Interventionism versus non-interventionism

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Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by jason » Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:06 pm

The most common criticism of Libertarians I have seen is that their non-interventionist policies would allow other rival powers, such as China or Russia, to grow in influence and to eventually take over much of the globe, greatly weakening the strength of the US and Europe, and ultimately could lead to the West being dominated by an Eastern power. While it would be nice to close most of our foreign military bases and end most of our foreign entanglements, it's not hard to imagine other countries filling the void created by the US and Europe pulling out. I've never seen any prominent Libertarians address these concerns. Is anyone familiar with what HB or Ron Paul, for example, have said about this? How do Libertarians counter this criticism?
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by hardlawjockey » Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:19 pm

jason wrote:
Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:06 pm
The most common criticism of Libertarians I have seen is that their non-interventionist policies would allow other rival powers, such as China or Russia, to grow in influence and to eventually take over much of the globe, greatly weakening the strength of the US and Europe, and ultimately could lead to the West being dominated by an Eastern power. While it would be nice to close most of our foreign military bases and end most of our foreign entanglements, it's not hard to imagine other countries filling the void created by the US and Europe pulling out. I've never seen any prominent Libertarians address these concerns. Is anyone familiar with what HB or Ron Paul, for example, have said about this? How do Libertarians counter this criticism?
The idea that we need to go beat those other bad guys up before they beat us up is very popular and hard to argue against and probably built into our DNA so it isn't surprising that Libertarianism doesn't do so well at the polls. Even though Jesus said to love our enemies and "turn the other cheek", this philosophy doesn't really go over that well in Christianity either. What percentage of the Christian vote did HB or Ron Paul get espousing this view?

In Libertarian philosophy "interventionism=force" and the use of force goes against the prime directive of Libertarianism. I actually first learned about HB long before I learned about the PP through some of his anti-war speeches. If you can find them, I would suggest reading them. They might provide some insight to your question.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kriegsspiel » Tue Jul 31, 2018 9:12 pm

"Intervening less" would most likely lead to better outcomes because we would have less chances to fuck something up. I think it would do wonders to just not fuck up as much.
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her own example. She well knows that by once enlisting under banners other than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.

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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by boglerdude » Wed Aug 01, 2018 1:33 am

And libertarians want open borders. I agree but that increases the need to stabilize the rest of the world to reduce refugees. Has western civilization (US & allies) removed more dictators than it has installed?
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by dualstow » Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:20 am

dictatress O0
(from the Adams quote above)
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:28 am

boglerdude wrote:
Wed Aug 01, 2018 1:33 am
And libertarians want open borders. I agree but that increases the need to stabilize the rest of the world to reduce refugees. Has western civilization (US & allies) removed more dictators than it has installed?
Immigration isn't stupid or evil or whatever, but a country telling itself it doesn't have the right to decide who can come and live there is insane. Open borders is stupid.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:29 am

dualstow wrote:
Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:20 am
dictatress O0
(from the Adams quote above)
Have you ever heard an Australian pronounce dictators?

Dick Tight-ass.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Xan » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:30 am

dualstow wrote:
Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:20 am
dictatress O0
(from the Adams quote above)
I'd have thought the feminine of "dictator" would have been "dictatrix". No, seriously.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:51 am

I'm pretty sure dictator is non-gender-specific, and John Quincy made it so just to be a dic. He was just a really early SJW.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by jason » Wed Aug 01, 2018 1:14 pm

So does everyone here agree that if the West changed its interventionist foreign policy to non-interventionism, that the West would run the risk of being overrun by the East, and 50 years from now, Westerners might be speaking Chinese?
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Mountaineer » Wed Aug 01, 2018 2:10 pm

jason wrote:
Wed Aug 01, 2018 1:14 pm
So does everyone here agree that if the West changed its interventionist foreign policy to non-interventionism, that the West would run the risk of being overrun by the East, and 50 years from now, Westerners might be speaking Chinese?
You are questioning if walking softly is a good strategy ... Some say only if you have a very big stick in readiness in case the hordes decide to come here before we abort or same-sex ourselves to nothingness. ;)
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kbg » Wed Aug 01, 2018 2:58 pm

Power in all its forms is a tool for exerting control. Those with power get to control, those without it don't.

