For Murray Rothbard, matters of war and foreign policy are central to a free society of equal people. These issues are important because they influence the existence, or absence, of individual autonomy and peaceful social cooperation, both domestically and internationally. Rothbard recognized the importance of protecting people and their property from internal and external threats. At the same time, he appreciated the fundamental tension in granting governments the power to serve this protective function—a state strong enough to protect property in principle is also strong enough to pose a threat to those very things by engaging in aggression against private people at home and abroad. Because of the industrial organization of the state apparatus, Rothbard believed we should expect governments to routinely overstep their bounds, moving beyond protection to predation. This is clear in Rothbard’s description of U.S. foreign policy in For a New Liberty (1996, first published in 1973):
In the name of “national self-determination” and “collective security” against aggression, the American government has consistently pursued a goal and a policy of world domination and of the forcible suppression of any rebellion against the status quo anywhere in the world. In the name of combatting “aggression” everywhere—of being the world’s “policeman”—it has itself become a great and continuing aggressor. (271)
In Rothbard’s telling, the U.S. government’s efforts to bring order, stability, and security to the world, couched in liberal rhetoric, had resulted in its becoming an aggressor—the very thing it sought to protect against.
In this paper we review some of Rothbard’s key insights on war and foreign policy. We draw mainly from the chapter in For a New Liberty dedicated to these issues. We supplement our discussion with passages from Rothbard’s essay “War, Peace, and the State” (2003), which was originally published in 1963, a decade prior to For a New Liberty. The main themes discussed by Rothbard include American foreign policy as imperialism, war as the health of the state, practical and ethical issues posed by nuclear weapons, the importance of nuclear disarmament, and the strategic use of smears and propaganda by government actors to both undermine antiwar views and to generate public support for the state’s interventionist foreign policies. In each case we discuss the contemporary relevance of these issues. We conclude with some open areas for future exploration.
U.S. Foreign Policy as Imperialism
Rothbard argues that U.S. foreign policy became increasingly imperialistic from the late nineteenth century onward. As he writes, “Americans are not accustomed to applying the term ‘imperialism’ to the actions of the U.S. government, but the word is a particularly apt
