Libertarian vs. Liberal Stance on War

Many liberals are confused by libertarian philosophy.  I suspect that the reason for this is ignorance.  Libertarianism is a position held by a small minority.  Both liberalism and conservatism are more popular.  Hence the main effort of the liberal is to argue against conservatism and vice versa.  The confusion is increased by the tendency of many libertarians to self-identify as conservatives.  In this post I intend to contrast the liberal and libertarian positions on war and peace, which may appear similar at first glance.  Indeed in a conversation, I recently heard one liberal, upon hearing an anti-imperialist argument for libertarianism described by another liberal, wonder how this differed from the liberal position.

The heart of the difference is that libertarianism is typically the political extension of either a rule-utilitarian or deontological approach to ethics.  In contrast, liberalism seems to be an extension of act-utilitarianism.  It may be that some liberals adhere to some other form of ethics.  I suspect that the vast majority of people holding any political position haven't thought enough about ethics to form an opinion on ethics.  Nevertheless, I think that this basic difference in approach results in differences in foreign policy on issues of war and peace.

To illustrate this think of what response you are likely to get if you ask a liberal when they believe it is appropriate for a country to wage war.  You are likely to get one of two responses.  If they are liberal enough, they will say that it is never appropriate.  More moderate liberals are likely to respond that it is a very complicated issue, and that you need to make a determination on a case by case basis.

In contrast the decision on whether to go to war is quite simple for the libertarian.  Were we invaded or attacked?  There is a simple rule that we can follow that will give a clear answer.  Intellectually defending that rule may be complicated, but the rule itself is quite simple.  The war making authority of a state is an extension of the right of an individual to self-defense.

Liberals tend to oppose imperialism because they see humanitarian arguments in its favor as disingenuous.  Libertarians might agree, but their opposition to imperialism is more radical than that of the non-pacifist liberals, who are the ones who are most likely to win elections and wield political influence.  Humanitarianism doesn't justify government action in the mind of the libertarian either at home or abroad.  Even if there is a good case for intervention, the libertarian is likely to hold that a rule against it is constitutionally efficient.  Ignoring the rule will lead to a set of actions that will have worse results.

In practice what this means is that liberals will sometimes see war as being justified on humanitarian grounds, while libertarians will not.  A recent example is the no fly zone over Libya.  Libertarians tended to oppose it. It is quite easy to see that Libya didn't attack the U.S.  In contrast, some liberals supported it, particularly those who hold political power.

I believe that the libertarian approach is better than the ad hoc approach to war and peace favored by those liberals moderate enough to wield political power.  Libertarianism and pacifism are both rule-based.  Both would impose costs on elected officials who took our country to war.  This ad hoc approach places insufficient restrictions on those who would wage war.

In order for a moral philosophy to tell us when we should blame someone, it is necessary for us to be able to detect offenses.  Under the ad hoc approach, this is hard to do.  Members of the general public get their information from politicians and the press, neither of which have much of an incentive to underestimate the degree of oppressive violence perpetrated abroad.  In the event of war, profits for the news media are likely to increase.  It is quite easy for elected officials to lie to their constituents about events that occur in foreign countries.  By contrast it is very difficult to convince people that the country has been invaded when in fact it has not.

War is expensive and carries a huge humanitarian cost.  It has many innocent victims.  There will almost always be more efficient methods of saving lives.  Even if a war is fought to repel an invasion, it is seldom justifiable on humanitarian grounds.  For this reason when a politician uses a humanitarian argument for war, it is best to assume that he is either lying or mistaken.

However, this is not the end of the story.  Suppose that a group of doctors was to attack you in order to kill you and harvest your organs to save five innocent lives.  You would be justified to use violence to ward off the attack.  We have a right to defend ourselves even in situations where doing so cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds.