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NOTE 14. War and Foreign Policy

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Chapter 14 War and Foreign Policy

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Isolationism Left and Right

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Isolationism was coined as a smear term to apply to opponents of American entry into World War II.

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Since the word was often applied through guilt by association to mean pro-Nazi,

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isolationist took on a right-wing as well as a generally negative flavor.

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If not actively pro-Nazi, isolationists were, at the very least, narrow-minded ignoramuses,

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ignorant of the world around them, in contrast to the sophisticated, worldly, caring internationalists

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who favored American crusading around the globe.

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In the last decade, of course, anti-war forces have been considered leftists,

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and interventionists from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter and their followers

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have constantly tried to pin the isolationist or at least neo-isolationist label on today's left wing.

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Left or right? During World War I, opponents of the war were bitterly attacked, just as now,

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as leftists, even though they included in their ranks libertarians and advocates of laissez-faire

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capitalism. In fact, the major center of opposition to the American War with Spain and the American

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in War to Crush the Philippine Rebellion at the Turn of the Century was laissez-faire liberals, men like the sociologist and economist William Graham Sumner and the Boston merchant Edward Atkinson, who founded the Anti-Imperialist League.

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Furthermore, Atkinson and Sumner were squarely in the great tradition of the classical English

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liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries, and in particular such laissez-faire extremists as Richard

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Cobden and John Bright of the Manchester School. Cobden and Bright took the lead in vigorously

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opposing every British war and foreign political intervention of their era, and for his pains,

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Cobden was known, not as an isolationist, but as the international man.

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Until the smear campaign of the late 1930s, opponents of war were considered the true internationalists,

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men who opposed the aggrandizement of the nation-state and favored peace, free trade, free migration,

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and peaceful cultural exchanges among peoples of all nations.

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Foreign intervention is international only in the sense that war is international. Coercion,

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whether the threat of force or the outright movement of troops, will always cross frontiers

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between one nation and another. Isolationism has a right-wing sound. Neutralism and peaceful

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coexistence sound leftish, but their essence is the same. Opposition to war and political

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Political Intervention Between Countries.

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This has been the position of anti-war forces for two centuries, whether they were the classical

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liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries, the leftists of World War I and the Cold War,

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or the rightists of World War II.

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In very few cases have these anti-interventionists favored literal isolation.

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What they have generally favored is political non-intervention in the affairs of other countries,

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Coupled with economic and cultural internationalism in the sense of peaceful freedom of trade, investment, and interchange between the citizens of all countries.

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And this is the essence of the libertarian position as well.

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Limiting Government

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Libertarians favor the abolition of all states everywhere, and the provision of legitimate

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functions now supplied poorly by governments, police, courts, etc., by means of the free

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market.

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Libertarians favor liberty as a natural human right, and advocate it not only for Americans,

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but for all peoples.

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In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no foreign policy, because

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Because there would be no states, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular

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territorial areas.

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But since we live in a world of nation states, and since this system is hardly likely to

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disappear in the near future, what is the attitude of libertarians toward foreign policy

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in the current, state-ridden world?

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Pending the dissolution of states, libertarians desire to limit, to whittle down, the area

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of Government Power in all directions and as much as possible.

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We have already demonstrated how this principle of de-statizing might work in various important

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domestic problems, where the goal is to push back the role of government and to allow the

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voluntary and spontaneous energies of free persons full scope through peaceful interaction,

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notably in the free market economy.

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In foreign affairs, the goal is the same, to keep government from interfering in the

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affairs of other governments or other countries.

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Political isolationism and peaceful coexistence, refraining from acting upon other countries,

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is then the libertarian counterpart to agitating for laissez-faire policies at home.

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The idea is to shackle government from acting abroad, just as we try to shackle government

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at Home. Isolationism, or peaceful coexistence, is the foreign policy counterpart of severely

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limiting government at home. Specifically, the entire land area of the world is now parceled

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out among various states, and each land area is ruled by a central government, with monopoly

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of violence over that area. In relations between states, then, the libertarian goal is to keep

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The Theory of Money and Credit

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In short, the objective of the libertarian is to confine any existing state to as small

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a degree of invasion of person and property as possible.

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And this means the total avoidance of war.

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The people under each state should pressure their respective states not to attack one

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Let us assume, for the moment, a world with two hypothetical countries, Graustark and

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Belgravia.

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Each is ruled by its own state.

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What happens if the government of Graustark invades the territory of Belgravia?

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From the libertarian point of view, two evils immediately occur.

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First, the Graustark Army begins to slaughter innocent Belgravian civilians, persons who

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are not implicated in whatever crimes the Belgravian government might have committed.

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War then is mass murder, and this massive invasion of the right to life, of self-ownership,

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of numbers of people, is not only a crime, but for the libertarian, the ultimate crime.

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Second, since all governments obtained their revenue from the thievery of coercive taxation,

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any mobilization and launching of troops inevitably involve an increase in tax coercion in Graustark.

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For both reasons, because interstate wars inevitably involve both mass murder and an

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increase in tax coercion, the libertarian opposes war.

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Period.

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It was not always thus.

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During the Middle Ages, the scope of wars was far more limited.

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Before the rise of modern weapons, armaments were so limited that governments could, and

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often did, strictly confine their violence to the armies of the rival governments.

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It is true that tax coercion increased, but at least there was no mass murder of the innocents.

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Not only was firepower low enough to confine violence to the armies of the contending sides,

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but in the pre-modern era, there was no central nation-state that spoke inevitably in the

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name of all inhabitants of a given land area.

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If one set of kings or barons fought another, it was not felt that everyone in the area

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must be a dedicated partisan.

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Moreover, instead of mass conscript armies enslaved to their respective rulers, armies

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were small bands of hired mercenaries.

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Often a favorite sport for the populace was to observe a battle from the safety of the

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town ramparts, and war was regarded as something of a sporting match.

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But with the rise of the centralizing state and of modern weapons of mass destruction,

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The slaughter of civilians, as well as conscript armies, have become a vital part of interstate

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warfare.

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Suppose that despite possible libertarian opposition, war has broken out.

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Clearly, the libertarian position should be that, so long as the war continues, the scope

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of assault upon innocent civilians must be diminished as much as possible.

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Old-fashioned international law had two excellent devices to accomplish this goal, the laws

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of war and the laws of neutrality or neutrals' rights.

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The laws of neutrality were designed to keep any war confined to the warring states themselves

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without attacks upon non-warring states and, particularly, aggression against the peoples

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of other nations.

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against the importance of such ancient and now almost forgotten American principles as

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freedom of the seas, or severe limitations upon the rights of warring states to blockade

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neutral trade with the enemy country.

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In short, the libertarian tries to induce neutral states to remain neutral in any interstate

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conflict, and to induce the warring states to observe fully the rights of neutral citizens.

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The laws of war, for their part, were designed to limit as much as possible the invasion

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by warring states of the rights of civilians in their respective countries.

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As the British jurist F. J. P. Veale put it, the fundamental principle of this code was

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that hostilities between civilized peoples must be limited to the armed forces actually

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engaged.

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It drew a distinction between combatants and non-combatants by laying down that the sole

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business of the combatants is to fight each other, and consequently that non-combatants

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must be excluded from the scope of military operations.

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In the modified form of prohibiting the bombardment of all cities not in the front line, this

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rule held in Western European wars in recent centuries until Britain launched the strategic

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To return to our hypothetical Graustark and Belgravia, suppose that Graustark has invaded Belgravia, and that a third government, Waldavia, now leaps into the war in order to defend Belgravia against Graustarkian aggression.

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Is this action justifiable? Here, indeed, is the germ of the pernicious 20th century theory of collective security, the idea that when one government aggresses against another, it is the moral obligation of the other governments of the world to band together to defend the victimized state.

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There are several fatal flaws in this concept of collective security against aggression.

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One is that when wildavia, or any other states, leap into the fray, they are themselves expanding

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and compounding the extent of the aggression, because they are, one, unjustly slaughtering

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masses of Graustarkian civilians, and two, increasing tax coercion over wildavian citizens.

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Furthermore, three, in this age when states and subjects are closely identifiable,

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wildavia is thereby leaving wildavian civilians open to retaliation by graustarkian bombers or

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missiles. Thus, entry into the war by the wildavian government puts into jeopardy the very lives and

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properties of wildavian citizens which the government is supposed to be protecting.

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Finally, four, conscription enslavement of Waldavian citizens will usually intensify.

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If this kind of collective security should really be applied on a worldwide scale with

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all the Waldavias rushing into every local conflict and escalating them, every local

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skirmish would soon be raised into a global conflagration.

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There is another crucial flaw in the collective security concept.

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The idea of entering a war in order to stop aggression is clearly an analogy from aggression

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by one individual upon another.

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Smith is seen to be beating up Jones, aggressing against him.

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Nearby police then rush to the defense of the victim Jones.

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They are using police action to stop aggression.

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It was in pursuit of this myth, for example, that President Truman persisted in referring

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to American entry into the Korean War as a police action, a collective U.N. effort to

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repel aggression.

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But aggression only makes sense on the individual Smith-Jones level, as does the very term police

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action.

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These terms make no sense whatever on an interstate level.

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First, we have seen that governments entering a war thereby become aggressors themselves

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against innocent civilians, indeed, become mass murderers.

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The correct analogy to individual action would be, Smith beats up Jones, the police rush

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in to help Jones, and in the course of trying to apprehend Smith, the police bomb a city

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block and murder thousands of people, or spray machine gun fire into an innocent crowd.

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This is a far more accurate analogy, for that is what a warring government does, and in

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the 20th century it does so on a monumental scale.

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But any police agency that behaves this way itself becomes a criminal aggressor, often

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far more so than the original Smith who began the affair.

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But there is yet another fatal flaw in the analogy with individual aggression.

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When Smith beats up Jones or steals his property, we can identify Smith as an aggressor upon

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the personal or property right of his victim.

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But when the Graustarkian state invades the territory of the Belgravian state, it is impermissible

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to refer to aggression in an analogous way.

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For the libertarian, no government has a just claim to any property or sovereignty right

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in a given territorial area.

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The Belgravian state's claim to its territory is therefore totally different from Mr. Jones'

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claim to his property, although the latter might also, on investigation, turn out to

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be the illegitimate result of theft.

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No state has any legitimate property.

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All of its territory is the result of some kind of aggression and violent conquest.

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Hence the Graustarkian state's invasion is necessarily a battle between two sets of thieves

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The only problem is that innocent civilians on both sides are being trampled upon.

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Aside from this general caveat on governments, the so-called aggressor state often has a quite plausible claim on its victim.

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Plausible, that is, within the context of the nation-state system.

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Suppose that Graustark has crossed the Belgravian border because Belgravia had a century earlier invaded Graustark

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Let us put it this way. In the unlikely event that the two countries could return to pre-modern warfare, with a. weapons limited so that no civilians were injured in their persons or property, b. volunteer rather than conscript armies, and also c. financing by voluntary methods instead of taxation, the libertarian could then, given our context, side unreservedly with Graustark.

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Of all the recent wars, none has come closer, though not completely so, to satisfying these

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three criteria for a just war than the Indian War of late 1971 for the liberation of Bangladesh.

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The government of Pakistan had been created as a last terrible legacy of imperial Britain

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to the Indian subcontinent.

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In particular, the nation of Pakistan consisted of imperial rule by the Punjabis of West Pakistan

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over the more numerous and productive Bengalis of East Pakistan, and also over the Patans

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of the Northwest Frontier.

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The Bengalis had long been yearning for independence from their imperial oppressors.

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In early 1971, parliament was suspended as a result of Bengali victory in the elections.

