Zeal For Truth

Over the past year, especially because of the effect of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy, many honest questions (and many baseless accusations) have been flying around about libertarianism, foreign policy and Christianity. I wanted to take the time to answer a few of these questions from my own perspective.

Is libertarian foreign policy isolationist? / You libertarians are a bunch of head-in-the-sand isolationists!
Libertarians are broadly defined as people that hold to the non-aggression principle, which is basically paraphrased:

The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence (’aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory (Murray Rothbard).

How does this kind of worldview translate to foreign policy? It definitely doesn’t automatically mean isolationism - but it could. So some libertarians can be isolationists (at least partly), but most hold to a defence-oriented foreign policy. That is, we do not attack any country unless it presents an imminent, specific and definable threat. Thus, World War II is justifiable to many libertarians, as may be the invasion of Afghanistan - however, preemptive wars such as Vietnam, Iraq or the Spanish-American War are typically frowned upon.

Wars to support alliances would also be unacceptable to libertarians. We broadly support alliances via trade and commerce, but not political alliances which tie us to the internal and external conflicts of others. World War I is an excellent example of the disasters of such alliances.

But more important to this distinction, is actually looking at what defines isolationism. There are two general points required for isolationism:

1. non-aggressive, or non-interventionist foreign policy
2. protectionism of the economy, culture, language, etc…

Libertarians abhor the second point. We would like to see trade with as many people as possible. We want our cultures to mingle and share with one another. We are generally more internationalist - supporting all kinds of diplomacy and cooperation with other nations.

The economic restrictions of isolationism (and currently favored by both the left and right), are an anathema to libertarians who support free-markets and the rights of individuals (regardless of their nationality) to voluntarily trade with one another. For example, many libertarians are for opening borders and loosening immigration controls - while many isolationist-oriented republicans want immigrant-hiring employers regulated, a border-fence and deportation of illegal immigrants.

So it is possible that isolationism and libertarianism can coincide briefly, but for the most part, these two ideas - especially when examined logically - are mutually exclusive.