Any discussion of US foreign policy regarding Ukraine should begin in the 1990s, not in 2022. Consider the incompetent foreign policy demonstrated by the Obama administration in 2014. Without US interference then, it's unlikely that we would see any Russian invasion in the first place.
It's also worth noting that the Ukrainian support is not to the Ukrainian people but the Ukrainian establishment. This distinction is particularly relevant considering that Ukraine is conscripting its people. They do not choose to fight Russia's invasion.
For a more nuanced and thorough discussion of the Ukraine war, I highly John Mearsheimer's substack.
I wrote that comment hastily and I'll admit it was foolish to refer to a choice made (or not) by "the people." However, I stand by the anti-draft sentiment. While I agree with your argument in Machinery of Freedom that hypothetically a good draft can exist, I don't think the reasons apply in the case of Ukraine or in WW2.
I don't know if they do. But resorting to a draft doesn't imply that most of the population doesn't support the war, only that they don't support it strongly enough to volunteer.
Ukraine has a population of about forty million. If every one of them was willing to accept a .1 probability of being drafted to fight if that would stop the Russians, that would be four million "willing" draftees, but zero volunteers.
It's hard for me to understand why you'd support US aid to Ukraine when you're not sure whether the Ukrainian draft is legitimate.
In support of my original argument (that US support is not helping the Ukrainian people but their government) I'll reference this DailyBeast article interviewing Ukrainians after support was passed. https://archive.fo/qs7KU
Of course it's very possible that DailyBeast interviewed 500 Ukrainians and only took the few opinions that supported the narrative they want to tell, so a healthy dose of skepticism is important, but I'm frankly baffled to see you support US aid in these conditions.
In my opinion, Ukraine should sue for any way to end the war even if that means ceding territory to Russia and a commitment to never join NATO or the EU. That is certainly a terrible outcome but it is much better than this brutal war. No one should support a government enforcing such unrealistic expectations through bloody conscription and cracking down on free speech and free movement.
The problem is that if Ukraine acts that way Russia is encouraged to try to expand farther. Putin has made it pretty obvious that he would like to reconstruct the Soviet Union, possibly the Soviet empire, geographically speaking.
I don't think that's obvious at all. It seems to me that the events of 2014 led Putin to believe (whether right or wrong) that NATO planned to take Ukraine and turn it against Russia, denying Russia friendly neighbors and trade opportunities. (Remember that President Biden said the US will kill Nord Stream 2 "one way or another" long before the 2022 Ukraine invasion occurred.)
Regardless, thank you for taking the time to explain your position.
Interventionism is good because it can be very useful to be proactive about threats. The cases where interventionism failed, and turned a small problem into a big problem, e.g. condemning Italy's African imperialism which made them side with the Nazis or in invading Iraq only to realize they weren't actively building large numbers of WMD, are obvious. The cases where interventionism prevent small problems from becoming big problems are harder to see though. How many countries decide not to build nukes because they fear becoming sanctioned like North Korea or invaded like Iraq? How many countries avoid commiting genocide on a minority population because they fear being bombed like Serbia?
Also, in a more cynical sense, while there are large costs in money and lives in going to war, there are also benefits besides whatever the explicit military goal is. It keeps the military sharp and experienced, and will make fighting any future wars easier. It is useful to be seen to come to the aid of our allies too, so they will want to stay our allies and other countries will want to become our allies. While the US today might be the strongest military and might not need allies to win a defensive war, there's no guarantee that China won't be able to overtake the US and allies would be needed to win a war against China, even allies that aren't meeting their spending obligations. Or even if China doesn't overtake the US, maybe they could form their own alliance that is capable of defeating a lone USA.
Considering the technological limitations no longer seem to be that relevant, most countries in the world could likely build a nuclear weapon if they were inclined to do so. There's a pretty big expense that many 3rd world countries would choose to avoid, but maybe 1/3 of the countries on the planet could choose to do so anyway. South Africa, Israel, India, and Pakistan are all examples of countries on the lower end of the economic spectrum (per capita or total GDP) when they developed nukes, and North Korea certainly qualifies, though they have more reason to want them than most.
So without an interventionist foreign policy, the chance of massive nuclear proliferation seems much higher. And if the first 20% of countries get nukes, it's almost certain to lead to an arms race among neighbors and political rivals to also develop them, even if it would not have happened otherwise - as with India and Pakistan.
