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* [http://chelm.freeyellow.com/rothbard.html Is it possible for a Jew to also be anti-Semitic? The case of Murray Rothbard]
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Revision as of 01:04, 14 September 2022

Rothbard’s foreign policy errors

by François Guillaumat

François Guillaumat is Rothbard’s French translator. For more, see the French version of this page: fr: Murray N. Rothbard and his podcasts on the subject (in French), in particular: Murray Rothbard (3) : Le politicien manqué. For the long-lasting and damaging consequences of theses errors on the libertarian movement, see Kremlintarianism.

Murray Rothbard’s isolationist fallacies

In the same way as in economic theory Murray Rothbard recommended a monetary policy inconsistent both with his own political principles and with the necessities of monetary adjustment, in international politics his thinking was fraught with fallacies, which arose from his attempt to use the philosophical a priori approach beyond the limits of its validity, that is to say in a field of knowledge where, on the contrary, prior historical analysis is absolutely necessary.

We must insist on the fact that the Rothbardians’ principled isolationism is inspired by fallacies and not only by different assessments or a lesser tendency to compromise, because its critics as well as its supporters still mistakenly believe that Rothbard’s isolationism was a direct consequence of his anarcho-capitalist principles, whereas it is not the case: on the contrary, it stems from his inability to apply them seriously to a complex political reality.

The category error of an a priori foreign policy

Indeed international politics, like all politics, but even more than national politics because it deals with two or more states —by definition aggressive and violent, is the domain of the dilemmas, of seeking the lesser evil, where the principles of freedom cannot be applied directly nor with certainty.

On the contrary, we can only identify the policy to be pursued though political intuition, after a thorough analysis of its implications. It requires knowledge and direct experience of the political societies in question, and of their mutual relationships, which obviously cannot be gained by anyone who thinks he can decide everything in advance.

Similarly, the advisability of a policy depends largely on the circumstances, not least because it depends on balances of forces which are constantly changing.

To claim a priori knowledge of the right decision is a guarantee of failure for the policy at hand, whatever it may be.

To try and determine foreign policy a priori is a category error which in turn guarantees the incompetence of those who commit it.

Thus the advisability of a policy must necessarily depend on the circumstances, and any decision made upon it must be the end product of a localized and dated historical study, and not of a general philosophical argument.

A logical consequence of that is that the very concepts of “isolationism” or “interventionism”, or “pacifism” or “warmongering” are meaningless if taken in absolute terms, that is to say, independently of the political circumstances to which the decision applies.

Yet that is precisely what Murray Rothbard did as he tried in For a New Liberty to define isolationism as “the” free-market foreign policy.

As a consequence, anyone who has seriously studied any matter of international politics can only conclude that in those matters Rothbard and the Rothbardians as such regularly ignore relevant facts which run counter to their pre-determined conclusions.

As they generally know only the United States and believe that they can dispense with knowing other governments, they have failed to take the measure of how much more mendacious and criminal those can be, and as a consequence they have more often than not sided with the worst murderers against those who tried to neutralize them, while repeating lies from their propaganda.

The false “exception” of isolationism

The inability to understand politics engendered by this categorical error has inspired its followers a set of secondary fallacies which essentially consist in postulating natural differences between the policies they advocate and those they denounce which are in fact purely imaginary.

The fallacy of borders

The fallacy of borders means to believe that the laws of politics are different once the border has been crossed: Whereas he knows better than anyone that if you do not care about politics, that will not prevent politics from dealing with you, the Rothbardian isolationist believes that, on the other side of the border, things change, and there are no aggressors among foreigners:

“if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone”

Anthropology could suffice to dispel this illusion by refuting its racist underlying assumption that non-Westerners have no power of agency and can only react to the initiatives of the West —who, in the anti-white version of this kind of racism, could be the only ones who ever commit aggression.

Yet, the history of the United States should also have been enough: in the first quarter century of their existence, the United States were attacked by the Barbary pirates, by France, and by England. That is why they spent the rest of the nineteenth century preventively conquering the strategic space outside of their state : that was the “Frontier”.