I like many Libertarian ideas, but there is another part of me that thinks it's a pretty stupid political philosophy. To live in a Libertarian world successfully (safely?), you have to assume no else in your world desires to exert control over you. You wishing power away does not make someone's desire to exert it go away.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by dualstow » Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:07 pm

jason wrote:
Wed Aug 01, 2018 1:14 pm
So does everyone here agree that if the West changed its interventionist foreign policy to non-interventionism, that the West would run the risk of being overrun by the East, and 50 years from now, Westerners might be speaking Chinese?
Believe me, I've tried. The tones are just too hard for me to master.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by ochotona » Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:10 pm

My parents are from China and I can't master Chinese. It's tough.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by boglerdude » Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:54 am

> if the West changed its interventionist foreign policy to non-interventionism, that the West would run the risk of being overrun by the East

Maybe. China is a dictatorship with a president-for-life. As a species, the goal is borders not being necessary because there's a global minimum standard of living
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by jhogue » Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:16 am

I think KBG is right. Libertarianism may be theoretically satisfying, but it is practically problematic.

Centuries later, the Moors still mourn the loss of Andalusia and the Turks believe they should not have stopped at the gates of Vienna.
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A stock trader asked him, "Groucho, where do you put all your money?" Groucho was said to have replied, "In Treasury bonds", and the trader said, "You can't make much money on those." Groucho said, "You can if you have enough of them!"
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kbg » Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:05 am

jhogue wrote:
Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:16 am
I think KBG is right. Libertarianism may be theoretically satisfying, but it is practically problematic.

Centuries later, the Moors still mourn the loss of Andalusia and the Turks believe they should not have stopped at the gates of Vienna.
And anarchists were an integral part of the Russian revolution...right up until the Bolsheviks seized control.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by jhogue » Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:00 pm

Yup.

The Soviets also slaughtered anarchists in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War in preference to fighting Franco and the fascists. See George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.
“Groucho Marx wrote:
A stock trader asked him, "Groucho, where do you put all your money?" Groucho was said to have replied, "In Treasury bonds", and the trader said, "You can't make much money on those." Groucho said, "You can if you have enough of them!"
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by hardlawjockey » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:37 pm

At one time I would have called myself a Libertarian but today I tend to eschew all forms of ideology and am more of a pragmatist.

Having said that, the U.S.A. has had an interventionist foreign policy since at least the end of WWII. Can someone point out what benefit this has been to the American taxpayer (Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan? - Anybody?). In some of Donald Trump's statements he seemed to agree with me on this which is the main reason I voted for him but like a lot of things about him, I have to adopt a wait and see attitude.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kbg » Thu Aug 02, 2018 10:11 pm

hardlawjockey wrote:
Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:37 pm
At one time I would have called myself a Libertarian but today I tend to eschew all forms of ideology and am more of a pragmatist.

Having said that, the U.S.A. has had an interventionist foreign policy since at least the end of WWII. Can someone point out what benefit this has been to the American taxpayer (Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan? - Anybody?). In some of Donald Trump's statements he seemed to agree with me on this which is the main reason I voted for him but like a lot of things about him, I have to adopt a wait and see attitude.
I think this is hard to say, very hard to say and I think common consensus would view most of the examples you mention as both costly and mistaken ventures. But you totally neglected the successes...Europe (all of it), Japan, a good chunk of the Pacific Ocean and associated peripheral countries, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Kosovo, Afghanistan (initially). We can debate some of the countries on this list but do not forget where intervention that did and did not result in war was an enormous success. IDK...if one compares the "win" with the "loss" column I think we did pretty well.