> South Africa, Israel, India, and Pakistan are all examples of countries on the lower end of the economic spectrum (per capita or total GDP) when they developed nukes, and North Korea certainly qualifies, though they have more reason to want them than most.
All those countries have, or at least had, decent human capital.
3. Every decade or so topple the odd left-wing Latin American government* to remind them whose hemisphere they are in.
*Canada may be deemed "Latin American" under pillar 3 if circumstances warrant. If this becomes necessary, full scale liberation of our Northern cousins should be considered preferable to regime change.
You might be entertained by the poem "Tale of Melon City". A city where by accident people end up electing a Melon as a King. Others think that this is stupid, but the people of the city argue that in fact the Melon has been better than a real King as there is more freedom.[1]
I think US foreign policy and this sort of tale goes hand in hand. Close observation of US-India ties makes me realize how incompetent USA was in general in handling of their ties with India when it could have easily done better despite the misgivings Indians had against USA. On other hand, Indians are hooked to Youtube, Pornhub, Google, they use Android phones, drive European/Japanese cars, eat in American fast food brands and every time an American company decides to invest in India there is a huge celebration. An average Indian student arriving in USA these days is actually deeply familiar with American culture.
This is a big win for USA and ends up aiding their "foreign policy" even though the foreign policy experts neither anticipated it and definitely not planned for it.
USSR spent a lot of money, China spends a lot of money to get a fraction of that kind of influence where as USA gets it all for free only to waste it with bunch of morons it sends through Department of State.
Is that because Europe is militarily weak, because the US and the USSR overshadowed Europe, because the US covered their military needs, because nukes exist (MAD), or for some other reason not listed here, such as Europe becoming cooperative in NATO and the EU and no longer looking at close neighbors as rivals?
The United States haven't had an inter-state war in over 150 years as well, but I wouldn't say that the reason is because the US is militarily weak.
"The weak point in the argument is its assumption that the interventionist foreign policy will be done well—that your foreign minister is Machiavelli or Metternich."
My first thought: why should a libertarian care about what is good _specifically for the country they currently live in_?
Consider a country that accepts immigrants and treats them as well as natives. (The US has claimed to be such a country.) It's also selfish and powerful, and becoming more so. It routinely bullies other countries, some more than others, and doesn't have much problem with "collateral damage" in its "police actions"; its covert services are known for destabilizing and overthrowing regimes it finds inconvenient. (Many people would claim this describes the US.)
You could work to proactively limit this country's power, for the good of your own country. Or you could simply move to the odds-on favorite to dominate the rest of the world.
What's wrong with moving to the more powerful country, from a libertarian point of view?
I am not sure what your point is. There is nothing wrong with moving to a country where you will be better off but I don't think that has much relation to how powerful it is. Switzerland is at present, has been for a long time, one of the most attractive countries to live in but, although it can defend itself, it isn't particularly powerful. The USSR was powerful but a very unattractive place to live. Indeed, it's my impression that citizens of the Soviet satellites were generally better off than Soviet citizens.
When I wrote this, I had the strong feeling that I wasn't expressing myself well. Now I'm sure of it.
You appear to me to be writing from the point of view of someone who associates themselves with a particular nation, and probably identifies with it. The question is how that nation should act, for the benefit of that nation and its current and perhaps future inhabitants.
That feels weird to me, and not entirely consistent with other libertarian values. It's not contradictory; just odd enough that I wanted to poke it a bit, seeking additional information.
At the same time, you are also asking the general question, with at least some examples from the history of other countries.
So I'm somewhat confused about where you are coming from, beyond the case of the current Ukraine war. And when I'm confused, I sometimes ask dumb questions.
I don't think my post has much to do with my identifying with a particular country. Whether the US should support Ukraine is a live political issue at the moment and I used it to comment on the general issue of interventionist policy. The question I was asking isn't what is best for me but what foreign policy is in the interest of the inhabitants of the US. I could ask the same question for other countries as well.
In one of my recent talks — I'm currently on a two week speaking trip in Europe — I discussed potential problems with anarcho-capitalism and suggested that it might work in the US, not work in Estonia. So far as Ukraine is concerned I think it is probably in the interest of European nations (i.e. of their inhabitants) to support Ukraine for much longer than it is in the interest of the U.S. to do so.
An alternative approach to consider (for the global general public), from the game theory level: Defect.
