Libertarian foreign policy
“ As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty: a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and are not forced to sacrifice their values for the benefit of others.
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.
- — Libertarian Party National Platform, Preamble (LPedia: Document:National Platform 2022#PREAMBLE)
“ One reason US libertarianism is a uniquely US phenomenon is hardline isolationism.
If you ask a US libertarian about Syria or Ukraine they couldn’t tell you about which party in the war is most inclined to defend liberties, they just say all sides are bad & bitch about taxes
There is no internationalism in libertarian circles, most US libertarians couldn’t care at all about civil liberties overseas because those aren’t our people
Did you know there are Libertarian Parties in Cuba & Russia? Probably not, because Libertarians here don’t care either
Some Ukrainian’s best bet against living under a dictatorship is purchased with US tax dollars? Absolute travesty! Don’t you know there is corruption in Ukraine, therefore I shouldn’t care if their nation is wiped off the face of the Earth, what about inflation?
For all the time Libertarians spent courting conservatives the most they achieved was getting the GOP to share their lack of concern about civil liberties for anyone except Americans
After a while the message becomes clear - US Libertarians do believe in liberty, but only for Americans, and sometimes not even that far, other people don’t matter
And then they wonder why no liberation struggle wants to embrace libertarian ideology!
If libertarianism is selfishness as principle, then why would anyone want to help someone who promises to not reciprocate?
A real revolutionary libertarianism would absolutely be internationalist & seek to aid & assist those who would improve civil liberties abroad
There were a number of us US libertarians who went independently to Rojava to learn from and support the revolution there since there were small gov’t principles at play there, but there was nothing organized, we were always outnumbered by Marxist & ancom foreign volunteers
How much more could we learn from other anti-statists outside the US if our movement was more willing to do so?
American libertarianism is blind to the hard-won experience of freedom fighters with libertarian principles in Chiapas, Kurdistan, Burma, and elsewhere
There is no guarantee that America will always be a bastion of liberty forever, and we should support refuges of liberty wherever they arise rather than assume a position of eternal “libertarianism in one country”, to borrow a line from the Stalinists
- Bryan Caplan, “EconLog Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 14”, “When it comes to his Cold War revisionism, though, Rothbard let his hatred of the U.S. government blind him to the relative benevolence of U.S. foreign policy and the absolute malevolence of the Soviet Union.”
- Tahmineh Dehbozorgi, “That’s false. Libertarianism fights for freedom and liberty of all individuals regardless of race, color, sex, nation of origin. Isolationism is because of the Marxist takeover of the libertarian movement. That’s why you never win.”, September 24, 2022 replying to: "With all due respect, the internal affairs of foreign countries are not within the scope of American libertarians. We believe that normalizing diplomacy and trade will reduce the power the mullahs get from US sanctions and belligerent behavior. The rest is up to the Iranians.
- Murray N. Rothbard (criticism of his a priori isolationism, by various libertarian authors)
- Why I’m ashamed to be a libertarian (on Russian invasion of Ukraine/US Aid to Ukraine from a libertarian perspective)
- Jan Krepelka, “Against Urki Libertarianism”, 2022