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From then on, Punjabi troops systematically slaughtered the civilian Bengal population.

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Indian entry into the conflict aided the popular Bengali resistance forces of the Mukti Bahini.

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While taxes and conscription were, of course, involved, the Indian armies did not use their

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weapons against Bengali civilians.

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On the contrary, here was a genuine revolutionary war of the Bengali public against a Punjabi

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Occupying State, Only Punjabi Soldiers Were on the Receiving End of Indian Bullets.

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This example points up another characteristic of warfare, that revolutionary guerrilla war

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can be far more consistent with libertarian principles than any interstate war.

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By the very nature of their activities, guerrillas defend the civilian population against the

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The Depredations of a State

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Hence guerrillas, inhabiting as they do the same country as the enemy state, cannot use

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nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

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Further, since guerrillas rely for victory on the support and aid of the civilian population,

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they must, as a basic part of their strategy, spare civilians from harm and pinpoint their

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and their activities solely against the state apparatus and its armed forces.

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Hence guerrilla war returns us to the ancient and honorable virtue of pinpointing the enemy

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and sparing innocent civilians.

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And guerrillas, as part of their quest for enthusiastic civilian support, often refrain

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from conscription and taxation and rely on voluntary support for men and materiel.

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The libertarian qualities of guerrilla warfare reside only on the revolutionary side.

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For the counter-revolutionary forces of the state, it is quite a different story.

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While the state cannot go to the length of nuking its own subjects, it does of necessity

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rely primarily on campaigns of mass terror, killing, terrorizing and rounding up the mass

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of civilians.

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Its guerrillas, to be successful, must be supported by the bulk of the population.

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The state, in order to wage its war, must concentrate on destroying that population,

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or must herd masses of civilians into concentration camps in order to separate them from their

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guerrilla allies.

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This tactic was used by the Spanish general Butcher Whaler against the Cuban rebels in

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in the 1890s, was continued by the American troops in the Philippines and by the British

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in the Boer War, and continues to be used down to the recent ill-fated strategic Hamlet

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policy in South Vietnam.

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The libertarian foreign policy, then, is not a pacifist policy.

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We do not hold, as do the pacifists, that no individual has the right to use violence

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in defending himself against violent attack.

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What we do hold is that no one has the right to conscript, tax, or murder others, or to

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use violence against others in order to defend himself.

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Since all states exist and have their being in aggression against their subjects and in

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the acquiring of their present territory, and since interstate wars slaughter innocent

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For civilians, such wars are always unjust, although some may be more unjust than others.

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Guerrilla warfare against states at least has the potential for meeting libertarian requirements

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00:23:02.760 --> 00:23:08.520
by pinpointing the guerrilla's battle against state officials and armies, and by their use

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of voluntary methods to staff and finance their struggle.

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in Foreign Policy.

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We have seen that libertarians have as their prime responsibility the focusing on the invasions

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and aggressions of their own state.

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The libertarians of Graustark must center their attentions on attempting to limit and

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00:23:32.180 --> 00:23:35.280
whittle down the Graustark state.

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The Waldavian libertarians must try to check the Waldavian state, and so on.

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In foreign affairs, the libertarians of every country must press their government to refrain

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from war and foreign intervention and to withdraw from any war in which they may be engaged.

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If for no other reason, then, libertarians in the United States must center their critical

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attention on the imperial and warlike activities of their own government.

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But there are still other reasons for libertarians here to focus upon the invasions and foreign

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and Interventions of the United States.

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For empirically, taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most

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interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States.

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Such a statement is bound to shock Americans, subject as we have been for decades to intense

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propaganda by the establishment on the invariable saintliness, peaceful intentions, and devotion

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and to Justice of the American Government in Foreign Affairs.

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The expansionist impulse of the American state began to take increasing hold in the late

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19th century, leaping boldly overseas with America's war against Spain, dominating Cuba,

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grabbing Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and brutally suppressing a Filipino rebellion

247
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for independence.

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The imperial expansion of the United States reached full flower in World War I, when President

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Woodrow Wilson's leap into the fray prolonged the war and the mass slaughter and unwittingly

250
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bred the grisly devastation that led directly to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia and the

251
00:25:19.180 --> 00:25:21.900
Nazi victory in Germany.

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It was Wilson's particular genius to supply a pietistic and moralistic cloak for a new

253
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American policy of worldwide intervention and domination, a policy of trying to mold

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in the American image, suppressing radical or Marxist regimes on the one hand and old-fashioned

255
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monarchist governments on the other.

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It was Woodrow Wilson who was to fix the broad features of American foreign policy for the

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rest of this century.

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Almost every succeeding president has considered himself a Wilsonian and followed his policies.

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It was no accident that both Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, so long thought

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of as Polar Opposites played important roles in America's first global crusade of World

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War I, and that both men harked back to their experience in World War I intervention and

262
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planning as the guideposts for their future foreign and domestic policies.

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And it was one of Richard Nixon's first acts as president to place Woodrow Wilson's picture

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00:26:26.680 --> 00:26:29.400
upon his desk.

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In the name of national self-determination and collective security against aggression,

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the American government has consistently pursued a goal and a policy of world domination and

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of the forcible suppression of any rebellion against the status quo anywhere in the world.

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In the name of combating aggression everywhere, of being the world's policeman, it has itself

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become a great and continuing aggressor.

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Anyone who balks at such a description of American policy should simply consider what

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the typical American reaction is to any domestic or foreign crisis anywhere on the globe, even

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at some remote site that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a direct

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or even indirect threat to the lives and security of the American people.

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The military dictator of Bumble Stan is in danger.

275
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Perhaps his subjects are tired of being exploited by him and his colleagues.

276
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The United States then becomes gravely concerned.

277
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Articles by journalists friendly to the State Department or the Pentagon spread the alarm

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00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:44.460
about what might happen to the stability of Bumble Stan and its surrounding area if the

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dictator should be toppled.

280
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For it so happens that he is a pro-American or pro-Western dictator.

281
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That is, he is one of ours instead of theirs.

282
00:27:57.140 --> 00:28:02.020
Millions or even billions of dollars worth of military and economic aid are then rushed

283
00:28:02.020 --> 00:28:07.020
by the United States to prop up the Bumble Stanny Field Marshal.

284
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If our dictator is saved, then a sigh of relief is heaved, and congratulations are passed

285
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around at the saving of our state.

286
00:28:16.260 --> 00:28:21.740
The continuing or intensified oppression of the American taxpayer and of the Bumble Stanny

287
00:28:21.740 --> 00:28:26.540
and Citizens are, of course, not considered in the equation.

288
00:28:26.540 --> 00:28:31.420
Or if it should happen that the Bumble Stanny dictator may fall, hysteria might hit the

289
00:28:31.420 --> 00:28:34.680
American press and officialdom for the moment.

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But then, after a while, the American people seem to be able to live their lives after

291
00:28:39.360 --> 00:28:46.060
losing Bumble Stan about as well as before, perhaps even better, if it means a few billion

292
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unless and foreign aid extracted from them to prop up the Bumble Stanny State.

293
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If it is understood and expected then that the United States will try to impose its will

294
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on every crisis everywhere in the world, then this is clear indication that America is the

295
00:29:02.820 --> 00:29:06.700
great interventionary and imperial power.

296
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The one place where the United States does not now attempt to work its will is the Soviet

297
00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:14.540
Union and the communist countries.

298
00:29:14.540 --> 00:29:20.020
But of course, it has tried to do so in the past. Woodrow Wilson, along with Britain and

299
00:29:20.020 --> 00:29:26.120
France, tried for several years to crush Bolshevism in the cradle, with American and allied troops

300
00:29:26.120 --> 00:29:33.020
being sent to Russia to aid the Tsarist White forces in trying to defeat the Reds. After

301
00:29:33.020 --> 00:29:38.420
World War II, the United States tried its best to oust the Soviets from Eastern Europe

302
00:29:38.420 --> 00:29:43.420
and succeeded in pushing them out of Azerbaijan in northwestern Iran.

303
00:29:43.420 --> 00:29:48.420
It also helped the British to crush a communist regime in Greece.

304
00:29:48.420 --> 00:29:54.420
The United States tried its best to maintain Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial rule in China,

305
00:29:54.420 --> 00:30:01.420
flying many of Chiang's troops northward to occupy Manchuria as the Russians pulled out after World War II.

306
00:30:01.420 --> 00:30:08.420
and it continues to prevent the Chinese from occupying their offshore islands, Quimoy and Matsu.

307
00:30:08.420 --> 00:30:17.420
After virtually installing the dictator Batista in Cuba, the United States tried desperately to oust the communist Castro regime

308
00:30:17.420 --> 00:30:26.420
by actions ranging from the CIA engineered Bay of Pigs invasion to CIA mafia attempts to assassinate Castro.

309
00:30:26.420 --> 00:30:36.420
Of all America's recent wars, certainly the most traumatic for Americans and their attitude toward foreign policy was the Vietnam War.

310
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America's imperial war in Vietnam was indeed a microcosm of what has been tragically wrong with American foreign policy in this century.

311
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American intervention in Vietnam did not begin, as most people believe, with Kennedy or Eisenhower or even Truman.

312
00:30:54.420 --> 00:31:13.420
It began no later than the date when the American government, under Franklin Roosevelt, on November 26, 1941, delivered a sharp and insulting ultimatum to Japan to get its armed forces out of China and Indochina, from what would later be Vietnam.

313
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This US ultimatum set the stage inevitably for Pearl Harbor.

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00:31:18.420 --> 00:31:24.980
Engaged in a war in the Pacific to oust Japan from the Asian continent, the United States

315
00:31:24.980 --> 00:31:32.620
and its OSS, predecessor to the CIA, favored and aided Ho Chi Minh's communist-run National

316
00:31:32.620 --> 00:31:35.980
Resistance Movement against the Japanese.

317
00:31:35.980 --> 00:31:42.060
After World War II, the communist Viet Minh was in charge of all northern Vietnam.

318
00:31:42.060 --> 00:31:48.260
But then France, previously the imperial ruler of Vietnam, betrayed its agreement with Ho

319
00:31:48.260 --> 00:31:55.620
and Massacred Viet Minh Forces. In this double cross, France was aided by Britain and the United States.

320
00:31:56.580 --> 00:32:01.780
When the French lost to the reconstituted Viet Minh guerrilla movement under Ho,

321
00:32:01.780 --> 00:32:08.500
the United States endorsed the Geneva Agreement of 1954, under which Vietnam was to be quickly

322
00:32:08.500 --> 00:32:15.220
reunited as one nation. For it was generally recognized that the post-war occupation divisions

323
00:32:15.220 --> 00:32:21.380
of the country into North and South were purely arbitrary and merely for military convenience.

324
00:32:22.260 --> 00:32:27.860
But having by trickery managed to oust the Viet Minh from the southern half of Vietnam,

325
00:32:27.860 --> 00:32:33.380
the United States proceeded to break the Geneva Agreement and to replace the French and their

326
00:32:33.380 --> 00:32:40.500
puppet emperor Bao Dai by its own clients, Ngo Dinh Diem and his family, who were installed in

327
00:32:40.500 --> 00:32:44.380
and Dictatorial Rule over South Vietnam.

328
00:32:44.380 --> 00:32:50.100
When Diem became an embarrassment, the CIA engineered a coup to assassinate Diem and

329
00:32:50.100 --> 00:32:54.180
replace him with another dictatorial regime.