Now that the conquered territories have been incorporated to it, we forget that they were not part of it and claim that a US “imperialism” was born in the late 19th century; this way of writing history rests on a biased selection of the events and their questionable interpretation, which allows for a suspicion that evidence has been sought exclusively to support pre-determined conclusions.

The verbal analogy of interventionism

Another, simpler fallacy rests on a verbal confusion: Rothbardian isolationism, in order to say that “interventionism” abroad is bound to fail, points to the fact that economic “interventionism” always fails to achieve its purported goals.

Yet, if economic “interventionism” does fail to achieve its purported goals, it achieves by definition at least one of its real objectives, which is to enable the powerful to steal from the weak. As regards its purported goals, economic “interventionism” can only fail because it claims to serve production whereas it is inherently aggressive and aggressive violence is pure destruction —and total destruction to boot, since it involves investments made not in production but in trying to avail oneself of the production of others: those are pseudo-investments, in effect lost for any production.

That, and that alone is true a priori reasoning about “interventionism”: every extension of such reasoning beyond this axiomatic truth, which Rothbard did and Rothbardians do, is fallacious and leads inevitably to error. That is true of the other aspects of economic interventionism, like who its real victims and beneficiaries are, which do depend on the a priori economic laws of fiscal incidence and effective protection, but not independently of the circumstances.

That is obviously also true of “interventionism” abroad, where all that can be known a priori is that gangs of aggressors confront other gangs of aggressors there, so that, logically, the advisability of siding with the ones or the others cannot be determined a priori. And as regards the effectiveness of such intervention, victory, not production, is the ostensible criterion of its success or failure; also, such violence may well serve production to the extent that it assaults criminals, something which the officials of the foreign states are by definition.

The warfare-welfare state

Another variant of the verbal sleight-of-hand about “interventionism”, this time borrowed from the left, and which is also characteristic of the illegitimate use of an a priori approach in matters of history, is the warfare-welfare-state argument: this argument represents as a necessary and universal connection the coincidence between the development of the welfare state and the war observed in the United States during the 1960s. Without even having to explain this historical coincidence, only one counter-example is logically necessary to refute the universality of those claims, and two can already be given: Britain’s evolution towards laissez-faire as it was developing its empire, and conversely, the expansion of the welfare state in Western Europe at the expense of defense since the mid-1960s.

The contradictions inherent in the complexity objection

The confusion over the word “interventionism” sometimes expresses a more subtle argument: that which argues that foreign policy is doomed to failure because society is opaque to those who would change it: that society is too complex and unpredictable for anyone to act effectively upon it.

It is true that international politics is more complex than national politics; and it is therefore also true that one must conclude that political action is even more uncertain and should be more cautious there than in national politics. Yet it remains to be seen what will be called “prudence” in this case, since in those matters, to do nothing is still to do something (see below). And that is why the complexity of international politics is an argument that a Rothbardian can hardly use without contradiction, since it means that it should be studied even more deeply in order to avoid elementary failures, whereas he claims on the contrary, with his a priori defined “libertarian foreign policy”, that such study could be completely dispensed with.

If the “complexity” argument proved that any “intervention” abroad is necessarily doomed to failure, then it would prove the same of any kind of political choice, and first, of any kind of foreign policy whatsoever – including an isolationist one. Again, borders are irrelevant: whoever preaches isolationism expects some effects from it, and those may very well not deliver, especially if such a policy was based on fallacies which inspired a refusal to get seriously informed.

A self-refuting position

Furthermore, if the opaque and unpredictable nature of society necessarily doomed any foreign intervention to failure, that would hardly be less true of all political action, including in national politics. And what do you do when you denounce a foreign policy in the name of the “unknowable and unpredictable” nature of international society, if not politics, “unknowable and unpredictable” according to your own disqualifications? Is it not an obvious practical contradiction to derive policy recommendations from an attempt to disqualify any policy for reasons of principle?

Winners and losers

To establish the fallacious nature of such an argument, let us just recall that in politics, the criterion of success is victory, and there is necessarily a winner and a loser at one time or another. This fact is enough to refute finally the idea that all politics is necessarily doomed to failure by the opaque and unpredictable nature of social reality.