Stop believing all of the tall tales and just so stories our Dear Leaders and The Experts tell, and collectively acknowledge them for what they are: illusion, delusion, deceit.
What's next after this? Well, we could start contemplating some new approaches to how the 99%+ of us normal people could get along, as well as how to get ourselves out from under the thumbs of our respective "democratic" or otherwise governments.
Or we can do what we've always done: continue living in varying levels of Fantasyland.
Well put, and agreeable even in the hedged edges. But, since Il Duce and his trigger-happy northern neighbor are in the mix, how about venturing an opinion as to which one was the champ of the heavyweight Fascist weight class? I bring it up b/c it seems germane to a consideration of post-war US foreign policy, the ‘F-bomb’ is still routinely invoked by people on the left, and while it is rooted in BM’s fond memories of Roman hegemony, Hitler clearly drove it to its tragic peak. The toxic marriage of big gov and the arms industry seems to be the essential crux of it all, which, if true, lends much credence to the leftist critique (despite the loose invocation of the term they are prone to). What say you, maestro?
I do think that for the current and recent past case of the US, intervention is confounded by the problem of public goods provision. The hegemon has an incentive to provide security to allies. It's difficult for him to credibly threaten not to provide security to a defensive alliance. It's probably analytically best to not call alliance formation and maintenance intervention. And nobody's rights are being violated. It's threatened intervention, deterrence if you will. I'm thinking here of Europe and Japan and, by extension, South Korea. Prevents rights violations in the future, or at least attempts to do so. Interestingly, US policy has been successful in those places but not where it has acted unilaterally, as in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Ukraine policy is interventionist, and I think, need not have been, but that's for another day. Policy toward Israel is more like a defensive alliance, nowadays against Iran. Deterrence doesn't always work, so we get rights violations.
Any discussion of US foreign policy regarding Ukraine should begin in the 1990s, not in 2022. Consider the incompetent foreign policy demonstrated by the Obama administration in 2014. Without US interference then, it's unlikely that we would see any Russian invasion in the first place.
It's also worth noting that the Ukrainian support is not to the Ukrainian people but the Ukrainian establishment. This distinction is particularly relevant considering that Ukraine is conscripting its people. They do not choose to fight Russia's invasion.
For a more nuanced and thorough discussion of the Ukraine war, I highly John Mearsheimer's substack.
The UK had conscription in WWII. Do you conclude that the British people did not choose to fight Hitler?
I wrote that comment hastily and I'll admit it was foolish to refer to a choice made (or not) by "the people." However, I stand by the anti-draft sentiment. While I agree with your argument in Machinery of Freedom that hypothetically a good draft can exist, I don't think the reasons apply in the case of Ukraine or in WW2.
I don't know if they do. But resorting to a draft doesn't imply that most of the population doesn't support the war, only that they don't support it strongly enough to volunteer.
Ukraine has a population of about forty million. If every one of them was willing to accept a .1 probability of being drafted to fight if that would stop the Russians, that would be four million "willing" draftees, but zero volunteers.
It's hard for me to understand why you'd support US aid to Ukraine when you're not sure whether the Ukrainian draft is legitimate.
In support of my original argument (that US support is not helping the Ukrainian people but their government) I'll reference this DailyBeast article interviewing Ukrainians after support was passed. https://archive.fo/qs7KU
Of course it's very possible that DailyBeast interviewed 500 Ukrainians and only took the few opinions that supported the narrative they want to tell, so a healthy dose of skepticism is important, but I'm frankly baffled to see you support US aid in these conditions.
In my opinion, Ukraine should sue for any way to end the war even if that means ceding territory to Russia and a commitment to never join NATO or the EU. That is certainly a terrible outcome but it is much better than this brutal war. No one should support a government enforcing such unrealistic expectations through bloody conscription and cracking down on free speech and free movement.
The problem is that if Ukraine acts that way Russia is encouraged to try to expand farther. Putin has made it pretty obvious that he would like to reconstruct the Soviet Union, possibly the Soviet empire, geographically speaking.
I don't think that's obvious at all. It seems to me that the events of 2014 led Putin to believe (whether right or wrong) that NATO planned to take Ukraine and turn it against Russia, denying Russia friendly neighbors and trade opportunities. (Remember that President Biden said the US will kill Nord Stream 2 "one way or another" long before the 2022 Ukraine invasion occurred.)