330
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To suppress the Viet Cong, the communist-led national independence movement in the South,

331
00:32:59.660 --> 00:33:05.700
the United States rained devastation on South and North Vietnam alike, bombing and murdering

332
00:33:35.700 --> 00:33:41.700
by an Imperial United States to suppress the wishes of the great bulk of the Vietnamese population

333
00:33:41.700 --> 00:33:50.700
and to maintain unpopular client dictators in the southern half of the country by virtual genocide, if necessary.

334
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Americans are not accustomed to applying the term imperialism to the actions of the U.S. government,

335
00:33:56.700 --> 00:33:59.700
but the word is a particularly apt one.

336
00:33:59.700 --> 00:34:07.700
In its broadest sense, imperialism may be defined as aggression by state A against the people of country B,

337
00:34:07.700 --> 00:34:12.700
followed by the subsequent coercive maintenance of such foreign rule.

338
00:34:12.700 --> 00:34:19.700
In our example above, the permanent rule by the Graustark state over formerly Northeastern Belgravia

339
00:34:19.700 --> 00:34:22.700
would be an example of such imperialism.

340
00:34:22.700 --> 00:34:28.700
But imperialism does not have to take the form of direct rule over the foreign population.

341
00:34:28.700 --> 00:34:37.700
In the 20th century, the indirect form of neo-imperialism has increasingly replaced the old-fashioned direct kind.

342
00:34:37.700 --> 00:34:43.700
It is more subtle and less visible, but no less effective a form of imperialism.

343
00:34:43.700 --> 00:34:51.700
In this situation, the imperial state rules the foreign population through its effective control over native client rulers.

344
00:34:51.700 --> 00:34:59.700
This version of modern Western imperialism has been trenchantly defined by the libertarian historian Leonard Ligio.

345
00:34:59.700 --> 00:35:08.700
The imperialist power of the Western countries imposed on the world's peoples a double or reinforced system of exploitation.

346
00:35:08.700 --> 00:35:18.700
Imperialism, by which the power of the Western governments maintains the local ruling class in exchange for the opportunity to superimpose

347
00:35:18.700 --> 00:35:32.380
This view of America as a long-time imperial world power has taken hold among historians

348
00:35:32.380 --> 00:35:37.740
in recent years as the result of compelling and scholarly work by a distinguished group

349
00:35:37.740 --> 00:35:43.900
of New Left revisionist historians inspired by Professor William Appleman Williams.

350
00:35:43.900 --> 00:35:49.480
But this was also the view of conservative as well as classical liberal isolationists

351
00:35:49.480 --> 00:35:56.620
during World War II and in the early days of the Cold War.

352
00:35:56.620 --> 00:35:59.140
Isolationist Criticisms

353
00:35:59.140 --> 00:36:05.080
The last anti-interventionist and anti-imperialist thrust of the old conservative and classical

354
00:36:05.080 --> 00:36:10.100
liberal isolationists came during the Korean War.

355
00:36:10.100 --> 00:36:15.460
of George Morgenstern, chief editorial writer of the Chicago Tribune and author of the first

356
00:36:15.460 --> 00:36:20.740
revisionist book on Pearl Harbor, published an article in the right-wing Washington Weekly

357
00:36:20.740 --> 00:36:26.620
Human Events, which detailed the grisly imperialist record of the United States government from

358
00:36:26.620 --> 00:36:30.460
the Spanish-American War down to Korea.

359
00:36:30.460 --> 00:36:35.880
Morgenstern noted that the exalted nonsense by which President McKinley had justified the

360
00:36:35.880 --> 00:36:42.000
The War Against Spain was familiar to anyone who later attended the evangelical rationalizations

361
00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:48.220
of Wilson for intervening in the European War, of Roosevelt promising the Millennium,

362
00:36:48.220 --> 00:36:55.240
of Eisenhower treasuring the crusade in Europe that somehow went sour, or of Truman, Stevenson,

363
00:36:55.240 --> 00:37:01.320
Paul Douglas, or the New York Times preaching the Holy War in Korea.

364
00:37:01.320 --> 00:37:05.780
In a widely noted speech at the height of the American defeat in North Korea at the

365
00:37:05.780 --> 00:37:12.600
hands of the Chinese in late 1950, conservative isolationist Joseph P. Kennedy called for

366
00:37:12.600 --> 00:37:15.600
U.S. withdrawal from Korea.

367
00:37:15.600 --> 00:37:21.480
Kennedy proclaimed that, I naturally opposed communism, but I said if portions of Europe

368
00:37:21.480 --> 00:37:28.080
or Asia wish to go communistic or even have communism thrust upon them, we cannot stop

369
00:37:28.080 --> 00:37:29.580
it.

370
00:37:29.580 --> 00:37:35.220
The result of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Kennedy charged, was

371
00:37:35.220 --> 00:37:42.500
disaster, a failure to purchase friends and a threat of land war in Europe or Asia.

372
00:37:42.500 --> 00:37:48.720
Kennedy warned that half of this world will never submit to dictation by the other half.

373
00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:54.320
What business is it of ours to support French colonial policy in Indochina or to achieve

374
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:58.620
Mr. Syngman Rhee's concepts of democracy in Korea?

375
00:37:58.620 --> 00:38:05.020
Shall we now send the marines into the mountains of Tibet to keep the Dalai Lama on his throne?

376
00:38:05.020 --> 00:38:11.820
Economically, Kennedy added, we have been burdening ourselves with unnecessary debts as a consequence

377
00:38:11.820 --> 00:38:14.020
of Cold War policy.

378
00:38:14.020 --> 00:38:18.940
If we continue to weaken our economy with lavish spending either on foreign nations

379
00:38:18.940 --> 00:38:26.340
or in foreign wars, we run the danger of precipitating another 1932 and of destroying the very system

380
00:38:26.340 --> 00:38:35.500
Kennedy concluded that the only rational alternative for America is to scrap the Cold War foreign

381
00:38:35.500 --> 00:38:41.800
policy altogether, to get out of Korea and out of Berlin and Europe.

382
00:38:41.800 --> 00:38:47.180
The United States could not possibly contain Russian armies if they chose to march through

383
00:38:47.180 --> 00:38:53.660
Europe, and if Europe should then turn communist, communism may break of itself as a unified

384
00:38:53.660 --> 00:38:54.660
force.

385
00:38:54.660 --> 00:38:59.180
The more people that it will have to govern, the more necessary it becomes for those who

386
00:38:59.180 --> 00:39:03.380
govern to justify themselves to those being governed.

387
00:39:03.380 --> 00:39:09.420
The more peoples that are under its yoke, the greater are the possibilities of revolt.

388
00:39:09.420 --> 00:39:15.180
And here, at a time when Cold Warriors were forecasting a world communist monolith as

389
00:39:15.180 --> 00:39:21.780
an eternal fact of life, Joseph Kennedy cited Marshal Tito as pointing the way for the eventual

390
00:39:21.780 --> 00:39:36.060
Kennedy realized that this policy will, of course, be criticized as appeasement.

391
00:39:36.060 --> 00:39:40.340
But is it appeasement to withdraw from unwise commitments?

392
00:39:40.340 --> 00:39:46.220
If it is wise in our interest not to make commitments that endanger our security, and

393
00:39:46.220 --> 00:39:50.300
this is appeasement, then I am for appeasement.

394
00:39:50.300 --> 00:39:56.540
concluded that the suggestions I make would conserve American lives for American ends,

395
00:39:56.540 --> 00:40:01.620
not waste them in the freezing hills of Korea or on the battle-scarred plains of Western

396
00:40:01.620 --> 00:40:04.420
Germany.

397
00:40:04.420 --> 00:40:09.020
One of the most trenchant and forceful attacks on American foreign policy to emerge from

398
00:40:09.020 --> 00:40:15.420
the Korean War was levelled by the veteran classical liberal journalist Garrett Garrett.

399
00:40:15.420 --> 00:40:22.940
Garrett began his pamphlet, The Rise of Empire, 1952, by declaring, We have crossed the boundary

400
00:40:22.940 --> 00:40:27.020
that lies between republic and empire.

401
00:40:27.020 --> 00:40:33.220
Explicitly linking this thesis with his notable pamphlet of the 1930s, The Revolution Was,

402
00:40:33.220 --> 00:40:38.260
which had denounced the advent of executive and status tyranny within the republican form

403
00:40:38.260 --> 00:40:44.820
under the New Deal, Garrett once more saw a revolution within the form of the old constitutional

404
00:40:44.820 --> 00:40:45.820
Republic.

405
00:40:45.820 --> 00:40:53.180
Garrett, for example, called Truman's intervention in Korea without a declaration of war a usurpation

406
00:40:53.180 --> 00:40:55.980
of congressional power.

407
00:40:55.980 --> 00:41:02.300
In his pamphlet, Garrett adumbrated the criteria, the hallmarks for the existence of empire.

408
00:41:02.300 --> 00:41:07.900
The first is the dominance of the executive power, a dominance reflected in the president's

409
00:41:07.900 --> 00:41:10.980
unauthorized intervention in Korea.

410
00:41:10.980 --> 00:41:15.640
The second is the subordination of domestic to foreign policy.

411
00:41:15.640 --> 00:41:19.440
The third, the ascendancy of the military mind.

412
00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:22.700
The fourth, a system of satellite nations.

413
00:41:22.700 --> 00:41:29.700
And the fifth, a complex of vaunting and fear, a vaunting of unlimited national might combined

414
00:41:29.700 --> 00:41:35.600
with a continuing fear, fear of the enemy, of the barbarian, and of the unreliability

415
00:41:35.600 --> 00:41:38.140
of the satellite allies.

416
00:41:38.140 --> 00:41:44.420
Garrett found each one of these criteria to apply fully to the United States.

417
00:41:44.420 --> 00:41:49.500
Having discovered that the United States had developed all the hallmarks of empire, Garrett

418
00:41:49.500 --> 00:41:56.260
added that the United States, like previous empires, feels itself to be a prisoner of history.

419
00:41:56.260 --> 00:42:02.840
For beyond fear lies collective security and the playing of the supposedly destined American

420
00:42:02.840 --> 00:42:05.780
role upon the world stage.

421
00:42:05.780 --> 00:42:09.820
Garrett concluded, It is our turn.

422
00:42:09.820 --> 00:42:12.220
Our turn to do what?

423
00:42:12.220 --> 00:42:17.340
Our turn to assume the responsibilities of moral leadership in the world.

424
00:42:17.340 --> 00:42:23.300
Our turn to maintain a balance of power against the forces of evil everywhere, in Europe and

425
00:42:23.300 --> 00:42:30.600
Asia and Africa, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, by air and by sea, evil in this case

426
00:42:30.600 --> 00:42:33.660
being the Russian barbarian.

427
00:42:33.660 --> 00:42:36.660
Our turn to keep the peace of the world.

428
00:42:36.660 --> 00:42:39.580
Our turn to save civilization.

429
00:42:39.580 --> 00:42:43.360
Our turn to serve mankind.

430
00:42:43.360 --> 00:42:47.060
But this is the language of empire.

431
00:42:47.060 --> 00:42:51.500
The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization.

432
00:42:51.500 --> 00:42:55.100
Its good intentions were peace, law, and order.

433
00:42:55.100 --> 00:42:58.020
The Spanish Empire added salvation.

434
00:42:58.020 --> 00:43:02.520
The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man's burden.

435
00:43:02.520 --> 00:43:09.040
We have added freedom and democracy, yet the more that may be added to it, the more it

436
00:43:09.040 --> 00:43:16.040
is the same language still, a language of power.

437
00:43:16.040 --> 00:43:19.660
War as the Health of the State

438
00:43:19.660 --> 00:43:24.700
Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy matters and prefer to spend their energies

439
00:43:24.700 --> 00:43:30.600
either on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such domestic concerns as the

440
00:43:30.600 --> 00:43:35.800
and the free market or privatizing postal service or garbage disposal.