The mere fact that in politics there must be a winner for there to be a loser then refutes the idea that every policy is inevitably doomed to failure because events are inherently unpredictable. In fact, there are policies that win because they were adapted to a complex situation, and therefore, policies that lose because they were not.

If you want to win in politics, you must analyze the situation. And no, indeed, there is no guarantee that a mistake made or an event unforeseen will not change everything, and yes, that is because people are rational and inventive —and, abroad, different. But we know that there will be a winner and a loser, so that you can succeed, but you can also be crushed —even if you do nothing. And we can no less know that, if you purport to define a policy a priori, that is to say, if you think that you can dispense with knowing the circumstances where you intend to implement it, then you are quite sure to be crushed.

How easy it is to be right when you are the one who writes history

For example, nothing is easier than to rewrite history and say that everything would have gone better if the U.S. had not intervened during the First World War: but if it is so easy, it is precisely because we know nothing about what would have happened otherwise.

And anyway you must carefully choose your examples to draw, falsely, general conclusions from that kind of virtual rewritten history.

In order to refute such virtual rewritten history, all that is needed is to use against it the argument of opacity and unpredictability - adding to that, of course, that of absolute ignorance. Which brings us to the last instance of the fallacy of imaginary differences

The myth of innocent politics

Rothbardian isolationism ultimately rests on the utopian premise that certain types of policy choices could be free of the uncertainties and moral responsibilities which are in fact inherent in politics, so that no policy can ever avoid them: We have just concluded that if social complexity and the free will of the players inevitably doomed intervention abroad to failure, that would be equally true of any foreign policy.

It’s time to remember that when you can act, even doing nothing is to act. It is an illusion – of a “precautionary principle” kind- to fantasize that action would have consequences while inaction would have none.

As the example of the Leninist and Hitlerian socialisms, both of which could and should have been nipped in the bud, inaction too has unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences on an opaque and dangerous reality.

To refuse to use force against an aggressor when we can do it is to authorize his aggressions

To refuse the use of violence against tyrants under the excuse of "not adding war to war” (Mitterrand, as a de facto accomplice of Serbian aggression) is to let aggressive violence run free, as if we did not accept that violence can —and must —be defensive and restorative, is to confuse libertarianism with pacifism, which is a different political philosophy —so different that, unlike libertarianism, it is a self-contradictory one, since no practical defense of any definition of justice can be based on an equal condemnation of aggressive and defensive violence.

You take political positions in the context of a power struggle

Another aspect of the illusion of innocent politics is the Rothbardians’ idea that they could take political positions without regard to their implications in real political society. Thus, Rothbardians are periodically surprised to be shoved in the same basket as the fanatical “anti-imperialist” advocates of absurdist slavery who, like them, apologize for genocidal tyrants using blatant lies and sophistry, whereas their own blatant lies and sophistry are sometimes a different kind of blatant lies and sophistry.

This surprise comes from their self-inflicted inability to do political analysis. For those for whom such analysis is natural, it is clear that in a conflict there are two camps, and if you denounce one of them you belong to the other ; self-evident that in times of war, those who want their government to quit fighting root for the victory of its enemies. If you fail to understand that, don’t be surprised if others don’t, and draw the consequences.

Conclusion: if you want to do politics, you must accept all its rules and implications

Thus, Murray Rothbard and his successors in foreign policy have criticized certain policies to demand another single one, on behalf of general statements which are quite untrue, notably:

—Their fallacious pretence to define foreign policy a priori, a delusion which guarantees the incompetence of whomever it deceives;

A substantive error which comes with

—The implicit assertion of alleged “differences in nature” between the policies they criticize and their own, “differences” which in reality do not exist.

In anarcho-capitalist terms, international politics by definition deals with complex relationships between criminal gangs. If you pretend to judge them, you must analyze every time the concrete political situation, in order to know which approach happens to be the least harmful, and where, and when.

The particular hostility that Rothbardians harbor towards the so-called neo-conservatives on foreign policy, —while the objectivists, whom they do not attack so much, are only different because they are much less expert and much more ruthless (verbally)—shows that there is jealousy in this hostility ; yet if those “neo-conservatives” have influence while the Rothbardians have none, that is also because, on the basis of false reasoning, they have failed to engage in any serious study of international politics.

