Concerning War, Just and Unjust

The political philosophy presented in this medium is what some would call libertarian. At the heart of libertarian philosophy is what is known as a non-aggression axiom. This is the belief that, as stated by libertarian scholar Walter Block, "It shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another." Furthermore, the only legitimate use of violence in the libertarian system is to defend oneself against aggression towards one's person or legitimately owned property.

This philosophy of non-violence can and must be applied both on a micro level and a macro level in order to maintain ideological consistency. On the micro level, this would mean that Jones would have no legal right to Smith’s legitimately obtained car, and that if Jones attempted to steal Smith’s car, Smith would have a right to defend his property with the use of violent force. If applied on a macro level, the non-aggression axiom illuminates the heart of libertarian just war theory.

In a libertarian society, a just war occurs when several key criteria are met. First, as the imminent libertarian philosopher Murray N. Rothbard pointed out, a just war occurs “when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination.” This situation is similar to the aforementioned Jones-Smith scenario. An example of such a conflict is the American Revolution. The colonists justly took up arms to defend their lives and properties against a coercively domineering British government.

Another criterion for a just war is that just wars are fought using no coercively obtained funds. Libertarians believe that taxation, the when the State coercively takes citizens’ money upon the threat of violence, is a form of theft. In the case of taxation, the justly acquired property of one person is taken not by voluntary means, but by violent means. Much more can be said about this topic, but this brief overview will have to suffice for our purposes here. Therefore, the libertarian non-aggression axiom holds that military action funded by taxation does not meet the standard of a just war.

A third plank in the libertarian just war doctrine is the belief that just wars are fought using only voluntary labor rather than forced labor. Libertarians believe that involuntary servitude, the act of forcing a person to perform a task or tasks upon the threat of violence, violates the basic right of self-ownership. Self-ownership is the principle that in the state of nature, man is not born subservient to or owned by any person other than himself. Only he has control over his faculties, and therefore, only he has the right to their use. Therefore, involuntary servitude, as is required when conscription is instituted during war, is not just. Military action undertaken using conscripted soldiers is not justified under the libertarian commitment to non-aggression.

A further application of the principle of non-aggression leads to a fourth criterion for just war, namely, the belief that just wars are fought when no private civilians’ lives or property is endangered against their will. It should be plain to see how any military action that leads to the loss of the lives or the properties of civilians violates those civilians’ right to the ownership of their persons and possessions.

The fifth and final thesis in the libertarian view of just war is the belief that the rights of countries or persons to remain neutral must be respected in order for the conflict to be defined as just.  Again, as is the case with the previous points, this simply is a further extension of the libertarian commitment to non-aggression. Again, to cite Rothbard, “In short, the libertarian tries to induce neutral States to remain neutral in any inter-State conflict and to induce the warring States to observe fully the rights of neutral citizens.”

Thus, military conflict can be just, unjust, or somewhere in between. A conflict that meets several of these criteria, but not all, may be called more just than a conflict that meets none, but it cannot be called just qua just.

Historically, the military action that has come closest to meeting these criteria is the war for the liberation of Bangladesh, which occurred in 1971. The nation of Pakistan consisted of imperial rule by the Punjabis of West Pakistan over the more numerous and productive Bengalis of East Pakistan. The Bengals desired independence from their imperial rulers. When the Punjab army began slaughtering civilian Bengalis as a result of a decisive Bengali parliamentary victory, the Bengali people took up arms in their defense to shake off the coercive rule of the Punjabis.

The libertarian position is not pacifist, as is claimed by some misinformed critics, but rather it is based upon the principal that persons and property must not be threatened with violence. In a future essay, we will examine how U.S. foreign policy has for years ignored this principal. For further research, we would point the reader to the writings of Erasmus, late Spanish scholastics like Grotius and de Vitoria, early English parliamentary Radicals like John Bright and Richard Cobden, and Murray N. Rothbard. Their writings considerably influenced the view presented above. This discourse should serve to show that a comprehensive, non-arbitrary, non-contradictory theory of just war is only possible under a larger philosophy of non-aggression.

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