441
00:43:35.800 --> 00:43:42.920
Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians.

442
00:43:42.920 --> 00:43:45.400
There are two important reasons.

443
00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:49.640
One has become a cliché but is all too true nevertheless.

444
00:43:49.640 --> 00:43:54.880
The overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust.

445
00:43:54.880 --> 00:44:00.100
To all the longstanding reasons moral and economic against an interventionist foreign

446
00:44:00.100 --> 00:44:06.700
and Policy has now been added the imminent, ever-present threat of world destruction.

447
00:44:06.700 --> 00:44:12.300
If the world should be destroyed, all the other problems and all the other isms—socialism,

448
00:44:12.300 --> 00:44:18.740
capitalism, liberalism, or libertarianism—would be of no importance whatsoever, hence the

449
00:44:18.740 --> 00:44:24.620
prime importance of a peaceful foreign policy and of ending the nuclear threat.

450
00:44:24.620 --> 00:44:30.100
The other reason is that apart from the nuclear menace, war, in the words of the libertarian

451
00:44:30.100 --> 00:44:33.960
Randolph Bourne, is the health of the state.

452
00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:40.300
War has always been the occasion of a great and usually permanent acceleration and intensification

453
00:44:40.300 --> 00:44:43.860
of state power over society.

454
00:44:43.860 --> 00:44:49.280
War is the great excuse for mobilizing all the energies and resources of the nation in

455
00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:55.720
in the name of patriotic rhetoric under the aegis and dictation of the state apparatus.

456
00:44:55.720 --> 00:45:02.320
It is in war that the state really comes into its own, swelling in power, in number, in

457
00:45:02.320 --> 00:45:07.980
pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

458
00:45:07.980 --> 00:45:13.680
Society becomes a herd seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing

459
00:45:13.680 --> 00:45:20.680
It is particularly ironic that war always enables the state to rally the energies of its citizens under the slogan of helping it to defend the country against some bestial outside menace.

460
00:45:43.680 --> 00:46:13.680
for the root myth that enables the state to wax fat off war is the canard that war is a defense by the state of its subjects the facts however are precisely the reverse for if war is the health of the state it is also its greatest danger a state can only die by defeat in war or by revolution in war therefore the state frantically mobilizes its subjects

461
00:46:13.680 --> 00:46:21.360
to fight for it against another state under the pretext that it is fighting to defend them.

462
00:46:22.800 --> 00:46:28.000
In the history of the United States, war has generally been the main occasion for the often

463
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:35.040
permanent intensification of the power of the state over society. In the War of 1812 against

464
00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:41.120
Great Britain, as we have indicated above, the modern inflationary fractional reserve banking

465
00:46:41.120 --> 00:46:47.140
Banking System first came into being on a large scale, as did protective tariffs, internal

466
00:46:47.140 --> 00:46:51.320
federal taxation, and a standing army and navy.

467
00:46:51.320 --> 00:46:56.960
And a direct consequence of the wartime inflation was the reestablishment of a central bank,

468
00:46:56.960 --> 00:47:00.480
the second bank of the United States.

469
00:47:00.480 --> 00:47:05.700
Virtually all of these statist policies and institutions continued permanently after the

470
00:47:05.700 --> 00:47:07.680
war was over.

471
00:47:07.680 --> 00:47:14.340
The Civil War and its virtual one-party system led to the permanent establishment of a neo-mercantilist

472
00:47:14.340 --> 00:47:19.580
policy of big government and the subsidizing of various big business interests through

473
00:47:19.580 --> 00:47:26.900
protective tariffs, huge land grants and other subsidies to railroads, federal excise taxation

474
00:47:26.900 --> 00:47:30.200
and a federally controlled banking system.

475
00:47:30.200 --> 00:47:35.860
It also brought the first imposition of federal conscription and an income tax, setting dangerous

476
00:47:35.860 --> 00:47:50.860
World War I brought the decisive and fateful turn from a relatively free and laissez-faire economy to the present system of corporate state monopoly at home and permanent global intervention abroad.

477
00:47:50.860 --> 00:47:57.860
The collectivist economic mobilization during the war, headed by War Industries Board Chairman Bernard Baruch,

478
00:47:57.860 --> 00:48:05.860
fulfilled the emerging dream of big business leaders and progressive intellectuals for a cartelized and monopolized economy,

479
00:48:05.860 --> 00:48:10.860
planned by the federal government in cozy collaboration with big business leadership.

480
00:48:10.860 --> 00:48:17.860
And it was precisely this wartime collectivism that nurtured and developed a nationwide labor movement

481
00:48:17.860 --> 00:48:37.860
This temporary collectivism, furthermore, served as a permanent beacon and model for big business leaders and corporatist politicians as the kind of permanent peacetime economy that they would like to impose on the United States.

482
00:48:37.860 --> 00:48:45.020
As Food Czar, Secretary of Commerce, and later as President, Herbert C. Hoover helped bring

483
00:48:45.020 --> 00:48:49.820
this continuing monopolized statist economy into being.

484
00:48:49.820 --> 00:48:56.020
And the vision was fulfilled in a recrudescence of wartime agencies and even wartime personnel

485
00:48:56.020 --> 00:48:59.420
by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

486
00:48:59.420 --> 00:49:05.080
World War I also brought a permanent Wilsonian global intervention abroad, the fastening

487
00:49:05.080 --> 00:49:11.680
of the Newly Imposed Federal Reserve System and a Permanent Income Tax on Society, High

488
00:49:11.680 --> 00:49:17.860
Federal Budgets, Massive Conscription and Intimate Connections between Economic Boom,

489
00:49:17.860 --> 00:49:22.800
War Contracts and Loans to Western Nations.

490
00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:28.000
World War II was the culmination and fulfillment of all these trends.

491
00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:33.280
Franklin D. Roosevelt finally fastened upon American life the heady promise of the Wilsonian

492
00:49:33.280 --> 00:49:38.980
and Domestic and Foreign Program, permanent partnership of big government, big business

493
00:49:38.980 --> 00:49:46.660
and big unions, a continuing and ever-expanding military-industrial complex, conscription,

494
00:49:46.660 --> 00:49:52.660
continuing and accelerating inflation, and an endless and costly role as counter-revolutionary

495
00:49:52.660 --> 00:49:56.060
policemen for the entire world.

496
00:49:56.060 --> 00:50:01.980
The Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter world, and there

497
00:50:01.980 --> 00:50:08.260
Where is little substantive difference among any of these administrations is corporate liberalism,

498
00:50:08.260 --> 00:50:11.580
the corporate state fulfilled.

499
00:50:11.580 --> 00:50:16.660
It is particularly ironic that conservatives, at least in rhetoric supporters of a free

500
00:50:16.660 --> 00:50:22.740
market economy, should be so complacent and even admiring of our vast military-industrial

501
00:50:22.740 --> 00:50:24.340
complex.

502
00:50:24.340 --> 00:50:29.660
There is no greater single distortion of the free market in present-day America.

503
00:50:29.660 --> 00:50:34.780
The bulk of our scientists and engineers has been diverted from basic research for civilian

504
00:50:34.780 --> 00:50:41.140
ends, from increasing productivity and the standard of living of consumers, into wasteful,

505
00:50:41.140 --> 00:50:46.160
inefficient and non-productive military and space boondoggles.

506
00:50:46.160 --> 00:50:51.300
These boondoggles are every bit as wasteful, but infinitely more destructive than the vast

507
00:50:51.300 --> 00:50:54.220
pyramid building of the pharaoh.

508
00:50:54.220 --> 00:50:59.780
It is no accident that Lord Cain's economics have proved to be the economics par excellence

509
00:50:59.780 --> 00:51:02.300
of the corporate liberal state.

510
00:51:02.300 --> 00:51:08.140
For Keynesian economists place equal approval upon all forms of government spending, whether

511
00:51:08.140 --> 00:51:11.360
on pyramids, missiles or steel plants.

512
00:51:11.360 --> 00:51:17.100
By definition, all of these expenditures swell the gross national product, regardless of

513
00:51:17.100 --> 00:51:19.700
how wasteful they may be.

514
00:51:19.700 --> 00:51:24.860
It is only recently that many liberals have begun to awaken to the evils of the waste,

515
00:51:24.860 --> 00:51:31.340
inflation and militarism that Keynesian corporate liberalism has brought to America.

516
00:51:31.340 --> 00:51:37.220
As the scope of government spending, military and civilian alike, has widened, science and

517
00:51:37.220 --> 00:51:43.060
industry have been skewed more and more into unproductive goals and highly inefficient

518
00:51:43.060 --> 00:51:44.780
processes.

519
00:51:44.780 --> 00:51:50.580
The goal of satisfying consumers as efficiently as possible has been increasingly replaced

520
00:51:50.580 --> 00:51:58.060
by the currying of favors by government contractors, often in the form of highly wasteful cost-plus

521
00:51:58.060 --> 00:51:59.060
contracts.

522
00:51:59.060 --> 00:52:06.060
Politics, in field after field, has replaced economics in guiding the activities of industry.

523
00:52:06.060 --> 00:52:11.980
Furthermore, as entire industries and regions of the country have come to depend upon government

524
00:52:11.980 --> 00:52:18.780
and Military Contracts, a huge vested interest has been created in continuing the programs,

525
00:52:18.780 --> 00:52:25.180
heedless of whether they retain even the most threadbare excuse of military necessity.

526
00:52:25.180 --> 00:52:31.020
Our economic prosperity has been made to depend on continuing the narcotic of unproductive

527
00:52:31.020 --> 00:52:35.140
and anti-productive government spending.

528
00:52:35.140 --> 00:52:40.420
One of the most perceptive and prophetic critics of America's entry into World War II was

529
00:52:40.420 --> 00:52:47.160
was the classical liberal writer John T. Flynn. In his As We Go Marching, written in the midst

530
00:52:47.160 --> 00:52:53.380
of the war he had tried so hard to forestall, Flynn charged that the New Deal, culminating

531
00:52:53.380 --> 00:52:59.080
in its wartime embodiment, had finally established the corporate state that important elements

532
00:52:59.080 --> 00:53:05.320
of big business had been seeking since the turn of the 20th century. The general idea,

533
00:53:05.320 --> 00:53:11.680
wrote was to reorder the society by making it a planned and coerced economy instead of

534
00:53:11.680 --> 00:53:18.120
a free one, in which business would be brought together into great guilds or an immense corporative

535
00:53:18.120 --> 00:53:23.800
structure, combining the elements of self-rule and government supervision with a national

536
00:53:23.800 --> 00:53:28.320
economic policing system to enforce these decrees.

537
00:53:28.320 --> 00:53:34.600
This after all is not so very far from what business had been talking about.

538
00:53:34.600 --> 00:53:39.520
The New Deal had first attempted to create such a new society in the National Recovery

539
00:53:39.520 --> 00:53:45.960
Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, mighty engines of regimentation

540
00:53:45.960 --> 00:53:49.320
hailed by labor and business alike.

541
00:53:49.320 --> 00:53:55.760
Now the advent of World War II had reestablished this collectivist program, an economy supported

542
00:53:55.760 --> 00:54:02.600
by great streams of debt under complete control, with nearly all the planning agencies functioning

543
00:54:02.600 --> 00:54:08.480
with almost totalitarian power under a vast bureaucracy.

544
00:54:08.480 --> 00:54:13.960
After the war, Flynn prophesied, the New Deal would attempt to expand this system permanently

545
00:54:13.960 --> 00:54:16.560
into international affairs.