The failed politician

Murray Rothbard’s political commitments do not reflect, as we have seen, a sense of political advisability as sharp as most of his reasonings were in political philosophy and economics. They reflect instead the quandaries of the philosopher who would apply his principles of justice to a complex and changing political society, where most players are only trying to violate such rules of justice.

Incompetent in domestic politics

Thus, Murray Rothbard failed to give real weight to the U.S. Libertarian Party which he had helped create. Seeking to influence policy without compromising his principles, he finally found himself taking political positions which were not only fluctuating but put him at odds with the “camps” that could come to power. During the Vietnam War, he was seen cozying up to the communist and defeatist left which caused the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975, with the 3 million murders which ensued. After Reagan, who he thought was an “idiot”, had won the Cold War, his dislike for the actually eligible candidates led him to contribute to the victory of the left by supporting the diversionary candidate Ross Perot in 1992, and then support the right-wing socialist (the increasingly out-of-touch protectionist) Patrick Buchanan. At the end of his life, he spent less time denouncing the worst enemies of freedom than his own potential allies in the political arena, because those make realistic assessments of political situations and have accepted that, in order to exercise influence, you should hold a definite position, and one consistent with belonging to a camp.

Harmful in foreign policy

His positions on foreign policy also reflected his philosophical errors in that field. Murray Rothbard could have acknowledged his own incompetence, as he did not read any foreign language and was afraid of flying. Instead, having adopted Senator Taft’s isolationist stance through an accident of history, and believing that he could directly apply his own principles, he argued for an a priori definition of a libertarian foreign policy as “non-interventionist”.

Armed with this categorical error, knowing better than anyone the depravity of his own government and unable to assess the extent of the others’, he never ceased denouncing the foreign policy of the United States only, occasionally supporting the worst tyrannies and repeating their propaganda lies.

Some of his successors still follow him on this path, less the genius and the care for accuracy. Devoid of any influence, they seek to attract attention by making outrageous statements in support of some genocidal murderer, provided he is the enemy of the United States: they are visibly content with the illusion of existence which some of the commentators who count on the right bestow upon them when, on occasion, they condescend to denounce them.

Rothbard’s history errors

by Paul Marks [1]

The late Murray Newton Rothbard was a profound economist and a historian of economic thought (although I do not share his anarchism - or “anarchocapitalism”), but he was NOT a good GENERAL historian - and neither are those who follow him, such as Tom Woods. They are very good on both the history of economic thought and economic history (two different things), but they are NOT good on general history.

The American Civil War was not a dispute about trade policy - if one looks at the words of Jefferson Davis (and other Confederate leaders) in the run up to 1861 (not after 1865) it is clear that their concern was slavery - not Free Trade. The First World War was not the fault of the Western Allies (indeed the Imperial German Declaration of War upon France was a tissue of lies). President Woodrow Wilson (vile man though he was) was not engaged in a conspiracy to drag the United States into war - indeed he resisted pressure to enter the war for years, in spite of Imperial German attacks on American ships and attacks (bombings and shootings) INSIDE the United States. The Second World War was not the fault of the Western Allies - there was no American and British “drive to war” against Nazi Germany in the 1930s, motivated by envy of its trade deals (as the late Professor Rothbard falsely claims in his history of American money and banking). The Cold War was not the fault of the United States - the Soviet Union was an aggressive Marxist power which most certainly (not did not) wish to spread Marxism over the world by violence. And, no, the various conflicts in the Middle East in the 20th and 21st centuries were and are not the fault of the Jews.

Why was Professor Rothbard, and those who followed him, so bad at general history when they were so good at both the history of economic thought and economic history (again two different things). Some have alleged that Murray Rothbard (like other people of Jewish origins) was trying (at least at some level in his mind) to “kill the Jew in himself” - but that would only explain his attitude to the 2nd World War and to the conflicts in the Middle East - it would not explain his false account of other historical matters. I think the answer is simpler one - Professor Rothbard (and those that followed him in general history) correctly believed that the “establishment line” on both the history of economic thought and economic history was horribly wrong (which it is), but he jumped to the conclusion that because mainstream historians are horribly wrong about both the history of economic thought and economic history, they must also be wrong about EVERYTHING ELSE. The American Civil War, both World Wars, the Cold War, conflicts in the Middle East - and-so-on, and that the reverse of what mainstream historians said must be true (about everything).

