho-capitalists) believe in strong police enforcement of property rights, but their belief in these property rights places many restrictions on HOW the police can engage in this strong enforcement. The same would apply to war. You can believe that a war against a dictator is justified…but also believe in major restrictions on how that war is fought. Thus, a privately owned power plant may be an illegitimate target, while actual military bases would undoubtedly be legitimate. It may be that a libertarian legitimate war is IMPOSSIBLE to fight on PRACTICAL grounds.

2. There are two types of libertarianism: “pure” deontological libertarianism and consequentialist libertarianism[*]….A consequentialist libertarian could easily conclude…that a war against a dictator, although inevitably resulting in the deaths of innocents, will advance the overall cause of freedom.

Indeed…it seems to me that the problem discussed here is not with libertarianism, but with deontology. Not only could a consequentialist libertarian easily support a war against a dictator, but ANY deontologist would have to oppose any modern war except to repel invasion. Is there ANY deontological moral code that would authorize the intentional killing of innocent workers at power plants?

There are, of course, consequentialist libertarians who argue that we only make the world more dangerous (for ourselves as well as others) by going to war in the absence of imminent danger to the homeland. But that’s an argument about how and when to go to war, not about whether to go to war or whether pre-emptive war is always unjustified.

The deontological view — what Randy Barnett would call “defenseism” — is more troublesome. Deontological libertarians (“defenseists”) seem to say that we should never attack until we are under attack, and then we must be very careful about what and whom we attack. Such a view, aside from being suicidal in practice, implies that the innocents and private property of the United States are somehow less worthy of protection than the innocents and private property of other lands.

That leads me to these thoughts, which I ask “defenseists” and reluctant consequentialists to consider.

You, the innocent, are targets simply because you’re Americans. Your main enemy — Osama bin Laden and his ilk — don’t care about the lives and property of innocents. Your main enemy doesn’t care what you think about George Bush, the invasion of Iraq, or pre-emptive war. Your main enemy doesn’t care whether you’re anarchists, crypto-anarchists, libertarians, communitarians, or even neo-fascists. You don’t have to choose sides, your main enemy has already done it for you.

The only ideology your main enemy values is Islamism, and he would impose an Islamic state upon you if he could. But he will settle for killing and terrorizing you so that you retreat from the Middle East. He will then control it and you will become poorer and ever more vulnerable to his threats of death and destruction. Now ask yourself whether you are willing to acquiesce in your enemy’s aims before you acquiesce in actions that might — unavoidably — result in the killing of foreign innocents and the destruction of their property.

That’s all for now. This post positions me to lay out a doctrine of pre-emptive war that is consistent with libertarianism, properly understood. I’ll do that in a future post.

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[* Editor’s note: Borrowing from Wikipedia, a deontological libertarian believes that the use of force is always wrong, except in self-defense; a consequentialist maintains “that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the consequences of the act and hence on the circumstances in which it is performed.”]

Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy writes again about libertarianism and foreign policy. He kindly mentions my posts on the subject (here and here). He also quotes some libertarian readers who are “defenseists” (“let the other guy shoot first”) and others who, like me, don’t believe in passivity. I’ll come back to this subject. For now, I just want to acknowledge Barnett’s latest post and thank him for the links.

Randy Barnett of The Volokh Conspiracy and I have both taken libertarian isolationists to task. My posts are here and here. Barnett’s latest is here. I’ve said this:

It is not aggression to seek out and destroy the aggressor before he attacks you, it is self-defense. If you were armed and you knew that another armed person meant you harm, why would you not shoot first? This isn’t just about Iraq, where there seems to be some nit-picking debate about what weapons Saddam might or might not have been making or intending to use, and about what sort of relationship Saddam might or might not have had with al Qaeda. This is a matter of principle. Let’s get the principle right, then argue about the facts.

Barnett, in his latest post, says this:

[The] rule of law doctrine of “imminent threat” is not a necessary prerequisite of justified self defense in all cases. As I discuss in The Structure of Liberty, what is needed to justify self-defense in principle is a communication of intent to invade rights in a context that suggests its seriousness. A communication constitutes a threat that violates the rights of another if it puts him in reasonable fear of being the victim of a battery or worse.

The example I give in SOL is of someone, let’s say it is me, who takes a full page advertisement in The New York Times announcing my intention to murder [a certain person] at some time within the next 7 days. Assuming it is not obviously a joke, and that I apparently have the means to carry out my threat, would [that person] have to wait until I came around to his house and made an overt threatening act, which ordinarily is required by the law of self defense? Given the nature of this “standing threat,” need there also be a showing of imminence?

I think under these special circumstances, [that person] should not have to wait until I chose a time and place convenient for my attack but could seek me out to preemptively defend himself against me at a time and place of his convenience. In SOL I call this “extended self-defense.” What makes this hypothetical unusual and unrealistic is the unambiguously objective manifestation of intent in the advertisement. The advertisement is what constitutes the threat that is the necessary condition of self defense and no further overt act is required. Under these circumstances [that person] is entitled, in my view, to “preempt” my attack before I ever perform an act that can be deemed “imminent” (like produce a weapon and point it in his direction). But this is so abnormal a hypothetical (criminals do not normally advertise their intentions) that it does not undermine the normal importance of imminence or to the law of self defense.

But advertisements and imminent acts (like massing armies on borders) are not the only ways to communicate a threat. So would speeches coupled with less normally obvious behavior. If the content of these other communications are sufficiently clear, then self defense would be warranted even in the absence of an overt act that constitutes an imminent threat. So “imminence” may not be a requirement of even a defenseist foreign policy (assuming that a [defenseist] foreign policy is logically entailed by libertarianism, which I doubt). What is required is a threat….

None of this however, is to argue that a military invasion is always (or ever) a good foreign policy. Many libertarians are “noninterventionists” who seem to oppose almost any military invasion outside the territory of the US on the ground that the unintended consequences of such actions are likely to be terrible, as indeed they often are.

My original point was simply that this type of noninterventionism, whether right or wrong, does not follow from Libertarian principles as some of its adherents apparently assume. It is more a pragmatic judgment of the sorts of rightful actions that will or will not yield good consequences. This judgment could lead to certain principles of foreign policy, but these should not be confused with Libertarian first principles. In addition, while I respect those who hold to this position, it tends to ignore the unintended consequences of nonaction, which can be just as harmful. Unintended consequences is a concept that, logically, runs in both directions….

Finally let me hasten to add that, though I have thought a lot about Iraq as a citizen, with these posts I have only just begun to think about the relationship of Libertarianism with foreign policy. I am completely open to being persuaded that this analysis is completely wrong (as well as to encouragement that I am on the right track). Indeed, I had hoped that, by raising the issue, someone else would [do] the [heavy] lifting and save me the trouble….

My sentiments, exactly. As I said in my last post on the subject,

I’m still waiting for a libertarian who specializes in foreign and defense policy to offer a policy paper that advocates something other than an isolationist foreign policy and a “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes” defense policy.

I guess I’ll have to dust off my old “defense analyst” credentials and do the job myself. But don’t expect anything soon.