Regardless, thank you for taking the time to explain your position.
Interventionism is good because it can be very useful to be proactive about threats. The cases where interventionism failed, and turned a small problem into a big problem, e.g. condemning Italy's African imperialism which made them side with the Nazis or in invading Iraq only to realize they weren't actively building large numbers of WMD, are obvious. The cases where interventionism prevent small problems from becoming big problems are harder to see though. How many countries decide not to build nukes because they fear becoming sanctioned like North Korea or invaded like Iraq? How many countries avoid commiting genocide on a minority population because they fear being bombed like Serbia?
Also, in a more cynical sense, while there are large costs in money and lives in going to war, there are also benefits besides whatever the explicit military goal is. It keeps the military sharp and experienced, and will make fighting any future wars easier. It is useful to be seen to come to the aid of our allies too, so they will want to stay our allies and other countries will want to become our allies. While the US today might be the strongest military and might not need allies to win a defensive war, there's no guarantee that China won't be able to overtake the US and allies would be needed to win a war against China, even allies that aren't meeting their spending obligations. Or even if China doesn't overtake the US, maybe they could form their own alliance that is capable of defeating a lone USA.
Considering the technological limitations no longer seem to be that relevant, most countries in the world could likely build a nuclear weapon if they were inclined to do so. There's a pretty big expense that many 3rd world countries would choose to avoid, but maybe 1/3 of the countries on the planet could choose to do so anyway. South Africa, Israel, India, and Pakistan are all examples of countries on the lower end of the economic spectrum (per capita or total GDP) when they developed nukes, and North Korea certainly qualifies, though they have more reason to want them than most.
So without an interventionist foreign policy, the chance of massive nuclear proliferation seems much higher. And if the first 20% of countries get nukes, it's almost certain to lead to an arms race among neighbors and political rivals to also develop them, even if it would not have happened otherwise - as with India and Pakistan.
> South Africa, Israel, India, and Pakistan are all examples of countries on the lower end of the economic spectrum (per capita or total GDP) when they developed nukes, and North Korea certainly qualifies, though they have more reason to want them than most.
All those countries have, or at least had, decent human capital.
The four pillars of the ideal US foreign policy.
1. Defend the homeland.
2. Defend shipping lanes.
3. Every decade or so topple the odd left-wing Latin American government* to remind them whose hemisphere they are in.
*Canada may be deemed "Latin American" under pillar 3 if circumstances warrant. If this becomes necessary, full scale liberation of our Northern cousins should be considered preferable to regime change.
You might be entertained by the poem "Tale of Melon City". A city where by accident people end up electing a Melon as a King. Others think that this is stupid, but the people of the city argue that in fact the Melon has been better than a real King as there is more freedom.[1]
I think US foreign policy and this sort of tale goes hand in hand. Close observation of US-India ties makes me realize how incompetent USA was in general in handling of their ties with India when it could have easily done better despite the misgivings Indians had against USA. On other hand, Indians are hooked to Youtube, Pornhub, Google, they use Android phones, drive European/Japanese cars, eat in American fast food brands and every time an American company decides to invest in India there is a huge celebration. An average Indian student arriving in USA these days is actually deeply familiar with American culture.
This is a big win for USA and ends up aiding their "foreign policy" even though the foreign policy experts neither anticipated it and definitely not planned for it.
USSR spent a lot of money, China spends a lot of money to get a fraction of that kind of influence where as USA gets it all for free only to waste it with bunch of morons it sends through Department of State.
[1] https://genius.com/Vikram-seth-the-tale-of-melon-city-annotated
Your king melon sounds like Aesop's story of King Log and King Stork.
https://aesopsfables.wordpress.com/the-frogs-who-desired-a-king/
Keeping Europe weak has had the beneficial result of almost no European wars in generations. A unique occurrence in European history.
Is that because Europe is militarily weak, because the US and the USSR overshadowed Europe, because the US covered their military needs, because nukes exist (MAD), or for some other reason not listed here, such as Europe becoming cooperative in NATO and the EU and no longer looking at close neighbors as rivals?
The United States haven't had an inter-state war in over 150 years as well, but I wouldn't say that the reason is because the US is militarily weak.
Take your pick. I don't claim to be an expert. My own opinion is that Europeans are comfortable as parasites on the US.