Therefore Professor Rothbard went looking for the writings dissenting historians - and he found them. People such as Charles Beard (the American Constitution as a conspiracy of the rich against ordinary people), Gabriel Kolko (the American Progressive era, President Theodore Roosevelt and co - being a “Triumph of Conservatism” with the American government under T. Roosevelt and others being the puppets of Big Business), Harry Elmer Barnes (both World Wars being aggression against Germany - not aggression by Germany), and the various “Revisionist” historians of the Cold War and the conflicts in the Middle East. That these dissenting historians were normally radical COLLECTIVISTS (of ether the socialist or National Socialist type) did not seem to matter to Professor Rothbard (or to those that followed him) - these historians were against the “establishment line” (mainstream historians) so they must-be-correct. And, perhaps the most important point, the central belief of both Professor Rothbard and those who followed him, was and is, that the governments in Washington D.C. and London are-always-wrong (and in economic policy there is something to be said for this view) - but then Professor Rothbard, and those who followed him in general history, jump to the conclusion that those who opposed “Uncle Sam” must-be-in-the-right. This led to the irony of the anarchist Murray Newton Rothbard being a de facto ally of some of the worst regimes and terrorist groups in history.

[2] I would agree that there is a distinction between historical facts and policy advice. One could make a case for non interventionism (although the neutrality policy of such nations as Sweden and Switzerland did de facto rest on the non neutrality of the United States - in several conflicts). What I believe was harmful about Murray Rothbard, from the point of view of the ordinary student of history (the ordinary person - of whom I am one) is NOT his policy advice - but his distortion of historical facts. For example, one can be reading his history of American money and banking and then read (without warning) that the United States and Britain were engaged in a “drive to war” against innocent Nazi Germany in the 1930s - motivated by envy of its trade deals. Or one can read (in many places in Rothbard’s writings) that the Soviet Union had no desire to spread Marxism by violence to the rest of the world - with such things as the invasion of Finland in 1940 being a minor border dispute. It is such utterly bizarre statements from Rothbard that did such harm to the libertarian cause. The, as long as it serves my noninterventionist position I will say anything - anything-at-all, practice of the late Professor Rothbard. To the ordinary person reading someone saying utterly bizarre things (things that were clearly false) discredits everything else they say - even if, in strict logic, it should not.

Rothbard and the Winter War

by Tim Starr, September 11, 2002 [3]