Personally, I don't think ticking off good international friends and deconstructing the post war order WE built is a particularly great idea. Trump is too stupid to realize we've called all the big decisions since WW II and for the most part our allies have towed the line even when they didn't want to.

Finally...I'm fairly confident the Russians have something big on him. His actions toward Russia are frankly bizarro for an American president. No doubt the Democrats have been trying to deligitimize him since day one with his resenting it being very understandable...but common sense would suggest doubling down on being tough on Russia would be a good defense...that is not what is happening.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by moda0306 » Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:07 am

hardlawjockey wrote:
Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:37 pm
At one time I would have called myself a Libertarian but today I tend to eschew all forms of ideology and am more of a pragmatist.

Having said that, the U.S.A. has had an interventionist foreign policy since at least the end of WWII. Can someone point out what benefit this has been to the American taxpayer (Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan? - Anybody?). In some of Donald Trump's statements he seemed to agree with me on this which is the main reason I voted for him but like a lot of things about him, I have to adopt a wait and see attitude.
I've gotten to the point where it seems to me the US has always had an interventionist "foreign" policy, but it's always been decently good at value comparison and not biting off more than it can chew. For years I sort of bought the argument that "until Teddy" or "until Wilson" or "Until FDR" or "Until Truman" we were non-interventionist... but think about this for a second...

During the 1800's, we were on the doorstep of billions of acres of largely arable "foreign" land that ended up being on top of other valuable natural resources such as gold and oil, mostly "owned" by weakening foreign powers thousands of miles away, or weak competitors to the South, or low-tech easily-conquerable "savages." Do we really get to pat ourselves on the back for slaughtering & annexing our way west and not getting involved in the Revolutions of 1848? What would the upside to any class of politician have been for that? Even a very basic cost/benefit analysis for any half-witted politician would see there was FAR more to gain by focusing our military adventures on the Western half of what is now the U.S. and mostly not shipping legions of folks overseas to play the colonial game elsewhere. The reason France, Britain & Spain look "colonialist" and "interventionist" by-comparison is that they weren't going to be able to conquer each other... Europe was pretty well-locked down. Better to send boats to India & the Americas. I'm sure if you smacked a billion acres of arable and resource-laden land right to the West of Europe, they probably would have avoided India & Africa for a while.

We were plenty interventionist in the 1800's. We just had targets that were simultaneously less conspicuous given how we view U.S. territory today and more profitable from a cost/benefit perspective to U.S. elite interests. Once we achieved manifest destiny, naturally, our colonialist hunger started to stretch to central/south America, and eventually Europe as a good last-minute tie-breaker to protect our trade & banking interests during WWI/II, and then we ended up (naturally) a world-power. We just took the game we've always been playing to the next level.

So short-story-long, I don't see us as ever having had a "limited government" approach. Giving us credit for that is like giving the Mongols credit for not conquering the Americas. Anyone knows you start with the low-hanging fruit... which is exactly what the USA did.

Of course none of this is new information... but it seems like it's rarely carried over to up-ending the narrative that the U.S. was largely anti-interventionist pre-WWII or during the guilded age or what-have-you.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kbg » Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:02 am

I think we are getting a bit loose with the definition of interventionist. I think we weren’t really interventionist until the late 1800s and by no stretch of the standard definition could you call the two world wars interventionist.

Latin America, Hawaii, a bit in Africa, Russia 1919) those are interventions (e.g. getting involved in the internal affairs of a country via outright support or overthrow of a domestic political faction)

Declared wars are not interventions, they are international political disputes being resolved by force/violence.

Also, the context of manifest destiny is pretty important and normally forgotten by the PC oriented. During the period of MD, the entire North American continent was an open field. Someone was going to fill the void and the winners ended up being the US and the UK. Don’t forget the French were trying to establish a Mexican client state as late as the US civil war.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by Kbg » Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:06 am

I think we are getting a bit loose with the definition of interventionist. I think we weren’t really interventionist until the late 1800s and by no stretch of the standard definition could you call the two world wars interventionist.

