Libertarianism and War

One thing which appears to be almost universal with libertarians is a pretty hard pacifist standpoint with regards to war with other countries. Ron Paul's main policy which made him stand out against the other candidates in the 2008 US Presidential election was his opposition to both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Libertarian Party in America also support removing the troops immediately, as does (I believe), the LPUK.

The attraction is obvious - war always causes casualties, is always expensive and paid for by taxes, and often leads to a government which does not respect the liberties of its citizens as well as causing instability in the area, and even blowback. But I think we should look beyond those superficial attractions. More specifically, we should look beyond our own borders.

Imagine there is a group of people living in the UK right now. They are armed to the teeth and wish to do any one of the following things:

• Massacre portions of the population
• Imprison people who oppose them without any semblance of a trial
• Steal from the population and spend it on, amongst other things, further armament

Now add to the equation that the government in power is a libertarian one. We would say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the libertarian government should take action against this group, including capturing and imprisoning them, taking their resources, and, where absolutely necessary, possibly killing them (in the example described this would probably be a lot of the time, given the fact that the group are heavily armed).
Indeed, the very fact that Somalia fails to stop people doing these things is why it isn't libertarian. So there's no disagreement from the libertarian camp so far.

But it seems to me that if we think that such things are rights infringements and we are justified in stopping them, then why stop that at the nation's borders? If we see governments elsewhere killing its own people, imprisoning without trial and thieving from them, then aren't we equally fully justified in stepping in to stop such actions?

It seems to me that the only way in which the first example isn't analogous with war is that, of course, the first example existed in defined state borders which the libertarian government had legitimate control over; and the second existed outside such borders.

But I think for the libertarian to give this response to the war question is to make a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is about libertarianism that is good. What is good about libertarianism is that it ensures the maximal protection of people's rights. The only reason why the government is legitimised in infringing rights is to protect more rights. There is nothing 'special' about a state compared to individuals which gives it extra legitimisation in its operation. If it happened that more rights could be protected by the state not existing (as the descriptive anarchist sometimes claims), then, ignoring problems of right-protection-equality, the state should not exist.

Thus, when one state invades another's borders, that, in and of itself, is not bad by libertarianism. Sure, bad things might result from it. But the state only exists to protect rights; it has no rights not to be invaded itself.

Therefore, if there is a country which is invading the rights of its citizens, that is pro tanto a reason for libertarian governments to invade. Now, we have to be careful here. Clearly wars are one of the greatest ways to infringe rights, for the reasons noted above. So whilst it's true that Sweden regularly infringes the rights of its citizens by taxing them through the ass, we shouldn't invade Sweden; because if we did, the lives lost and the taxes required would represent far more rights infringements than if we let Sweden be.

But I think I've shown that from a libertarian standpoint, there is sometimes a good reason for invading countries. We shouldn't reject invading countries because invading countries is bad. We should weigh up whether the invasion would mean a net infringement or protection of rights. Libertarians should not reject war out of hand.