Foreign Policy & War

The Politicians Are Scaring You Again

by Sheldon Richman October 16, 2014

They are doing it again. “They” are the war-party politicians, Democrats and Republicans. “It” is scaring you into supporting another war in the Middle East. When will the American people learn? If in a republic the people are the ultimate check on government power, a gullible, easily frightened public is a disaster waiting to happen. Where is the derisive skepticism ...

The Hegemony Builders

by Scott McPherson October 15, 2014

  Who are these, obsequious fools Lickspittles drawing e'er near To the flames of power, but fulfilled By a moment in diadem's glare?   “To arms!” they cry – to all but they For what good is slavish applause If spent upon a battlefield – What then for Caesar's next cause?   Oh mighty lambs, lust for war! Heedless of misery and pain Lust for him who makes it so Suckle the breast ...

TGIF: A Foreign Policy By and For Knaves

by Sheldon Richman October 10, 2014

David Hume (1711-1776) was no hardcore libertarian, but he was a provocative thinker and a key figure in the development of liberalism. Hume helped make the Scottish Enlightenment the important period it was. He also can be fun to read. Observe this from his essay “Of the Independency of Parliament”: Political writers have established it as a maxim, ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Boomerang of Foreign Intervention

by Future of Freedom Foundation October 6, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the unintended consequences of an interventionist foreign policy. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

Smedley Butler and the Racket That Is War

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2014

From 1898 to 1931, Smedley Darlington Butler was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the Corps’s highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine. During his years in ...

TGIF: The “Boomerang Effect”: How Foreign Policy Changes Domestic Policy

by Sheldon Richman September 26, 2014

The late Chalmers Johnson, the great analyst of the American empire, warned that if Americans didn’t give up the empire, they would come to live under it. We’ve had many reasons to take his warning seriously; indeed, several important thinkers have furnished sound theoretical and empirical evidence for the proposition. Now come two scholars who advance our understanding of how ...

Will American Ground Troops Be Sent to Fight ISIS?

by Sheldon Richman September 25, 2014

With the United States dropping bombs on yet another Muslim country, we might benefit from a close look at President Obama’s anti–Islamic State strategy. Obama and his spokespeople are always quick to make two points: first, that no American ground forces will be sent into combat against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and second, that the United ...

TGIF: The Antimilitarist Libertarian Heritage

by Sheldon Richman September 19, 2014

With the United States on the verge of another war in the Middle East — or is it merely the continuation of a decades-long war? — we libertarians need to reacquaint ourselves with our intellectual heritage of peace, antimilitarism, and anti-imperialism. This rich heritage is too often overlooked and frequently not appreciated at all. That is tragic. Libertarianism, to ...

Is the Foreign-Policy Elite Clueless?

by Sheldon Richman September 17, 2014

The American foreign-policy elite seems to have no idea what it’s doing. Americans may believe the government — especially the foreign-policy side — is at least minimally competent, but when one surveys decisions from the last few decades, one has to wonder. The current crop of policymakers, like earlier ones, know what they want to do: make the world safe for ...

TGIF: Does Freedom Require Empire?

by Sheldon Richman September 5, 2014

In a startling article, Daniel McCarthy, the admirable editor of The American Conservative magazine (TAC), writes, “Successive British and American empires created and upheld the world order in which liberalism could flourish.” In other words, as he writes in “Why Liberalism Means Empire,” “Liberalism and ...

Let’s Have Candor from the NATO Summit

by Sheldon Richman September 4, 2014

Don’t hold your breath, but it would be refreshing if NATO leaders meeting in Wales this week spoke candidly for once about Ukraine. They could start by embracing this observation by John Mearsheimer, the distinguished foreign-policy scholar at the University of Chicago: According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on ...

The Presidential Authority to Torture and Assassinate, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 The 9/11 attacks provided George W. Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA with the perfect opportunity to seize extraordinary powers. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. A crisis fills much of the citizenry with great fear, and government officials have long known that in the midst of a crisis many people will eagerly trade ...