Latin America, Hawaii, a bit in Africa, Russia 1919) those are interventions (e.g. getting involved in the internal affairs of a country via outright support or overthrow of a domestic political faction). And, no question we had an imperialist phase with the Philippines and Cuba being the prime examples.

Declared wars are not interventions, they are international political disputes being resolved by force/violence.

Also, the context of manifest destiny is pretty important and normally forgotten by the PC oriented. During the period of MD, the entire North American continent was an open field. Someone was going to fill the void and the winners ended up being the US and the UK. Don’t forget the French were trying to establish a Mexican client state as late as the US civil war.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by moda0306 » Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:40 am

Kbg wrote:
Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:06 am
I think we are getting a bit loose with the definition of interventionist. I think we weren’t really interventionist until the late 1800s and by no stretch of the standard definition could you call the two world wars interventionist.

Latin America, Hawaii, a bit in Africa, Russia 1919) those are interventions (e.g. getting involved in the internal affairs of a country via outright support or overthrow of a domestic political faction). And, no question we had an imperialist phase with the Philippines and Cuba being the prime examples.

Declared wars are not interventions, they are international political disputes being resolved by force/violence.

Also, the context of manifest destiny is pretty important and normally forgotten by the PC oriented. During the period of MD, the entire North American continent was an open field. Someone was going to fill the void and the winners ended up being the US and the UK. Don’t forget the French were trying to establish a Mexican client state as late as the US civil war.
Declared wars are absolutely interventions... you could argue they're more obvious or more legitimate, but they are in no-way non-intervention. In-fact I think one of the main names for folks who wanted to stay out of WWI were "non-interventionists." "Isolationists" was the pejorative version of that.

And there's also a "power vacuum" or some similar "context" to colonialism. "If we don't do it someone else will" has been a common excuse over time for many "interventionist" policies by many governments. It may aid in understanding the logic behind most interventions, colonial adventures, and even genocides, but it's by no means "non-intervention" just because someone else might do it too.
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Re: Interventionism versus non-interventionism

Post by moda0306 » Fri Aug 03, 2018 11:05 am

moda0306 wrote:
Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:40 am
Kbg wrote:
Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:06 am
I think we are getting a bit loose with the definition of interventionist. I think we weren’t really interventionist until the late 1800s and by no stretch of the standard definition could you call the two world wars interventionist.

Latin America, Hawaii, a bit in Africa, Russia 1919) those are interventions (e.g. getting involved in the internal affairs of a country via outright support or overthrow of a domestic political faction). And, no question we had an imperialist phase with the Philippines and Cuba being the prime examples.

Declared wars are not interventions, they are international political disputes being resolved by force/violence.

Also, the context of manifest destiny is pretty important and normally forgotten by the PC oriented. During the period of MD, the entire North American continent was an open field. Someone was going to fill the void and the winners ended up being the US and the UK. Don’t forget the French were trying to establish a Mexican client state as late as the US civil war.
Declared wars are absolutely interventions... you could argue they're more obvious or more legitimate, but they are in no-way non-intervention. In-fact I think one of the main names for folks who wanted to stay out of WWI were "non-interventionists." "Isolationists" was the pejorative version of that.

And there's also a "power vacuum" or some similar "context" to colonialism. "If we don't do it someone else will" has been a common excuse over time for many "interventionist" policies by many governments. It may aid in understanding the logic behind most interventions, colonial adventures, and even genocides, but it's by no means "non-intervention" just because someone else might do it too.
For the record, I'm not trying to make some melodramatic accusation of unique guilt of the US Government.

I'm basically saying that "state structures and ambitious corporate interests and profiteering individuals will engage in violence to survive and prosper." This is a human thing... not a US thing... it's just important we operate in the realm of reality, and it's obvious why the US didn't join European wars in the 1800's and but did in the 1900's, and it's not a shift from anti-interventionism to interventionism.
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