Rothbard’s Cold War Wackiness: I’ve been asked by Mikko Ellila to comment on Rothbard’s interpretation of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, as he presented it in his libertarian manifesto, “For A New Liberty” (FANL). It’s been a very long time since I’ve read FANL, and I wasn’t terribly impressed with it at the time since I was already quite familiar with the basics of libertarian theory. However, I wasn’t very familiar with Soviet history at the time, so I didn’t notice how strange many of his claims about it are. Since Mikko is himself Finnish, I thought I’d start with Rothbard’s account of the Winter War, fought between the Soviet Union after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and before the German invasion of Russia: “The old pre-World War I Russia had now been restored with the exception of Finland. But Finland was prepared to fight. Here the Russians demanded not the reincorporation of Finland as a whole, but only of parts of the Karelian Isthmus which were ethnically Russian. When the Finns refused this demand, the ”Winter War“ (1939-1940) between Russia and Finland ensued, which ended with the Finns conceding only Russian Karelia.” - Rothbard, “For A New Liberty,” p. 285 While I’ve read several books which describe the Winter War and its causes, this is the first time I’ve read the claim that there was anyone in Finnish Karelia who was ethnically Russian, much less that Stalin’s demands were intended to incorporate them into Soviet territory. My sources all cite other demands made by Stalin, with other purposes. For example, here’s what the highly-respected British military historian, Sir John Keegan, says about it: “Finland had been Russian territory between 1809 and 1917; when it won its independence after fighting against Russian and local Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, it had obtained a frontier demarcation which Stalin decided ran too close for strategic comfort to Leningrad and the Soviet Baltic ports. On 12 October 1940, a week after Latvia had signed its dictated treaty, the Soviet Union confronted the Finnish government with demands for naval basing rights and the cession of a large strip of Finnish territory in the Karelian isthmus leading to Leningrad.” - John Keegan, “The Second World War,” p. 47 The reason given by Keegan is the closeness of the Finnish border to Leningrad and the Soviet Baltic ports, not the presence of ethnic Russians in Finnish Karelia. Now, let us consult one of my favorite historians of WWII, Richard Overy: “Having absorbed half of Poland, and temporarily averted the German threat, Stalin was eager to press on with the fulfilment of the terms set out in the secret German-Soviet protocols. The Baltic states were asked to sign treaties of mutual assistance in the two weeks following the Polish defeat. The treaties gave the Soviet Union the right to station troops in Baltic bases. A few weeks later, on October 5, similar demands were made of Finland: a naval and air base at the mouth of the Baltic at Hanko and cession of the Karelian isthmus north of Leningrad to provide a better defence of that vital city. In return Finland was offered a large area of Soviet territory in Karelia. The Finns refused and on November 13 negotiations were broken off. Stalin almost certainly would have preferred a political solution, but when the Finns refused to be intimidated he tore up the Soviet-Finnish non-aggression treaty and prepared for a military campaign to bring Finland entirely into the Soviet orbit. A puppet Communist government-in-waiting was established for Finland, and Stalin drew up plans to incorporate Finland into the Soviet Union as the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic.” - Richard Overy, “Russia’s War,” pp. 55-56 That quote from Overy puts Stalin’s demands in the context of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and Stalin’s forcible imposition of treaties upon Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Red Army never left their territory until the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, more than half a century later. Overy also points out that when Stalin’s minimal demands were rejected, he determined to totally annex Finland by military force. This, along with the demands for naval bases, makes a mockery of Rothbard’s claim that Stalin’s demands were limited to the incorporation of territory allegedly inhabited by ethnic Russians into Soviet territory. However, these brief accounts by Keegan and Overy are from books about the Second World War in general, not specifically about the Winter War. As it happens, I also have a book about the Winter War, and here’s what it has to say about Stalin’s demands: "At the first high-level meeting in Moscow, on