Could somebody expain to me what the libertarian position on nuclear disarmament is? Thank you.
All the govts of the world should be completely disarmed, including nuclear weapons.
But, libertarianism is not a thing to have official positions, nor someone to give them.
There you might try the Libertarian Party. They’re pretty good at doing things non-libertarian.
Good point. What I meant to say was what was the position held by most Mises.com posters. I have usually applied the consequentialist libertarian’s argument regarding gun control to nuclear weapons, mainly that disarming the U.S. government would make our country more suceptable to invasion from foreign countries. How does one make sure that all countries agree to disarm without initiating force to force them to disarm?
LOL at the last part.
I suspect a majority would go with Junker: all governments should be disarmed. Why stop at nukes, for that matter? The Brady bunch would get my donations if they devoted themselves to gun control of government.
As for foreign invasions, I suppose nukes have some deterrant value–but then again, they’re a major reason we’re at risk in the first place. The current crop of presidential hopefuls have made a point of keeping the “nuclear option on the table.” Others rightly take that as a threat, and it’s precisely that bully-boy stuff that made 9/11 inevitable sooner or later.
A better deterrant would be to disarm all government employees, and disband the army–but to arm every man, woman and child who doesn’t work for government. We could make the US safe from all external threats in about a year, if we declared 100% tax amnesty for any citizen who can hit a man-sized target at 500 yards with a rack-grade rifle. This would even deter nuclear strikes: first, it means we couldn’t, and wouldn’t, be running around like the world’s policeman, so folks wouldn’t need to retaliate; and second, it means that even a successful invasion would be a pyrrhic victory, because there would still be a rifle behind every tree waiting for the invaders.
–Len.
Well, as much as I oppose government, I still believe that everyone spare convicted criminals has the right to keep and bear arms, and I believe that should include government employees. There should be 100% tax amnesty for everybody, armed or not. Also, I find it hard to see how it would deter nuclear strikes, since it is hard to use your rack-grade rifle if you are dead. The army would be better if it were replaced with a volunteer militia; there should be no standing armies during a time of peace. But, is there any way you could get every country to disarm itself without using force against it?
“I would never invade the United States, there would be a gun behind every blade of grass.”
- Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japanese navy (unsourced)
I think a certain amount of long range nuclear missiles would be an effective deterrent against a pre emptive nuclear/biological/chemical/EMP first strike and low yield battle nukes (Davy Crockettes) would be a good deterrent against a ground based invasion. Provided you’d be willing to use them on your own soil. But their low yield so the damage would be relitively minimal.
Government employees are ipso facto criminals, so we’re OK there.
It isn’t guns versus nukes. You’re forgetting that people don’t attack and invade just to do it; they do it for a reason. That reason is thwarted if the victims continue to resist. Killing everyone is less easy than it sounds, and involves making the place uninhabitable. That’s what I already said, though: look up “pyrrhic victory.”
–Len
Shazam> LOL at the last part.
Thanks. Sometime I fear humor is no longer seen w/o a smiley. Anyhow, Len’s got the response.
And I’d go for letting all current prisoners go free. Most are not violent, rather drugs, tax, or gun “felons”. The few really violent will “adjust” to a well-armed society.The old, recurring story of invasion should be ignored. The US has never been successfully invadeable. The last figure I saw was 80m guns. That’s about 4,000 light infantry divisions. Up it per Len, and you’ve got 25,000 LIDs. Nobody can transport enough firepower to defeat that many divisions. That doesn’t even mention US materiel productivity. And it’s true, you ignore threats of nuclear destruction. You never give in or even talk to blackmailers. ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.
You mean Molon Labe?
Why do we need to? The U.S. could get rid of all nuclear weapons, and no one would use one against us, if we ended all foreign aid and brought all our troops home.
You have to have a pretty good reason to kill millions of people. If you do not, then you are just ensuring your own death, as the world would hunt you down and kill you. And not just you, but your whole country. Plus, as someone already pointed out, nuking an area makes it uninhabitable.
