Why is that most libertarians support non-interventionism in foreign affairs? When aggression is used in remote places on earth, why not defend against that aggression? Fine, let’s do it without a state, let’s fund private voluntary organizations to help defend against aggression. Why almost all libertarians can’t stand foreign intervensionism? For example peacefull protestors in Syria today are being killed by a ruthless Dictator. Why don’t libertarians recommend private organizations to intervene and try to kill Assad and his officers? There is some gut-level distate of intervensionism in libertarian circles. Why is that?
Because there is a knowledge problem. We have little information of what is happening in Syria and very poor understanding of the country. First rule of helping out is do no harm. The default position therefore is not to act.
Maybe libertarians who have a very good understanding of Syria would recommend just what you are asking about, or maybe they would recommend against it. I don’t know, but I know that the rest of us can not know for certain what is best and what effect such interference would end up having.
Because a revolution/civil war is not a defensive action against tyranny, but an attempt to replace the ruling elite and revitalise the waning legitimacy of state power.
Why don’t we support Hamas against Israel? Because they’d be just as bad, if not worse, if they were the only government in Palestine.
I think these reasons are valid for anyone, but why libertarians have a special aversion to intervensionism?
By the way I can tell you why I don’t like intevensionism. 3 reasons. First I don’t care too much what happens in other countries. Second, many times they hate you because of the intervensionism. Third, as James said, it usually just replaces one dictator with another, so what’s the point?
Mainly, my reason is the first one. I normally don’t care that much about what happens so far away from me - I have much closer and more important things to worry about. Thus I resent that my money is taken from me against my consent to do things that I wouldn’t pay for voluntarily.
Most libertarians reject the seizure of their property to go toward many things, not just foreign aggression. They also reject the concept of national interest, as this is a collectivist term that often is used against the individual.
There’s a couple problems libertarians have with intervention, mostly they were mentioned above. I made a post on this a couple weeks ago, and I’m not against intervention in principle. I’m against most State intervention because of its consequences and how the money to fund the effort was extracted. I don’t mind the argument that if it’s not close in proximity, it doesn’t affect you much; that is a normal human inclination thanks to evolution. On the other hand, I don’t support the concept of “we need to protect Amurrika only” because that is just as statist as saying “Amurrika needs an active foreign policy”; talking in statist blocs is just misleading and a chimera.
Who decides who is a dictator and who decides who is not?
To me Israel has an evil government that should be stopped etc but you might not agree with that. This sort of subjective nature of international conflict, is why I think libertarians do not think any organisation should go around and police the world.
Any conflict in the name of peace is usually not in the name of peace at all, any conflict in the name of ensuring democracy is usually not realy done to bring true democracy.
International conflict is usually about geo-political (claiming land/extending power over more land) reasons and not religious or other superficial justifications that are usually supplied to the rest of the population. Most conflict can be attributed to financial gain, ie resources and not some sort of do-gooder reason or self defense.
A Dictator is clearly defined. It’s a person that dictates legality of everything within a given region of the state. A person that uses actual force to coerce compliance of their own individual fiat.
Conflict’s can be about peaceful resolution if they are defensive in nature. Say you shoot at me, I defend myself by firing back. The problem is when the state takes up this cause, quite often they were complacent in instigating the situation against another state.
I wouldn’t say that International conflict’s are about financial gain so much as political and power gain. Fiat money is based on debt, so it’s not really a gain if you have more of it. In reality, it’s more of situation where you indebt the individual’s that live within that arbitrary state region more so to the state itself. It’s a mean’s of control that fit’s clearly within the conceptual idea of the state itself.
I’m do not ascribe to Libertarian Philosophy, but that is my personal take on it.
I see most calls for intervention coming from a place of “We must kill people so that people aren’t killed”- which never made sense to me. The goal of savings innocents is never achieved and the suffering only continues, and usually government foreign intervention is more evil than whatever they were trying to prevent.. It pains me to know others are in horrible situations, but this is as it was and how its going to be.
I personally see my time being better spent on doing other things, now if there was something I knew I could do for sure that would help those in conflict come to peace I would- but solving the problem of violence has been a difficult one indeed.