Libertarian ideas on national defense generally verge on the ridiculous.

Let us leave aside for the moment, the obvious truth that a state which cannot secure its borders will promptly see its resources occupied and looted by its neighbors the way Rwanda, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Uganda have helped themselves to the mines of Zaire. It will see its border areas being used to fight neighboring wars as gangs of armed men simply move in and take over the way the PLO did in southern Lebanon.

And let us leave aside the fact that bitter human experience teaches us that the worst possible tyranny is that exercised by gangs of young men with guns. There is no more destructive creature on this planet than a teenage boy with a gun. He has neither pity nor remorse and fears only being seen as weak by the guys. Death means nothing to him.

And let us leave aside the fact that military skills require training and practice that amateurs cannot give.

Let us look at the core of the problem. The essential unfitness of libertarian societies to defend themselves. Many libertarians, when asked, babble about Vietnam as if guerrilla warfare were paintball. Have they no conception of the staggering human cost the Vietnamese paid ? Is a society based on the principle that no one has any duty to anyone going to live in caves and tunnels for ten years ? Is a culture based on I, I, I, Me, Me, Me going to suffer and struggle and sacrifice year after year ? Of course not. Indeed, the values of good soldiers are collectivist values. Obedience. Duty. Loyalty. Self-sacrifice. Teamwork. No libertarian society would ever be willing to pay the cost in blood, sweat, and tears for victory.

I will answer your point “Indeed, the values of good soldiers are collectivist values. Obedience. Duty. Loyalty. Self-sacrifice” by observing how questionably such model soldiers as that served Russia against Afghanistan.

So you think the mujihadeen were libertarians ? You think tribal warriors are individualists ? They are absolutely nothing whatsoever of the sort. I can imagine nothing more collectivist than the values of a suicide bomber.

If that’s the measure of a good soldier I’ll put my money on those such as the individualist early Americans who fought the British for independence.

An incredibly naive romanticism about guerrilla warfare seems to be a prerequisite of libertarianism. Both instances, Afghanistan and the American Revolutionary War, illustrate a key weakness. Both require the help of a Great Power. Once France entered the war England no longer held the strategic initiative. It was immediately compelled to evacuate Philadelphia to economize on shipping. In Afghanistan without American Stinger missiles the mujihadeen would have been crushed by Soviet Mi-24′s.

And we return to my earlier point. A climate of pervasive violence will turn young men into hardened killers and guerrilla warfare is a total breakdown of civil society. The Cole, Younger, and James gangs came out of Bloody Kansas and the Quantrills. The larger the guerrilla forces, the more likely civil warfare afterwards. Idealism ? Hardly.

As if libertarians would live in caves for ten minutes.