A popular mantra among libertarians is being “antiwar.” One problem with that mantra, however, is that it can be construed to mean that libertarians are pacifists — that is, that they are opposed to all wars, including defensive wars. In other words, if the United States were invaded by a foreign army, pacifists would refrain from opposing the invaders by force and would favor passively letting our nation be conquered and subjugated by the foreign power.
I think it’s safe to say that most libertarians are not pacifists — that they do believe that people have the right to wage a defensive war in the event their nation is invaded by a foreign army. Therefore, the better term to describe libertarians would be “anti-foreign war” instead of simply “antiwar.”
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But even that is insufficient to achieve a genuinely free society. Simply settling for being “anti-foreign war” leaves intact things like foreign aid, foreign coups, sanctions, embargoes, foreign military bases, state-sponsored assassinations of foreigners, engendering hatred for certain foreign regimes, and provoking wars and conflicts between other nations (e.g., Ukraine and Russia). Those types of things not only produce death, suffering, and destruction of liberty abroad, they also bring the destruction of liberty here at home.
Thus, the best term to describe genuine libertarianism is “non-interventionist” or non-interventionism.” That would bring an end not only to foreign wars but to all forms of foreign interventionism.
But even being anti-interventionist is not enough to achieve a genuinely free society. That’s because the national-security state form of governmental structure under which we have all been born and raised is at the root of the foreign wars and foreign interventionism. So long as you leave the national-security state intact, the nation is going to continue experiencing foreign wars and foreign interventionism. That’s because the national-security establishment and its ever-expanding army of “defense” contractors feeding at the public trough depend on generating perpetual crises, wars, conflicts, and official enemies as a way to keep people afraid, tense, and agitated.
Thus, being antiwar or anti-interventionist and pro-Pentagon, pro-CIA, and pro-NSA is meaningless because keeping the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA intact means keeping perpetual war and perpetual interventionism intact. To get rid of the foreign wars and the foreign interventionism, it is necessary to get rid of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA and restore our nation’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic, which entailed a relatively small, basic military force.
Our American ancestors fully understood this concept. If the Constitutional Convention had come out with a proposal that called for a national-security state, there is no possibility whatsoever that our American ancestors would have accepted it. That’s because they were fiercely opposed to “standing armies,” which was the term used at that time for a “national-security state.”
That’s why Americans lived under a governmental system known as a limited-government republic for more than 150 years. For virtually all of that time, there were no foreign wars. There were also no Pentagon, CIA, NSA, foreign aid, foreign military bases, foreign coups, state-sponsored assassinations, provoking wars between other nations, and other forms of foreign interventionism.
All that changed with the Spanish-American War, followed by U.S. intervention into World War I and World War II, followed by the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, and then followed by perpetual war and perpetual foreign interventionism.
Thus, if one truly wants to be free, it is not enough to be antiwar or even anti-interventionism and pro-national-security state. A necessary prerequisite for freedom is the dismantling, not the reform, of the entire national-security establishment and the restoration of a limited-government republic.