Wednesday, 23 March 2011


FLC206, Military Intervention in Libya -


The Errors of Muscular Libertarianism, Sean Gabb, 22nd March 2011

Free Life Commentary,

A Personal View from
The Director of the Libertarian Alliance
Issue Number 206
22nd March 2011

Military Intervention in Libya:

The Errors of Muscular Libertarianism

by Sean Gabb

Everything I thought relevant about our latest war in the Moslem world I said in a blog posting a few

days ago. However, I have been asked to write at greater length. If I do not choose to begin again on

the reams of commentary that I made on our earlier war in Iraq, I suppose I should say something

about Libya.

Looking at the immediate issues, I am against intervention. It is none of our business what goes on

in the Moslem world. Even if it were, there is no good that we are nowadays capable of doing there.

I doubt if air strikes alone will prevent Colonel Gaddafi or his enemies from killing ordinary people.

The logic of the intervention we have made may draw us into some kind of land attack – followed by

some kind of occupation. And everyone ought by now to understand the likeliest outcome of

military occupations in the Moslem world. Even if he is brought down with the help we are so far

providing, I do not believe that whatever follows Colonel Gaddafi will be much better on the whole

than he has been, or that it will be any more friendly to us. The most charitable view to be taken

of the British and American Governments is that they are run by fools whose memory does not

reach back even to 2003. The most sensible view is that military action is being taken for the

benefit of special interest groups that cannot stand openly forward without bringing both

governments down into scandal and contempt.

That is my view of the war. Of course, it is possible that, this time, I and the trend within

libertarianism to which I belong are mistaken as to facts. Perhaps this time, limited intervention

will bring down a tyrant, and he will be followed by a stable and reasonably liberal democracy in

Libya. I do not for a moment suppose that this will happen – or is actually desired by whoever is

giving the orders. But let me assume that this is a possibility, and then take issue with a rival

libertarian trend that asserts our right, and even our duty, to beat down tyranny wherever we can,

and to raise up such constitutional government as the people there are able to support.

The main problem – specific facts aside – with this kind of assertion is the talk of “we” and “us”.

Such talk made reasonable sense in the ancient democracies. When a treaty was made between

Athens and Corcyra, for example, the Athenian ambassadors signed fully on behalf of the people of

Athens. All policy was debated at meetings that every adult male citizen had the right to attend.

Even allowing for slavery, probably the majority of those who paid taxes were able to speak and

vote on the weight and the use of the tax money. Certainly, everyone who might be called on to

do military or naval service could speak and vote. Moreover, every effective office of state was

filled either by direct election, for short periods and with the real possibility of impeachment,

or by lot for short periods, so that the people as a whole, in every generation, would have a share

n government. Obviously, there were always dissenters from whatever the majority decided.

But, when the ancient historians say that “the Athenians” did this or that, they were making

sense.

But neither England nor America is a democracy of this kind. In both countries, there is a much

greater separation of state and people. To take the example of my own country, the British State

comprises the Queen-in-Parliament, plus a mass of employed officials who themselves outnumber

the whole population of ancient Athens; and it is influenced by a further cluster of usually corporate

interests. Whether this machine is directed by six hundred or so elected representatives is beside

the point – though it generally is not directed by them. These representatives are themselves

members of a class separate from the people who choose between them every four or five years.

To speak of actions taken by the British State as taken by “us” is a plain error. One of the reasons

we moderns pay so much attention to constitutional safeguards is because we need them in ways

that the Athenians mostly did not. We need them because we face a State that is separate from us,

and that has interests that are often hostile to our own. We are not entirely helpless as we stand

before the State. Elections aside, we are lucky enough to live in a country that still has a broadly

liberal political culture, and where most organs of the State are directed by men willing to act with

a certain restraint. But this does not mean that there is any specific identity between the interests

of State and people, or that we should put too much meaning into the verbal convention that “we”

went to war in Iraq, or that “we” must do something to help the people of Libya.

Because, for any number of reasons, we do not and cannot control the State, the best we can do

is to keep insisting that those who direct the State should be guided by certain principles. The main

principle is that they should not regard themselves in any sense as our parents, nor as our agents.