RE the nonaggressionists:
…when the US government completely disarms all of it’s nukes, and disbands it’s military, down the road some statist nation will start claiming resources inside the US “borders” as their manifest destiny. Statists/Socialists as defined by Mises and others must constantly be expanding their borders and conducting war to survive. Should a massive military build-up begin in the countries of China or Russia, we can would certainly expect to see an attempt at the oil reserves in Alaska, for example. I do not picture a bunch of riflemen making the trek up to the Bering Straight to guard those reserves as they would not risk their lives for lower oil prices… but what is absurd is that many here would continue to allow citizens to freely trade with such a regime. And from there would it stop? Certainly not. In fact, it would eventually become in the best interest of a few PDAs to throw in with the invading country, as that would secure their interests’ survival. As the invading state continues to over-reach what it is capable of occupying, we will have in the meantime, millions dead, infrastructure ruined, and chaos (it doesn’t have to take two states to render this result). Even after the fall of the Statist aggressors, that would leave standing a PDA that could easily seize power over the broken factions… and the only thing that would prevent them from doing so, according to libertarians would be “well, in an anarcho-capitalist society, pretty much everyone would be an anarcho-capitalist and libertarian so they wouldn’t form a state.” All of this of course could easily be avoided if we were able to dump a couple nukes on anyone who attempted to invade.
I can think of another group of people who had no standing army and no real functional government… the American Indians… look what that got them?
There are a million reasons why the monopoly on use of force should just be considered by all an acceptable level of theft… and the only acceptable one at that.
This isn’t Europe, Snliii. That kind of expansionism requires a shared border; one doesn’t follow “manifest destiny” across oceans.
We need to reinforce again and again that anarchy isn’t about reverting to a primitive state. The Indians were slaughtered because they were up against a vastly larger force armed with guns, germs and steel, and had nothing but stone-age technology. Anarchists don’t want to don loincloths and hunt buffalo. If there were 300,000,000 Indians, and they had M1 rifles, we’d be speaking Iroqouis today.
–Len.
RE: Len,
Well, that’s why I mentioned Alaska at first. But even then some of ‘our’ greatest assets , after deregulation, would be offshore platforms that could be seized with a few subs.
But even without a full invasion… a powerful state across the world who maintained a large arsenal of nukes could constantly demand various assets or capital as tribute from the free people living in the Americas… perhaps to fund their wars in Europe/Asia.
To which we reply, “No. Go soak your head.”
–Len.
I’m not convinced that market agencies will be unable to repel a state. In fact, they might do such a good job of it that it’d think twice before invading again.
It’s difficult to tell…
And that’s when they find out why around 80 million Americans own guns.
Unless the threat was directed at various corporations’ infrastructure. When faced with the choice of losing it or paying some sort of tribute, I think most would pay the tribute.
Not to mention, as we would probably be freely trading with their enemies, it would probably be in their interest to marginalize our production anyway…
The power that comes with a nuclear arsenal is too great and as it stands now, the only guard against a state with those weapons is to have more than they do and their allies combined.
If you’re right, then you’re wrong: conventional weapons are equally threatening, so eliminating nukes doesn’t eliminate the threat.
–Len.
In which case those corporations would quickly lose their business to firms that were willing and able to protect their customers and their property, and their assets would likely be liquidated and absorbed by the same.
You imagine that they would have the power to do so, but in order to look at a hypothetical objectively, you need to stop looking at it through the lense of statist bias.The problem with your assumption is that we are discussing a hypothetical situation in which nobody legitimately has that sort of power. A hypothetical just as “unlikely” today as a cure for polio was “unlikely” in 1942.
I’m going to need you to provide some proof of this assumption. You are assuming, a priori, that nuclear-equipped nations would attack a nation who, by virtue of its disarmed status, presents no threat to them. I reject your assumption referring to the hundreds of non-nuclear nations who have yet to be attacked, except by each other.