Improving Upon History (#48590)
by Andre Zantonavitch on December 11, 2004 at 5:44 PM

Chris, the essense of your views on foreign policy seem to be that current pro-war libertarians and Objectivists "suffer from historical amnesia" and can't seem to figure out that "intervention" and "interference" abroad vary rarely works. And the isolationist Founding Fathers and Ayn Rand back you on this. Thus you seem to have a Murderer's Row of intellectual power on your side: history, America's creators, and Rand. You even have the current situation in Iraq, and the fetid bozo intellectualizing of Peter Schwartz which you could convincingly cite.

Still, I think this overall cautious and contextual approach (as seen in your 1995 book 'Hayek, Marx and Utopia' and much elsewhere) may not be necessary or appropriate to truly FREEDOM-loving states. Interventionism abroad ~worked~ with traditional colonialism and even WWII. Under colonialism, both parties benefitted in the 1700s and 1800s: the locals gained freedom and wealth and access to high civilization, while the foreign occupiers similarily profitted. After WWII, Japan and Germany had freedom and an alien culture "forced" upon them and the result was largely good.

The great problem in Iraq today is America is very much anti-freedom in its occupation policy. The US lets Iraq: keep their food subsidies for daily items, stay in OPEC, maintain nationalized and socialized oil, have evil islamicist and communist leaders, continue with drug tyranny and "vice" crimes, etc. All of this is the opposite of political liberalism and a ~huge~ problem.

Even still...Iraq is kinda "working" and moving toward freedom. If America would have been even ~remotely~ more loyal to the concept of democratic elections and providing general security (utilizing the hordes of unemployed locals), the situation would probably be much, much better. Current Western "nation building" and "teaching democracy" is highly inept and grossly irrational. But this doesn't invalidate the above interventionist concepts and ideals.

As for the historically intimate ties between the welfare and warfare state -- while the argument here is powerful indeed -- there's really no reason to suppose that this tie is natural or inevitable. What happens if the US invades and conquers Cuba, rapidly executes the top 100 supporters of communism, holds elections within a month, imposes the US constition on them for a year, and then ~leaves~, while taking some of the unowned dictatorship's islands in compensation? This gambit might work out well for ~both~ nations!