They should regard themselves, rather, as our trustees.

Now, the duty of a trustee is to act in what any reasonable man might regard as the best interests

of the beneficiaries. He should not use things for his own purposes that are not really his property.

He should not simply take instructions from the beneficiaries. He should act with prudence and with

restraint.

If we apply this principle to foreign policy, we see that all actions here should never go beyond a very

cautious selfishness. The State has no money of its own. The rulers of the State do not nowadays do

any fighting. In all cases, it is the people who pay and the people who fight. It is, therefore, not enough f

or David Cameron and William Hague to speak about the sufferings of the Libyan people. If they were to

resign their offices and go off to fight, as many Englishmen did, in the Spanish Civil War, that would be

their business. It is not their business to spend our money and our lives on their crusade – and not even

if they could find a temporary majority for doing so in a referendum. Their duty, as trustees, is to take

such minimal actions as will safeguard this country from invasion. This might sometimes require them to

go a little further. They might, for example, be required to intervene in an Irish civil war. They might also

be required to gain and exercise a benevolent hegemony over countries like Holland and Belgium, and

actively to conciliate the French and Germans. But, just as a trustee is not permitted to sell or mortgage

assets to feed the starving in Africa or fund research into a cure for aids, the rulers of this country have no

business to run about the world, involving us in foreign matters that we do not fully understand and cannot

efficiently control.

There is a general benefit to behaving in this manner. When the governments of the main countries act

purely in the reasonable interests of their peoples, foreign policies taken on a caution and predictability

that is most consistent with enabling a peaceful intercourse between nations. Wars come about most

often not from national selfishness, but from impulsive and unpredictable acts in furtherance of some

abstract principle. And I say again that such principles will generally be a cover for the enrichment

of some shameful special interest.

There is a fundamental difference, then, between a man who takes sides in some foreign dispute and

goes out to act on his decision, and a State that intervenes in foreign disputes. There is also a fundamenta

l difference between a man who acts by himself and a man who calls for a State to act on his behalf.

This is my view of how the British State should respond to events in Libya and the rest of the world.

It would be my view even if I could be shown a record of success in the spreading of liberal democracy

through the world. But there is no such record. The people who are now calling for “humanitarian”

intervention in Libya are often the same people who called for the same in the Balkans. We bombed.

We occupied. We are still occupying. The mountains of dead Albanians we read about in the

newspapers were never found. Instead, the alleged aggressors suffered ethnic cleansing and

what might fall within the legal definition of genocide. And Kossovo is now a gangster state that

has exported criminals to every country in Europe. The same people told us that Saddam Hussein

was feeding his enemies into plastic shredders, and had – or soon might have – “weapons of mass

destruction”. So we invaded. Seven years later, perhaps a million Iraqis are dead. Iraqi Christians are

persecuted as they never were under Saddam Hussein. Water and electricity have still not been

restored in many areas of the country. Instead, below a thin veneer of constitutional rule paid for

by the Americans, the country is a patchwork of jurisdictions based on tribe or religion, and hardly

anyone is better off. Of course, none of the alleged weapons was ever found. Leave aside my own

preference for how the British State should generally conduct itself – is it likely to be any better in

Libya?

Comments

Re: Non-Intervention

Submitted by Anduril (not verified) on Tue, 22/03/2011 - 11:55pm.

John Stuart Mill put it like this, in "A Few Words on Non-Intervention": that complete

non-intervention amounts to the miserable proposition that the wrong can support the wrong,

but the right cannot support the right. Intervention to enforce non-intervention is always morally

justifiable, if not always prudent.

Tony

Wars and politicians

Submitted by ampers on Tue, 22/03/2011 - 10:00pm.

The awful thing is, politicians all want a war because they are under the impression that it

will mean they get votes come the next election.

The awful thing that I mentioned above is that, on the whole, they do get more votes when

they get into a war. Although Blair's name is mud, at the time he was thought of as a hero.

What does this say for the general British public?

Ampers.

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