546
00:54:16.560 --> 00:54:21.960
He wisely predicted that the great emphasis of vast governmental spending after the war

547
00:54:21.960 --> 00:54:27.080
would continue to be military, since this is the one form of government spending to

548
00:54:27.080 --> 00:54:32.240
to which conservatives would never object, and which workers would also welcome for its

549
00:54:32.240 --> 00:54:34.200
creation of jobs.

550
00:54:34.200 --> 00:54:40.600
Thus, militarism is the one great glamorous public works project upon which a variety

551
00:54:40.600 --> 00:54:45.920
of elements in the community can be brought into agreement.

552
00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:50.820
Flynn predicted that America's post-war policy would be internationalist in the sense

553
00:54:50.820 --> 00:54:54.120
of being imperialist.

554
00:54:54.120 --> 00:54:58.960
Militaryism is, of course, international in the sense that war is international, and

555
00:54:58.960 --> 00:55:02.400
it will follow from the policy of militarism.

556
00:55:02.400 --> 00:55:05.120
We will do what other countries have done.

557
00:55:05.120 --> 00:55:10.640
We will keep alive the fears of our people of the aggressive ambitions of other countries,

558
00:55:10.640 --> 00:55:17.240
and we will ourselves embark upon imperialistic enterprises of our own.

559
00:55:17.240 --> 00:55:23.080
Imperialism will ensure for the United States the existence of perpetual enemies, of waging

560
00:55:23.080 --> 00:55:29.080
What Charles A. Beard was later to call perpetual war for perpetual peace.

561
00:55:29.080 --> 00:55:35.080
For, Flynn pointed out, we have managed to acquire bases all over the world.

562
00:55:35.080 --> 00:55:39.880
There is no part of the world where trouble can break out, where we cannot claim that

563
00:55:39.880 --> 00:55:41.720
our interests are menaced.

564
00:55:41.720 --> 00:55:46.940
Thus menaced, there must remain, when the war is over, a continuing argument in the

565
00:55:46.940 --> 00:55:52.760
hands of the imperialists for a vast naval establishment and a huge army ready to attack

566
00:55:52.760 --> 00:56:15.760
One of the most moving portrayals of the change in American life wrought by World War II was written by John Dos Passos, a lifelong radical and individualist who was pushed from extreme left to extreme right by the march of the New Deal.

567
00:56:15.760 --> 00:56:21.760
Dos Passos expressed his bitterness in his post-war novel, The Grand Design.

568
00:56:21.760 --> 00:56:33.760
At home, we organized blood banks and civilian defense and imitated the rest of the world by setting up concentration camps, only we called them relocation centers,

569
00:56:33.760 --> 00:56:39.760
and stuffing into them American citizens of Japanese ancestry without benefit of habeas corpus.

570
00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:45.760
The President of the United States talked the sincere Democrat, and so did the members of Congress.

571
00:56:45.760 --> 00:56:49.760
In the administration, there were devout believers in civil liberty.

572
00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:55.760
Now we're busy fighting a war. We'll deploy all four freedoms later on, they said.

573
00:56:55.760 --> 00:56:58.760
War is a time of Caesars.

574
00:56:58.760 --> 00:57:08.760
And the American people were supposed to say, thank you, for the century of the common man turned over for a relocation behind barbed wire, so help him God.

575
00:57:08.760 --> 00:57:29.760
We learned. There are things we learned to do. But we have not learned, in spite of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the great debates at Richmond and Philadelphia, how to put power over the lives of men into the hands of one man and to make him use it wisely.

576
00:57:29.760 --> 00:57:32.760
Soviet Foreign Policy

577
00:57:32.760 --> 00:57:37.760
In a previous chapter, we have already dealt with the problem of national defense,

578
00:57:37.760 --> 00:57:45.760
abstracting from the question of whether the Russians are really hell-bent upon a military attack upon the United States.

579
00:57:45.760 --> 00:57:51.760
Since World War II, American military and foreign policy, at least rhetorically,

580
00:57:51.760 --> 00:57:56.760
has been based upon the assumption of a looming threat of Russian attack,

581
00:57:56.760 --> 00:58:02.920
Act, an assumption that has managed to gain public approval for global American intervention

582
00:58:02.920 --> 00:58:07.440
and for scores of billions in military expenditures.

583
00:58:07.440 --> 00:58:12.200
But how realistic, how well-grounded is this assumption?

584
00:58:12.200 --> 00:58:17.960
First, there is no doubt that the Soviets, along with all other Marxist-Leninists, would

585
00:58:17.960 --> 00:58:23.600
like to replace all existing social systems by communist regimes.

586
00:58:23.600 --> 00:58:29.760
But such a sentiment, of course, scarcely implies any sort of realistic threat of attack, just

587
00:58:29.760 --> 00:58:35.680
as an ill wish in private life can hardly be grounds for realistic expectation of imminent

588
00:58:35.680 --> 00:58:37.480
aggression.

589
00:58:37.480 --> 00:58:44.800
On the contrary, Marxism-Leninism itself believes that a victory of communism is inevitable,

590
00:58:44.800 --> 00:58:50.800
not on the wings of outside force, but rather from accumulating tensions and contradictions

591
00:58:50.800 --> 00:58:53.440
within each society.

592
00:58:53.440 --> 00:59:00.760
So Marxism-Leninism considers internal revolution, or in the current Euro-Communist version democratic

593
00:59:00.760 --> 00:59:05.200
change, for installing communism to be inevitable.

594
00:59:05.200 --> 00:59:12.720
At the same time, it holds any coercive external imposition of communism to be at best suspect,

595
00:59:12.720 --> 00:59:19.220
and at worst disruptive and counterproductive of genuine organic social change.

596
00:59:19.220 --> 00:59:25.460
Any idea of exporting communism to other countries on the backs of the Soviet military is totally

597
00:59:25.460 --> 00:59:29.660
contradictory to Marxist-Leninist theory.

598
00:59:29.660 --> 00:59:34.500
We are not saying, of course, that Soviet leaders will never do anything contrary to

599
00:59:34.500 --> 00:59:40.540
Marxist-Leninist theory, but to the extent that they act as ordinary rulers of a strong

600
00:59:40.540 --> 00:59:46.500
Russian nation-state, the case for an imminent Soviet threat to the United States is gravely

601
00:59:46.500 --> 00:59:47.900
weakened.

602
00:59:47.900 --> 00:59:54.420
For the sole alleged basis of such a threat, as conjured up by our cold warriors, is the

603
00:59:54.420 --> 01:00:00.340
Soviet Union's alleged devotion to Marxist-Leninist theory, and to its ultimate goal of world

604
01:00:00.340 --> 01:00:02.640
communist triumph.

605
01:00:02.640 --> 01:00:07.820
If the Soviet rulers were simply to act as Russian dictators, consulting only their own

606
01:00:07.820 --> 01:00:14.280
nation-state interests, then the entire basis for treating the Soviets as a uniquely diabolic

607
01:00:14.280 --> 01:00:34.280
When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917, they had given little thought to a future Soviet foreign policy, for they were convinced that communist revolution would soon follow in the advanced industrial countries of Western Europe.

608
01:00:34.280 --> 01:00:46.280
When such hopes were dashed after the end of World War I, Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks adopted the theory of peaceful coexistence as the basic foreign policy for a communist state.

609
01:00:46.280 --> 01:00:58.280
The idea was this. As the first successful communist movement, Soviet Russia would serve as a beacon for and supporter of other communist parties throughout the world.

610
01:00:58.280 --> 01:01:11.280
But, the Soviet state qua-state would devote itself to peaceful relations with all other countries, and would not attempt to export communism through interstate warfare.

611
01:01:11.280 --> 01:01:25.280
The idea here was not just to follow Marxist-Leninist theory, but was the highly practical course of holding the survival of the existing communist state as the foremost goal of foreign policy.

612
01:01:25.280 --> 01:01:31.280
That is, never to endanger the Soviet state by courting interstate warfare.

613
01:01:31.280 --> 01:01:37.780
Other countries would be expected to become communist by their own internal processes.

614
01:01:37.780 --> 01:01:43.780
Thus, fortuitously, from a mixture of theoretical and practical grounds of their own,

615
01:01:43.780 --> 01:01:51.280
the Soviets arrived early at what libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy.

616
01:01:51.280 --> 01:01:57.120
As time went on, furthermore, this policy was reinforced by a conservatism that comes

617
01:01:57.120 --> 01:02:03.160
upon all movements after they have acquired and retained power for any length of time,

618
01:02:03.160 --> 01:02:08.520
in which the interests of keeping power over one's nation-state begins to take more and

619
01:02:08.520 --> 01:02:13.680
more precedence over the initial idea of world revolution.

620
01:02:13.680 --> 01:02:19.240
This increasing conservatism under Stalin and his successors strengthened and reinforced

621
01:02:19.240 --> 01:02:24.160
with the non-aggressive, peaceful coexistence policy.

622
01:02:24.160 --> 01:02:29.780
The Bolsheviks indeed began their success story by being literally the only political

623
01:02:29.780 --> 01:02:36.300
party in Russia to clamor from the beginning of World War I for an immediate Russian pull-out

624
01:02:36.300 --> 01:02:37.720
from the war.

625
01:02:37.720 --> 01:02:44.080
Indeed, they went further and courted enormous unpopularity among the public by calling for

626
01:02:44.080 --> 01:02:49.600
for the Defeat of Their Own Government, Revolutionary Defeatism.

627
01:02:49.600 --> 01:02:54.980
When Russia began to suffer enormous losses, accompanied by massive military desertions

628
01:02:54.980 --> 01:03:01.760
from the front, and the war became extremely unpopular, the Bolsheviks, guided by Lenin,

629
01:03:01.760 --> 01:03:07.920
continued to be the only party to call for an immediate end to the war, the other parties

630
01:03:07.920 --> 01:03:11.480
still vowing to fight the Germans to the end.

631
01:03:11.480 --> 01:03:16.880
When the Bolsheviks took power, Lenin, over the hysterical opposition of even the majority

632
01:03:16.880 --> 01:03:22.760
of the Bolshevik Central Committee itself, insisted on concluding the appeasement peace

633
01:03:22.760 --> 01:03:27.480
of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.

634
01:03:27.480 --> 01:03:32.980
Here Lenin succeeded in taking Russia out of the war, even at the price of granting

635
01:03:32.980 --> 01:03:39.080
to the victorious German army all the parts of the Russian Empire which it then occupied,

636
01:03:39.080 --> 01:03:44.760
Including White Russia and the Ukraine Thus, Lenin and the Bolsheviks began their

637
01:03:44.760 --> 01:03:52.520
reign by being not simply a peace party, but virtually a peace-at-any-price party.

638
01:03:52.520 --> 01:03:58.280
After World War I and Germany's defeat, the new Polish state attacked Russia and succeeded

639
01:03:58.280 --> 01:04:03.600
in grabbing for itself a large chunk of White Russia and the Ukraine.

640
01:04:03.600 --> 01:04:08.360
Taking advantage of the turmoil and of the civil war within Russia at the end of the

641
01:04:08.360 --> 01:04:14.740
For, various other national groups, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, decided to

642
01:04:14.740 --> 01:04:21.000
break away from the pre-World War I Russian Empire and declare national independence.

643
01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:27.800
Now, while Leninism pays lip service to national self-determination, to Soviet rulers from

644
01:04:27.800 --> 01:04:33.060
the very beginning, it was clear that the boundaries of the old Russian state were supposed

645
01:04:33.060 --> 01:04:35.240
to remain intact.

646
01:04:35.240 --> 01:04:41.040
The Red Army reconquered the Ukraine, not only from the whites, but also from the Ukrainian

647
01:04:41.040 --> 01:04:48.300
nationalists and from the indigenously Ukrainian anarchist army of Nestor Makno as well.

648
01:04:48.300 --> 01:04:55.300
For the rest, it was clear that Russia, like Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, was a revisionist

649
01:04:55.300 --> 01:04:59.960
country vis-à-vis the post-war settlement at Versailles.

650
01:04:59.960 --> 01:05:05.640
That is, the lodestar of both Russian and German foreign policy was to recapture their

651
01:05:05.640 --> 01:05:13.520
pre-World War I borders, what they both considered the true borders of their respective states.

652
01:05:13.520 --> 01:05:18.720
It should be noted that every political party or tendency in Russia and Germany, whether

653
01:05:18.720 --> 01:05:24.720
ruling the state or in opposition, agreed with this aim of full restoration of national

654
01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:26.620
territory.

655
01:05:26.620 --> 01:05:32.220
But it should be emphasized, while Germany under Hitler took strong measures to recapture

656
01:05:32.220 --> 01:05:39.600
the lost lands, the cautious and conservative Soviet rulers did absolutely nothing.

657
01:05:39.600 --> 01:05:45.420
Only after the Stalin-Hitler Pact and the German conquest of Poland did the Soviets,

658
01:05:45.420 --> 01:05:50.540
now facing no danger in doing so, recapture their lost territories.

659
01:05:50.540 --> 01:06:01.540
Specifically, the Russians repossessed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as the old Russian lands of White Russia and the Ukraine that had been eastern Poland.

660
01:06:01.540 --> 01:06:04.540
And they were able to do so without a fight.

661
01:06:04.540 --> 01:06:10.540
The old pre-World War I Russia had now been restored, with the exception of Finland.

662
01:06:10.540 --> 01:06:13.540
But Finland was prepared to fight.

663
01:06:13.540 --> 01:06:23.540
Here, the Russians demanded not the reincorporation of Finland as a whole, but only of parts of the Karelian Isthmus, which were ethnically Russian.

664
01:06:23.540 --> 01:06:36.540
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.

665
01:06:36.540 --> 01:06:58.540
On June 22, 1941, Germany, triumphant over everyone but England in the West, launched a sudden, massive and unprovoked assault on Soviet Russia, an act of aggression aided and abetted by the other pro-German states in Eastern Europe, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Finland.

666
01:06:58.540 --> 01:07:06.540
This German and Allied invasion of Russia soon became one of the pivotal facts in the history of Europe since that date.

667
01:07:06.540 --> 01:07:19.540
So unprepared was Stalin for the assault, so trusting was he in the rationality of the German-Russian accord for peace in Eastern Europe that he had allowed the Russian army to fall into disrepair.

668
01:07:19.540 --> 01:07:27.020
So unwarlike was Stalin, in fact, that Germany was almost able to conquer Russia in the face

669
01:07:27.020 --> 01:07:29.260
of enormous odds.

670
01:07:29.260 --> 01:07:34.260
Since Germany otherwise would have been able to retain control of Europe indefinitely,

671
01:07:34.260 --> 01:07:40.400
it was Hitler who was led by the siren call of anti-communist ideology to throw away a

672
01:07:40.400 --> 01:07:47.820
rational and prudent course and launch what was to be the beginning of his ultimate defeat.

673
01:07:47.820 --> 01:07:53.200
The mythology of the Cold Warriors often concedes that the Soviets were not internationally

674
01:07:53.200 --> 01:07:56.400
aggressive until World War II.

675
01:07:56.400 --> 01:08:02.040
Indeed, they are compelled to assert this point, since most Cold Warriors heartily approve

676
01:08:02.040 --> 01:08:07.820
the World War II alliance of the United States with Russia against Germany.

677
01:08:07.820 --> 01:08:13.580
It was during and immediately after the war, they assert, that Russia became expansionist

678
01:08:13.580 --> 01:08:17.280
and drove its way into Eastern Europe.

679
01:08:17.280 --> 01:08:22.560
What this charge overlooks is the central fact of the German and associated assault upon

680
01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:25.840
Russia in June 1941.

681
01:08:25.840 --> 01:08:30.320
There is no doubt that Germany and her allies launched this war.

682
01:08:30.320 --> 01:08:35.460
Hence, in order to defeat the invaders, it was obviously necessary for the Russians to

683
01:08:35.460 --> 01:08:40.540
roll back the invading armies and conquer Germany and the other warring countries of

684
01:08:40.540 --> 01:08:42.420
Eastern Europe.

685
01:08:42.420 --> 01:08:47.340
It is easier to make a case for the United States being expansionist for conquering and

686
01:08:47.340 --> 01:08:52.180
occupying Italy and parts of Germany than it is for Russia's actions.

687
01:08:52.180 --> 01:08:58.100
After all, the United States was never directly attacked by the Germans.

688
01:08:58.100 --> 01:09:03.660
During World War II, the United States, Britain and Russia, the three major allies, had agreed

689
01:09:03.660 --> 01:09:09.800
on joint three-power military occupation of all the conquered territories.

690
01:09:09.800 --> 01:09:14.760
The United States was the first to break the agreement during the war by allowing Russia

691
01:09:14.760 --> 01:09:19.320
no role whatever in the military occupation of Italy.

692
01:09:19.320 --> 01:09:24.160
Despite this serious breach of agreement, Stalin displayed his consistent preference

693
01:09:24.160 --> 01:09:29.400
for the conservative interests of the Russian nation-state over cleaving to revolutionary

694
01:09:29.400 --> 01:09:35.360
ideology by repeatedly betraying indigenous communist movements.

695
01:09:35.360 --> 01:09:40.840
In order to preserve peaceful relations between Russia and the West, Stalin consistently tried

696
01:09:40.840 --> 01:09:45.100
to hold back the success of various communist movements.

697
01:09:45.100 --> 01:09:50.160
He was successful in France and Italy, where communist partisan groups might easily have

698
01:09:50.160 --> 01:09:54.160
seized power in the wake of the German military retreat.

699
01:09:54.160 --> 01:10:00.440
But Stalin ordered them not to do so, and instead persuaded them to join coalition regimes

700
01:10:00.440 --> 01:10:03.760
headed by anti-communist parties.

701
01:10:03.760 --> 01:10:08.640
In both countries, the communists were soon ousted from the coalition.

702
01:10:08.640 --> 01:10:14.900
In Greece, where the communist partisans almost did seize power, Stalin irretrievably weakened

703
01:10:14.900 --> 01:10:21.840
them by abandoning them and urging them to turn over power to newly invading British troops.

704
01:10:21.840 --> 01:10:26.880
In other countries, particularly ones where communist partisan groups were strong, the

705
01:10:26.880 --> 01:10:31.180
communists flatly refused Stalin's requests.

706
01:10:31.180 --> 01:10:37.300
In Yugoslavia, the victorious Tito refused Stalin's demand that Tito subordinate himself

707
01:10:37.300 --> 01:10:42.220
to the anti-communist Mihailović in a governing coalition.

708
01:10:42.220 --> 01:10:48.720
Mao refused a similar Stalin demand that he subordinate himself to Chiang Kai-shek.

709
01:10:48.720 --> 01:10:53.540
There is no doubt that these rejections were the beginning of the later extraordinarily

710
01:10:53.540 --> 01:10:58.460
important schisms within the world communist movement.

711
01:10:58.460 --> 01:11:04.220
Russia, therefore, governed Eastern Europe as military occupier after winning a war launched

712
01:11:04.220 --> 01:11:06.100
against her.

713
01:11:06.100 --> 01:11:10.900
Russia's initial goal was not to communize Eastern Europe on the backs of the Soviet

714
01:11:10.900 --> 01:11:12.060
Army.

715
01:11:12.060 --> 01:11:17.340
Her goal was to gain assurances that Eastern Europe would not be the broad highway for

716
01:11:17.340 --> 01:11:23.660
an assault on Russia, as it had been three times in half a century, the last time in

717
01:11:23.660 --> 01:11:28.420
a war in which over 20 million Russians had been slaughtered.

718
01:11:28.420 --> 01:11:34.620
In short, Russia wanted countries on her border which would not be anti-communist in a military

719
01:11:34.620 --> 01:11:40.660
sense, and which would not be used as a springboard for another invasion.

720
01:11:40.660 --> 01:11:45.820
Political conditions in Eastern Europe were such that only in more modernized Finland did

721
01:11:45.820 --> 01:11:52.460
non-communist politicians exist whom Russia could trust to pursue a peaceful line in foreign

722
01:11:52.460 --> 01:11:53.900
affairs.

723
01:11:53.900 --> 01:11:59.400
And in Finland, this situation was the work of one far-seeing statesman, the agrarian

724
01:11:59.400 --> 01:12:02.320
leader Julio Pasikivi.

725
01:12:02.320 --> 01:12:08.420
It was because Finland then and since has firmly followed the Pasikivi line that Russia

726
01:12:08.420 --> 01:12:13.900
was willing to pull its troops out of Finland and not to insist on the communization of

727
01:12:13.900 --> 01:12:21.180
that country, even though it had fought two wars with Finland in the previous six years.

728
01:12:21.180 --> 01:12:26.020
Even in the other Eastern European countries, Russia clung to coalition governments for

729
01:12:26.020 --> 01:12:33.020
several years after the war and only fully communized them in 1948, after three years

730
01:12:33.020 --> 01:12:39.740
of unrelenting American Cold War pressure to try to oust Russia from these countries.

731
01:12:39.740 --> 01:12:47.020
In other areas, Russia readily pulled its troops out of Austria and out of Azerbaijan.

732
01:12:47.020 --> 01:12:52.180
The Cold Warriors find it difficult to explain Russian actions in Finland.

733
01:12:52.180 --> 01:12:59.020
If Russia is always hell-bent to impose communist rule wherever it can, why the soft line on

734
01:12:59.020 --> 01:13:00.340
Finland?

735
01:13:00.340 --> 01:13:06.060
The only plausible explanation is that its motivation is security for the Russian nation-state

736
01:13:06.060 --> 01:13:11.700
against attack, with the success of world communism playing a very minor role in its

737
01:13:11.700 --> 01:13:14.220
scale of priorities.

738
01:13:14.220 --> 01:13:19.540
In fact, the Cold Warriors have never been able either to explain or absorb the fact

739
01:13:19.540 --> 01:13:23.140
of deep schisms in the world communist movement.

740
01:13:23.140 --> 01:13:29.000
For if all communists are governed by a common ideology, then every communist everywhere

741
01:13:29.000 --> 01:13:34.740
should be part of one unified monolith, and one which, given the early success of the

742
01:13:34.740 --> 01:13:39.820
Bolsheviks, would make them subordinates or agents of Moscow.

743
01:13:39.820 --> 01:13:45.440
If communists are mainly motivated by their bond of Marxism-Leninism, how come the deep

744
01:13:45.440 --> 01:13:51.700
China-Russia split, in which Russia, for example, keeps one million troops at the ready on the

745
01:13:51.700 --> 01:13:54.280
China-Russia frontier?

746
01:13:54.280 --> 01:13:59.140
How come the enmity between the Yugoslav and Albanian communist states?

747
01:13:59.140 --> 01:14:05.220
How come the actual military conflict between the Cambodian and Vietnamese communists?

748
01:14:05.220 --> 01:14:10.840
The answer, of course, is that once a revolutionary movement seizes state power, it begins very

749
01:14:10.840 --> 01:14:16.740
quickly to take on the attributes of a ruling class with a class interest in retaining state

750
01:14:16.740 --> 01:14:18.140
power.