October 12, Stalin wasted no time putting his demands on the table. His main strategic problem, he said, was the vulnerability of the frontiers around Leningrad. In order to improve the city’s security, he needed —indeed, he MUST have—the strongest possible assurances of continued good relations with Finland... "The Soviet Union therefore demanded: "* that the frontier between Russia and Finland in the Karelian Isthmus region be moved westward to a point only 20 miles east of Viipuri, and that all existing fortifications on the Karelian isthmus be destroyed; "* that the Finns cede to Russia the islands of Suursaari, Lavansaari, Tytarsaari, and Koivisto in the Gulf of Finland, along with most of the Rybachi Peninsula on the Arctic coast. In compensation for this, Stalin was willing to exchange 5,500 square kilometers of East Karelia, above Lake Ladoga; “* that the Finns lease to the USSR the peninsula of Hanko, and permit the Russians to establish a base there, manned by 5,000 troops and some support units.” - William R. Trotter, “A Frozen Hell,” pp. 15-16 Trotter also confirms that Stalin set up his own puppet government for Finland, which promptly signed a treaty ceding all Finnish territory to the Soviet Union. But he doesn’t mention any ethnic Russians inhabiting Finnish Karelia or any demands by Stalin for the incorporation of the territory on which they were living into the Soviet Union. Frankly, I’m at a loss as to where Rothbard got this argument and what factual evidence there is to support it. Unfortunately, I don’t own a copy of FANL, so I can’t check his footnotes. Rothbard’s argument doesn’t even square with the usual line taken by pro-Soviet revisionists, which is that Russian foreign policy was basically the same as Tsarist Russian foreign policy. But, as even Rothbard’s quote above makes clear, restoration of the Tsarist Empire would mean the total reincorporation of Finland, since Finland was part of the Tsar’s territory before the Bolshevik Revolution. That’s not all Rothbard had to say about Finland, however: “The cold warriors find it difficult to explain Russian actions in Finland. If Russia is always hell-bent to impose Communist rule wherever it can, why the ”soft line“ in Finland? The only plausible explanation is that its motivation is security for the Russian nation-state against attack, with the success of world communism playing a very minor role in its scale of priorities.” - FANL, p. 287 The “soft line” Rothbard’s referring to is the limited territorial concessions Finland made to Russia after WWII, along with neutrality in the Cold War, in exchange for Russia letting Finland keep most of its territory. Actually, this is not so difficult to explain: the Red Army never successfully conquered and occupied Finland, thanks to the valiant defense the Finns made against the Soviets at the Mannerheim Line in the Winter War. By the end of WWII, the Soviets did have the military capability to defeat Finland, thanks to the improvements that had been made since their defeat by Finland in 1940 - improvements which were partly motivated by the Finnish victory. However, these improvements were made in large part because of supplies and equipment the Soviets had gotten from the Western Allies, mainly the USA, and the Soviets were only able to defeat Germany thanks to the support of the Western Allies. This put a constraint upon Soviet actions that hadn’t been present in 1940: In order to keep getting support from the Western Allies, Stalin had to refrain from acting in ways of which the Western Allies would disapprove. Stalin even promised to hold free elections in the countries that had been occupied by the Red Army, to maintain a united front with the Western Allies. It was only after none of those elections resulted in victory for any of Stalin’s Communist parties that he proceeded to puppetize those countries by force. But, by that time, the West was opposing any extension of the Soviet sphere of influence by military invasion, so it was too late for Stalin to invade Finland and puppetize it without risking military resistance by the West, which Stalin wanted to avoid above all else. So, Rothbard’s description of the Cold War view of Soviet foreign policy is in need of a bit of modification, or clarification: the Soviet Union WAS hell-bent on imposing Communist rule wherever it could, but it couldn’t do it when facing resistance by military forces capable of resisting the Red Army, either the Finns at the time of the Winter War, or the Western Allies in post-war era. By using the case of Finland the way he does, Rothbard is trying to use an example of successful military resistance to Soviet expansionism to argue that there was no such thing as Soviet expansionism by military means.


