Toward a Libertarian Foreign Policy

Christopher A. PrebleChristopher A. Preble

Capitol Hill Briefing

May 7, 2015

“Of all enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” “No nation, could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

James Madison, 1795

Milton Friedman, 2005

“War is a friend of the state....In time of war, government will take powers and do things that it would not ordinarily do.”

“A standing military force, with an over-grown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

James Madison to the Constitutional Convention, 1787

“avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

George Washington, 1796

“Separated as we are by a world of water from other Nations, if we are wise we shall surely avoid being drawn into the labyrinth of their politics, and involved in their destructive wars.”

Washington’s Ideal Foreign Policy

“The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive branch is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. “It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

Madison writing as Helvidius, 1793

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad.”

Madison to Jefferson, 1798

“the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

H.L. Mencken, 1918

David Boaz, 2015“War cannot be avoided at all costs, but it should be avoided wherever possible. Proposals to involve the United States—or any government—in foreign conflict should be treated with great skepticism.”

A Libertarian Foreign Policy

Anxious of warSkeptical of fearmongeringMindful of the fatal conceit

Confident and cosmopolitan

Confident and Cosmopolitan“We look forward to a world bound together by free trade, global communications, and cultural exchange. We support maintaining the world’s largest and most powerful military,...

Confident and Cosmopolitan“...[but] we believe that military intervention around the world costs Americans substantial blood and treasure and benefits them little.”

“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.”

The Founders’ Ideal Foreign Policy = A Libertarian Foreign Policy

Cato’s Foreign Policy and National Security

Cato’s Foreign Policy and National Security

Questions?

Christopher PrebleVice President

Defense and Foreign Policy Studies202-218-4630

cpreble@cato.org