751
01:14:18.140 --> 01:14:23.860
The world revolution begins to pale in their outlook to insignificance, and since state

752
01:14:23.860 --> 01:14:29.880
elites can and do have conflicting interests in power and wealth, it is not surprising

753
01:14:29.880 --> 01:14:34.860
that inter-communist conflicts have become endemic.

754
01:14:34.860 --> 01:14:40.380
Since their victory over German and associated military aggression in World War II, the Soviets

755
01:14:40.380 --> 01:14:44.500
have continued to be conservative in their military policy.

756
01:14:44.500 --> 01:14:50.460
Their only use of troops has been to defend their territory in the communist bloc rather

757
01:14:50.460 --> 01:14:52.460
than to extend it further.

758
01:14:52.460 --> 01:15:00.580
Thus, when Hungary threatened to leave the Soviet bloc in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968,

759
01:15:00.580 --> 01:15:06.900
The Soviets intervened with troops, reprehensibly to be sure, but still acting in a conservative

760
01:15:06.900 --> 01:15:11.100
and defensive rather than expansionist manner.

761
01:15:11.100 --> 01:15:16.500
The Soviets apparently gave considerable thought to invading Yugoslavia when Tito took it out

762
01:15:16.500 --> 01:15:21.580
of the Soviet bloc, but were deterred by the formidable qualities for guerrilla fighting

763
01:15:21.580 --> 01:15:24.740
of the Yugoslav army.

764
01:15:24.740 --> 01:15:32.100
In no case has Russia used troops to extend its block or to conquer more territories.

765
01:15:32.100 --> 01:15:36.940
Professor Stephen F. Cohen, Director of the Program in Russian Studies at Princeton, has

766
01:15:36.940 --> 01:15:42.700
recently delineated the nature of Soviet conservatism in foreign affairs.

767
01:15:42.700 --> 01:15:48.100
That a system born in revolution and still professing revolutionary ideas should have

768
01:15:48.100 --> 01:15:53.200
become one of the most conservative in the world may seem preposterous.

769
01:15:53.200 --> 01:15:59.360
And all those factors variously said to be most important in Soviet politics have contributed

770
01:15:59.360 --> 01:16:01.300
to this conservatism.

771
01:16:01.300 --> 01:16:07.280
The bureaucratic tradition of Russian government before the revolution, the subsequent bureaucratization

772
01:16:07.280 --> 01:16:13.540
of Soviet life which proliferated conservative norms and created an entrenched class of zealous

773
01:16:13.540 --> 01:16:19.900
defenders of bureaucratic privilege, the geriatric nature of the present day elite, and even

774
01:16:19.900 --> 01:16:24.980
and the official ideology whose thrust turned many years ago from the creation of a new

775
01:16:24.980 --> 01:16:29.220
social order to extolling the existing one.

776
01:16:29.220 --> 01:16:34.420
In other words, the main thrust of Soviet conservatism today is to preserve what it

777
01:16:34.420 --> 01:16:39.300
already has at home and abroad, not to jeopardize it.

778
01:16:39.300 --> 01:16:44.660
A conservative government is, of course, capable of dangerous militaristic actions, as we saw

779
01:16:44.660 --> 01:16:46.780
in Czechoslovakia.

780
01:16:46.780 --> 01:16:53.380
But these are acts of imperial protectionism, a kind of defensive militarism, not a revolutionary

781
01:16:53.380 --> 01:16:55.580
or aggrandizing one.

782
01:16:55.580 --> 01:17:01.180
It is certainly true that for most Soviet leaders, as presumably for most American leaders,

783
01:17:01.180 --> 01:17:07.080
détente is not an altruistic endeavor, but the pursuit of national interests.

784
01:17:07.080 --> 01:17:12.980
In one sense this is sad, but it is probably also true that mutual self-interest provides

785
01:17:12.980 --> 01:17:19.580
Finds a More Durable Basis for Detente Than Lofty and Finally Empty Altruism.

786
01:17:19.580 --> 01:17:27.180
Similarly, as impeccable an anti-Soviet source as former CIA Director William Colby finds

787
01:17:27.180 --> 01:17:32.140
the overwhelming concern of the Soviets to be the defensive goal of avoiding another

788
01:17:32.140 --> 01:17:35.640
catastrophic invasion of their territory.

789
01:17:35.640 --> 01:17:40.980
As Colby testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you will find a concern,

790
01:17:40.980 --> 01:17:45.700
Even a paranoia over their, the Soviets, own security.

791
01:17:45.700 --> 01:17:50.080
You will find the determination that they shall never again be invaded and put through

792
01:17:50.080 --> 01:17:55.820
the kinds of turmoil that they have been under and many different invasions.

793
01:17:55.820 --> 01:18:02.780
I think that they want to over-protect themselves to make certain that that does not happen.

794
01:18:02.780 --> 01:18:08.220
Even the Chinese, for all their bluster, have pursued a conservative and pacific foreign

795
01:18:08.220 --> 01:18:09.500
policy.

796
01:18:09.500 --> 01:18:15.280
Not only have they failed to invade Taiwan, recognized internationally as part of China,

797
01:18:15.280 --> 01:18:20.740
but they have even allowed the small offshore islands of Koumoui and Matsu to remain in

798
01:18:20.740 --> 01:18:23.080
Chiang Kai-shek's hands.

799
01:18:23.080 --> 01:18:27.820
No moves have been made against the British and Portuguese occupied enclaves of Hong Kong

800
01:18:27.820 --> 01:18:29.540
and Macau.

801
01:18:29.540 --> 01:18:36.480
And China even took the unusual step of declaring a unilateral ceasefire and withdrawal of forces

802
01:18:36.480 --> 01:18:42.640
to its border after having triumphed easily over Indian arms in their escalated border war.

803
01:18:46.640 --> 01:18:48.640
Avoiding A priori History

804
01:18:49.760 --> 01:18:55.520
There is still one thesis common to Americans and even to some libertarians that may prevent

805
01:18:55.520 --> 01:19:01.600
them from absorbing the analysis of this chapter. The myth propounded by Woodrow Wilson that

806
01:19:01.600 --> 01:19:08.800
that democracies must inevitably be peace-loving, while dictatorships are inevitably warlike.

807
01:19:08.800 --> 01:19:13.480
This thesis was, of course, highly convenient for covering Wilson's own culpability for

808
01:19:13.480 --> 01:19:18.560
dragging America into a needless and monstrous war.

809
01:19:18.560 --> 01:19:23.300
But apart from that, there is simply no evidence for this assumption.

810
01:19:23.300 --> 01:19:28.640
Many dictatorships have turned inward, cautiously confining themselves to preying on their own

811
01:19:28.640 --> 01:19:29.640
people.

812
01:19:29.640 --> 01:19:36.640
Some examples range from pre-modern Japan to communist Albania to innumerable dictatorships in the third world today.

813
01:19:36.640 --> 01:19:42.640
Uganda's Idi Amin, perhaps the most brutal and repressive dictator in today's world,

814
01:19:42.640 --> 01:19:48.640
shows no signs whatever of jeopardizing his regime by invading neighboring countries.

815
01:19:48.640 --> 01:19:52.640
On the other hand, such an indubitable democracy as Great Britain

816
01:19:52.640 --> 01:19:58.640
spread its coercive imperialism across the globe during the 19th and earlier centuries.

817
01:19:58.640 --> 01:20:12.640
The theoretical reason why focusing on democracy or dictatorship misses the point is that states, all states, rule their population and decide whether or not to make war.

818
01:20:12.640 --> 01:20:21.640
And all states, whether formally a democracy or dictatorship or some other brand of rule, are run by a ruling elite.

819
01:20:21.640 --> 01:20:27.440
Whether or not these elites, in any particular case, will make war upon another state is

820
01:20:27.440 --> 01:20:33.380
a function of a complex interweaving web of causes, including temperament of the rulers,

821
01:20:33.380 --> 01:20:38.740
the strength of their enemies, the inducements for war, public opinion.

822
01:20:38.740 --> 01:20:44.540
While public opinion has to be gauged in either case, the only real difference between a democracy

823
01:20:44.540 --> 01:20:50.360
and a dictatorship on making war is that in the former, more propaganda must be beamed

824
01:20:50.360 --> 01:20:54.480
at One's Subjects to Engineer Their Approval.

825
01:20:54.480 --> 01:20:59.760
Intensive propaganda is necessary in any case, as we can see by the zealous opinion-molding

826
01:20:59.760 --> 01:21:03.180
behavior of all modern warring states.

827
01:21:03.180 --> 01:21:06.880
But the democratic state must work harder and faster.

828
01:21:06.880 --> 01:21:11.840
And also, the democratic state must be more hypocritical in using rhetoric designed to

829
01:21:11.840 --> 01:21:18.920
appeal to the values of the masses—justice, freedom, national interest, patriotism, world

830
01:21:18.920 --> 01:21:26.280
Peace, etc. So, in democratic states, the art of propagandizing their subjects must be a bit more

831
01:21:26.280 --> 01:21:33.320
sophisticated and refined. But this, as we have seen, is true of all governmental decisions,

832
01:21:33.320 --> 01:21:40.120
not just war or peace. For all governments, but especially democratic governments, must work hard

833
01:21:40.120 --> 01:21:45.880
at persuading their subjects that all of their deeds of oppression are really in their subject's

834
01:21:45.880 --> 01:21:54.080
What we have said about democracy and dictatorship applies equally to the lack of correlation

835
01:21:54.080 --> 01:22:00.380
between degrees of internal freedom in a country and its external aggressiveness.

836
01:22:00.380 --> 01:22:04.880
Some states have proved themselves perfectly capable of allowing a considerable degree

837
01:22:04.880 --> 01:22:09.720
of freedom internally while making aggressive war abroad.

838
01:22:09.720 --> 01:22:15.380
Other states have shown themselves capable of totalitarian rule internally while pursuing

839
01:22:15.380 --> 01:22:17.900
A Pacific Foreign Policy.

840
01:22:17.900 --> 01:22:26.240
The examples of Uganda, Albania, China, Great Britain, etc. apply equally well in this comparison.

841
01:22:26.240 --> 01:22:32.240
In short, libertarians and other Americans must guard against a priori history.

842
01:22:32.240 --> 01:22:37.900
In this case, against the assumption that in any conflict, the state which is more democratic

843
01:22:37.900 --> 01:22:44.060
or allows more internal freedom is necessarily or even presumptively the victim of aggression

844
01:22:44.060 --> 01:22:48.540
by the more dictatorial or totalitarian state.

845
01:22:48.540 --> 01:22:53.420
There is simply no historical evidence whatever for such a presumption.

846
01:22:53.420 --> 01:22:59.240
In deciding on relative rights and wrongs, on relative degrees of aggression in any dispute

847
01:22:59.240 --> 01:23:06.200
in foreign affairs, there is no substitute for a detailed empirical historical investigation

848
01:23:06.200 --> 01:23:08.660
of the dispute itself.

849
01:23:08.660 --> 01:23:13.540
It should occasion no great surprise, then, if such an investigation concludes that a

850
01:23:13.540 --> 01:23:19.860
democratic and relatively far freer United States has been more aggressive and imperialistic

851
01:23:19.860 --> 01:23:25.220
in foreign affairs than a relatively totalitarian Russia or China.

852
01:23:25.220 --> 01:23:31.560
Conversely, hailing a state for being less aggressive in foreign affairs in no way implies

853
01:23:31.560 --> 01:23:36.860
that the observer is in any way sympathetic to that state's internal record.