Rothbard and Soviet foreign policy

by Tim Starr [4]

After having discussed Rothbard’s misinterpretation of the Winter War, I now turn to his denial that Soviet foreign policy was based upon aggressive military expansion: “First, there is no doubt that the Soviets, along with all other Marxist-Leninists, would like to replace all existing social systems by Communist regimes. But such a sentiment, of course, scarcely implies any sort of realistic threat of attack - just as an ill wish in private life can hardly be grounds for realistic expectation of imminent aggression.” - Rothbard, “For A New Liberty,” p. 282 “Any idea of ”exporting“ communism to other countries on the backs of the Soviet military is totally contradictory to Marxist-Leninist theory.” - ibid, p. 283 “Thus, fortuitously, from a mixture of theoretical and practical grounds of their own, the Soviets arrived early at what libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy.” - ibid, pp. 283-284 The most problematic of Rothbard’s above assertions is that exportation of Communism by means of Soviet military might is contrary to Marxist-Leninist theory. Lenin was the primary author of Marxism-Leninism, but this alleged “contradiction” didn’t stop him from authorizing the Red Army to invade Poland in the 1920s, presumably with the intent of Bolshevizing Poland once it was conquered. Lenin also actively supported attempts to overthrow “bourgeois” regimes like those of Germany and Hungary in the aftermath of WWI, albeit by means of domestic insurrection rather than invasion by the Red Army. However, this was because the Red Army was kept plenty busy fighting the Whites, the Greens, and the peasants in the Russian Civil War, not because of any theoretical objection. While Lenin originated Marxism-Leninism, Stalin was the first to systematically present it in his book, “Foundations of Leninism.” Stalin was also unable to find any theoretical objection to spreading Communism by military might, as proven by the fact that he proceeded to do so as soon as he had favorable international conditions for doing so. His first attempt was in his provision of Comintern, KGB, and Red Army support for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, which led to the Spanish Republican Army being almost entirely under the command of officers who were Soviet puppets. This failed because of an anti-Communist rebellion within the Spanish Republican Army against the Soviet puppets, enabling the Nationalists to win the war. However, Stalin didn’t really care that much about Spain, and he cut off support for the Republicans after he gave up on the hope of a collective security alliance with the West against Germany, and decided on an alliance with Germany to carve up Eastern Europe between himself and Hitler instead. (See “Spain Betrayed,” edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov on Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War.) Upon signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, Stalin proceeded to occupy half of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia with the Red Army, and started the process of Sovietizing those countries. In Poland, the Soviets actually mass-murdered people faster than the Nazis did in their half of Poland until the German invasion of Russia in June of 1941. In the aftermath of WWII, all of the countries that had been occupied by the Red Army were Sovietized, with the only exceptions being Austria and Finland. I’ve already discussed why Finland wasn’t Sovietized. Austria wasn’t Sovietized because it had been jointly occupied by the Western Allies as well as the Soviets, the Allies agreed to neutralize Austria, and Austria was small potatoes compared to the rest of occupied Europe. Between 1945 and 1950, countries Sovietized by Stalin while under Soviet military occupation included East Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Yugoslavia was originally Sovietized, until Tito’s split with Stalin over the question of whether to continue supporting the Communists in the Greek Civil War. Stalin wanted that support to stop, because he was too afraid of Western intervention, while Tito wanted it to continue. Stalin also authorized Kim Il-Sung’s invasion of South Korea, and provided military assistance to North Korea in the Korean War, including tanks and Soviet pilots flying Soviet fighter planes. The fact that Stalin did export Communism with the T-34 tanks and the rest of the might of the Red Army in the aftermath of WWII makes it rather irrelevant whether such aggressive military expansion was contrary to the official ideology of the Soviet Union, even if we accept that allegation for the sake of argument. What matters is how the Soviet Union actually behaved, and the Soviet Union manifestly did present a clear and present military threat to other countries wherever it wasn’t clearly opposed by superior military forces. As for the Soviet Union arriving at what Rothbard considered the “only principled and proper foreign policy” for libertarians, he is referring to Khruschev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence.” That policy was the exception to the rule for the Soviet Union, and was largely the result of the Soviet Union facing a USA and its allies in NATO and SEATO that was determined to oppose Soviet aggression with overwhelming military might. It also didn’t last very long, as Khruschev was soon ousted by the hard-liners in the Politburo and replaced by Brezhnev, who decided upon a policy of defending every existing Communist regime and adding new ones to the fold by covertly supporting revolutionary “national liberation” movements in the Third World. Cuba and Vietnam were the first field tests of this strategy, and between 1975 and 1980 about a dozen countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia fell to the Commies, until the election of Ronald Reagan, another Cold War hawk who went further than his predecessors by not only supporting containment of the Soviets but active rollback of Soviet puppet regimes as well, such as in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, etc. “Peaceful coexistence” was Khruschev’s euphemism for keeping the ill-gotten gains of Soviet military conquests in Eastern Europe and elsewhere - millions of slaves, massive amounts of raw materials, agricultural produce, industrial equipment, and territory. Letting tyrannical conquerors keep their slaves & booty isn’t “peace,” it’s a permanent state of war between the tyrants & their subjects. This is hardly the “only principled and proper foreign policy” for libertarians, since libertarians are opposed to tyranny, aggression, slavery, mass-theft and mass-murder. It may be the best policy option in a particular situation, but a policy of containing or rolling back such tyranny and slavery could also be the best policy, too. Determining which of these options is best requires a thorough examination of the empirical facts of the situation. It can’t be answered by resort to a priori theory, nor by starting with your conclusions, looking for evidence that fits your conclusions, and ignoring or explaining away all evidence contrary to your conclusions. Unfortunately, this latter strategy appears to have been the one Rothbard used, to the detriment of his own scholarly integrity, and the credibility of his followers. Hopefully, those who’ve bought into his denial of Soviet aggressiveness will reconsider their agreement with him, have a look at the evidence against it, and make a more informed judgement.

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