"The weak point in the argument is its assumption that the interventionist foreign policy will be done well—that your foreign minister is Machiavelli or Metternich."
Or Palmerston.
I find foreign policy frustrating because basic liberal principles don't seem to help resolve the problem. I liked your summary of the issues.
My first thought: why should a libertarian care about what is good _specifically for the country they currently live in_?
Consider a country that accepts immigrants and treats them as well as natives. (The US has claimed to be such a country.) It's also selfish and powerful, and becoming more so. It routinely bullies other countries, some more than others, and doesn't have much problem with "collateral damage" in its "police actions"; its covert services are known for destabilizing and overthrowing regimes it finds inconvenient. (Many people would claim this describes the US.)
You could work to proactively limit this country's power, for the good of your own country. Or you could simply move to the odds-on favorite to dominate the rest of the world.
What's wrong with moving to the more powerful country, from a libertarian point of view?
I am not sure what your point is. There is nothing wrong with moving to a country where you will be better off but I don't think that has much relation to how powerful it is. Switzerland is at present, has been for a long time, one of the most attractive countries to live in but, although it can defend itself, it isn't particularly powerful. The USSR was powerful but a very unattractive place to live. Indeed, it's my impression that citizens of the Soviet satellites were generally better off than Soviet citizens.
When I wrote this, I had the strong feeling that I wasn't expressing myself well. Now I'm sure of it.
You appear to me to be writing from the point of view of someone who associates themselves with a particular nation, and probably identifies with it. The question is how that nation should act, for the benefit of that nation and its current and perhaps future inhabitants.
That feels weird to me, and not entirely consistent with other libertarian values. It's not contradictory; just odd enough that I wanted to poke it a bit, seeking additional information.
At the same time, you are also asking the general question, with at least some examples from the history of other countries.
So I'm somewhat confused about where you are coming from, beyond the case of the current Ukraine war. And when I'm confused, I sometimes ask dumb questions.
I don't think my post has much to do with my identifying with a particular country. Whether the US should support Ukraine is a live political issue at the moment and I used it to comment on the general issue of interventionist policy. The question I was asking isn't what is best for me but what foreign policy is in the interest of the inhabitants of the US. I could ask the same question for other countries as well.
In one of my recent talks — I'm currently on a two week speaking trip in Europe — I discussed potential problems with anarcho-capitalism and suggested that it might work in the US, not work in Estonia. So far as Ukraine is concerned I think it is probably in the interest of European nations (i.e. of their inhabitants) to support Ukraine for much longer than it is in the interest of the U.S. to do so.
An alternative approach to consider (for the global general public), from the game theory level: Defect.
Stop believing all of the tall tales and just so stories our Dear Leaders and The Experts tell, and collectively acknowledge them for what they are: illusion, delusion, deceit.
What's next after this? Well, we could start contemplating some new approaches to how the 99%+ of us normal people could get along, as well as how to get ourselves out from under the thumbs of our respective "democratic" or otherwise governments.
Or we can do what we've always done: continue living in varying levels of Fantasyland.
Well put, and agreeable even in the hedged edges. But, since Il Duce and his trigger-happy northern neighbor are in the mix, how about venturing an opinion as to which one was the champ of the heavyweight Fascist weight class? I bring it up b/c it seems germane to a consideration of post-war US foreign policy, the ‘F-bomb’ is still routinely invoked by people on the left, and while it is rooted in BM’s fond memories of Roman hegemony, Hitler clearly drove it to its tragic peak. The toxic marriage of big gov and the arms industry seems to be the essential crux of it all, which, if true, lends much credence to the leftist critique (despite the loose invocation of the term they are prone to). What say you, maestro?
Insightful, as always.
I do think that for the current and recent past case of the US, intervention is confounded by the problem of public goods provision. The hegemon has an incentive to provide security to allies. It's difficult for him to credibly threaten not to provide security to a defensive alliance. It's probably analytically best to not call alliance formation and maintenance intervention. And nobody's rights are being violated. It's threatened intervention, deterrence if you will. I'm thinking here of Europe and Japan and, by extension, South Korea. Prevents rights violations in the future, or at least attempts to do so. Interestingly, US policy has been successful in those places but not where it has acted unilaterally, as in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Ukraine policy is interventionist, and I think, need not have been, but that's for another day. Policy toward Israel is more like a defensive alliance, nowadays against Iran. Deterrence doesn't always work, so we get rights violations.