854
01:23:36.860 --> 01:23:42.620
It is vital, indeed it is literally a life and death matter, that Americans be able to

855
01:23:42.620 --> 01:23:48.760
look as coolly and clear sightedly as free from myth at their government's record in

856
01:23:48.760 --> 01:23:54.640
foreign affairs as they are increasingly able to do in domestic politics.

857
01:23:54.640 --> 01:24:01.160
For war and a phony external threat have long been the chief means by which the state wins

858
01:24:01.160 --> 01:24:04.100
back the loyalty of its subjects.

859
01:24:04.100 --> 01:24:09.860
As we have seen, war and militarism were the gravediggers of classical liberalism.

860
01:24:09.860 --> 01:24:16.980
We must not allow the state to get away with this ruse ever again.

861
01:24:16.980 --> 01:24:23.240
A Foreign Policy Program To conclude our discussion, the primary plank

862
01:24:23.240 --> 01:24:29.340
of a libertarian foreign policy program for America must be to call upon the United States

863
01:24:29.340 --> 01:24:33.340
to abandon its policy of global interventionism.

864
01:24:33.340 --> 01:24:40.300
To withdraw immediately and completely, militarily and politically, from Asia, Europe, Latin

865
01:24:40.300 --> 01:24:44.580
America, the Middle East, from everywhere.

866
01:24:44.580 --> 01:24:50.060
The cry among American libertarians should be for the United States to withdraw now,

867
01:24:50.060 --> 01:24:53.500
in every way that involves the U.S. government.

868
01:24:53.500 --> 01:24:59.600
The United States should dismantle its bases, withdraw its troops, stop its incessant political

869
01:24:59.600 --> 01:25:02.940
meddling and abolish the CIA.

870
01:25:02.940 --> 01:25:08.940
It should also end all foreign aid, which is simply a device to coerce the American taxpayer

871
01:25:08.940 --> 01:25:15.200
into subsidizing American exports and favored foreign states, all in the name of helping

872
01:25:15.200 --> 01:25:18.320
the starving peoples of the world.

873
01:25:18.320 --> 01:25:23.920
In short, the United States government should withdraw totally to within its own boundaries

874
01:25:23.920 --> 01:25:31.120
and maintain a policy of strict political isolation or neutrality everywhere.

875
01:25:31.120 --> 01:25:37.720
The spirit of this ultra-isolationist libertarian foreign policy was expressed during the 1930s

876
01:25:37.720 --> 01:25:42.760
by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler.

877
01:25:42.760 --> 01:25:49.120
In the fall of 1936, General Butler proposed a now-forgotten constitutional amendment,

878
01:25:49.120 --> 01:25:55.320
an amendment which would delight libertarian hearts if it were once again to be taken seriously.

879
01:25:55.320 --> 01:25:59.920
Here is Butler's proposed constitutional amendment in its entirety.

880
01:25:59.920 --> 01:26:12.920
1. The removal of members of the land armed forces from within the continental limits of the United States and the Panama Canal Zone for any cause whatsoever is hereby prohibited.

881
01:26:12.920 --> 01:26:28.920
2. The vessels of the United States Navy or of the other branches of the armed service are hereby prohibited from steaming, for any reason whatsoever except on an errand of mercy, more than 500 miles from our coast.

882
01:26:28.920 --> 01:26:43.920
3. Aircraft of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps is hereby prohibited from flying, for any reason whatsoever, more than 750 miles beyond the coast of the United States.

883
01:26:43.920 --> 01:26:46.920
Disarmament

884
01:26:46.920 --> 01:27:03.920
Strict isolationism and neutrality, then, is the first plank of a libertarian foreign policy in addition to recognizing the chief responsibility of the American state for the Cold War and for its entry into all the other conflicts of this century.

885
01:27:03.920 --> 01:27:09.920
Given isolation, however, what sort of arms policy should the United States pursue?

886
01:27:09.920 --> 01:27:15.920
Many of the original isolationists also advocated a policy of arming to the teeth.

887
01:27:15.920 --> 01:27:30.920
But such a program in a nuclear age continues the grave risk of global holocaust, a mightily armed state, and the enormous waste and distortions that unproductive government spending imposes on the economy.

888
01:27:30.920 --> 01:27:39.920
Even from a purely military point of view, the United States and the Soviet Union have the power to annihilate each other many times over,

889
01:27:39.920 --> 01:27:54.920
And the United States could easily preserve all of its nuclear retaliatory power by scrapping every armament except Polaris submarines, which are invulnerable and armed with nuclear missiles with multi-targeted warheads.

890
01:27:54.920 --> 01:28:07.920
But for the libertarian, or indeed for anyone worried about massive nuclear destruction of human life, even disarming down to Polaris submarines is hardly a satisfactory settlement.

891
01:28:07.920 --> 01:28:18.920
World peace would continue to rest on a shaky balance of terror, a balance that could always be upset by accident or by the actions of madmen in power.

892
01:28:18.920 --> 01:28:36.920
No, for anyone to become secure from the nuclear menace, it is vital to achieve worldwide nuclear disarmament, a disarmament toward which the SALT agreement of 1972 and the SALT II negotiations are only a very hesitant beginning.

893
01:28:36.920 --> 01:28:39.320
beginning.

894
01:28:39.320 --> 01:28:44.720
Since it is in the interest of all people and even of all state rulers not to be annihilated

895
01:28:44.720 --> 01:28:51.300
in a nuclear holocaust, this mutual self-interest provides a firm rational basis for agreeing

896
01:28:51.300 --> 01:28:58.760
upon and carrying out a policy of joint and worldwide general and complete disarmament

897
01:28:58.760 --> 01:29:02.900
of nuclear and other modern weapons of mass destruction.

898
01:29:02.900 --> 01:29:08.480
Such joint disarmament has been feasible ever since the Soviet Union accepted Western proposals

899
01:29:08.480 --> 01:29:16.280
to this effect on May 10, 1955, an acceptance which only gained a total and panicky Western

900
01:29:16.280 --> 01:29:20.100
abandonment of their own proposals.

901
01:29:20.100 --> 01:29:26.200
The American version has long held that while we have wanted disarmament plus inspection,

902
01:29:26.200 --> 01:29:31.540
the Soviets persist in wanting only disarmament without inspection.

903
01:29:31.540 --> 01:29:34.400
The actual picture is very different.

904
01:29:34.400 --> 01:29:41.220
Since May 1955, the Soviet Union has favored any and all disarmament and unlimited inspection

905
01:29:41.220 --> 01:29:48.080
of whatever has been disarmed, whereas the Americans have advocated unlimited inspection,

906
01:29:48.080 --> 01:29:51.920
but accompanied by little or no disarmament.

907
01:29:51.920 --> 01:29:57.140
This was the burden of President Eisenhower's spectacular, but basically dishonest, Open

908
01:29:57.140 --> 01:30:03.500
Open Skies Proposal, which replaced the disarmament proposals we quickly withdrew after the Soviet

909
01:30:03.500 --> 01:30:07.220
acceptance of May 1955.

910
01:30:07.220 --> 01:30:13.220
Even now that open skies have been essentially achieved through American and Russian space

911
01:30:13.220 --> 01:30:21.220
satellites, the 1972 controversial SALT agreement involves no actual disarmament, only limitations

912
01:30:21.220 --> 01:30:23.860
on further nuclear expansion.

913
01:30:23.860 --> 01:30:29.300
Furthermore, since American strategic might throughout the world rests on nuclear and

914
01:30:29.300 --> 01:30:35.140
air power, there is good reason to believe in Soviet sincerity in any agreement to liquidate

915
01:30:35.140 --> 01:30:39.220
nuclear missiles or offensive bombers.

916
01:30:39.220 --> 01:30:44.460
Not only should there be joint disarmament of nuclear weapons, but also of all weapons

917
01:30:44.460 --> 01:30:51.420
capable of being fired massively across national borders, in particular, bombers.

918
01:30:51.420 --> 01:30:57.060
It is precisely such weapons of mass destruction as the missile and the bomber, which can never

919
01:30:57.060 --> 01:31:02.660
be pinpoint targeted to avoid their use against innocent civilians.

920
01:31:02.660 --> 01:31:08.820
In addition, the total abandonment of missiles and bombers would enforce upon every government,

921
01:31:08.820 --> 01:31:15.060
especially including the American, a policy of isolation and neutrality.

922
01:31:15.060 --> 01:31:20.300
Only if governments are deprived of weapons of offensive warfare will they be forced to

923
01:31:20.300 --> 01:31:23.900
to pursue a policy of isolation and peace.

924
01:31:23.900 --> 01:31:29.180
Surely, in view of the black record of all governments, including the American, it would

925
01:31:29.180 --> 01:31:34.400
be folly to leave these harbingers of mass murder and destruction in their hands and

926
01:31:34.400 --> 01:31:38.480
to trust them never to employ those monstrous weapons.

927
01:31:38.480 --> 01:31:43.260
If it is illegitimate for government ever to employ such weapons, why should they be

928
01:31:43.260 --> 01:31:49.500
allowed to remain fully loaded in their none-too-clean hands?

929
01:31:49.500 --> 01:31:54.180
The contrast between the conservative and the libertarian positions on war and American

930
01:31:54.180 --> 01:32:00.140
foreign policy was starkly expressed in an interchange between William F. Buckley Jr.

931
01:32:00.140 --> 01:32:06.540
and the libertarian Ronald Hamowy in the early days of the contemporary libertarian movement.

932
01:32:06.540 --> 01:32:11.820
Scorning the libertarian critique of conservative foreign policy postures, Buckley wrote,

933
01:32:11.820 --> 01:32:34.820
There is room in any society for those whose only concern is for tablet keeping, but let them realize that it is only because of the Conservatives' disposition to sacrifice, in order to withstand the Soviet enemy, that they are able to enjoy their monasticism and pursue their busy little seminars on whether or not to de-municipalize the garbage collectors.

934
01:32:34.820 --> 01:32:37.820
To which Hamowy trenchantly replied,

935
01:33:04.820 --> 01:33:26.820
Mr. Buckley chooses to be dead rather than red. So do I. But I insist that all men be allowed to make that decision for themselves. A nuclear holocaust will make it for them.

936
01:33:26.820 --> 01:33:33.820
To which we might add that anyone who wishes is entitled to make the personal decision of better dead than red,

937
01:33:33.820 --> 01:33:36.860
or Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.

938
01:33:36.860 --> 01:33:43.300
What he is not entitled to do is to make these decisions for others, as the pro-war policy

939
01:33:43.300 --> 01:33:46.140
of conservatism would do.

940
01:33:46.140 --> 01:33:52.340
What conservatives are really saying is better them dead than red, and give me liberty or

941
01:33:52.340 --> 01:33:54.360
give them death, which are the

942
01:33:54.360 --> 01:33:59.640
battle cries not of noble heroes but of mass murderers.

943
01:33:59.640 --> 01:34:03.220
In one sense alone is Mr. Buckley correct.

944
01:34:03.220 --> 01:34:09.040
In the nuclear age, it is more important to worry about war and foreign policy than about

945
01:34:09.040 --> 01:34:14.820
de-municipalizing garbage disposal, as important as the latter may be.

946
01:34:14.820 --> 01:34:20.700
But if we do so, we come ineluctably to the reverse of the Buckleyite conclusion.

947
01:34:20.700 --> 01:34:26.380
We come to the view that since modern air and missile weapons cannot be pinpoint targeted

948
01:34:26.380 --> 01:34:32.300
to avoid harming civilians, their very existence must be condemned.

949
01:34:32.300 --> 01:34:38.300
nuclear and air disarmament becomes a great and overriding good to be pursued for its

950
01:34:38.300 --> 01:34:43.700
own sake, more avidly even than the demunicipalization of garbage.