Comments (31)

• Dr. Michael W. Popejoy

  I have the utmost respect and admiration for the late Murray Rothbard and I am a mere grasshopper in comparison to his intellect, however, I have to disagree to at least part of his thesis on 20th century warfighting. Had Hitler limited himself to reunifying disputed German territory and rebuilding Germany's economic and industrial infrastructure, then WWII would unlikely to have been necessary. However, his near genocide of European Jewry and his aggressive campaign to absorb virtually all of Europe under his fascist system really needed to be countered by a country strong enough to stop him. And despite U.S. provocation -- it was the Japanese who chose to attack Pearl Harbor and lead us into war. Did FDR know the attack was coming? Many think that he did and he failed to warn the base there to create the war fever that was necessary to get a naive American public committed to war. In this regard, Rothbard is correct about political leadership creating the fear of the barbarians at the gate. I think in terms of Hitler and the Japanese and to some extent, the Russians, we were correct in assuming they posed a danger to our continuation as a nation-state. However, we cannot easily draw parallels to the Iraq issue and other problems around the world even though the creation of a war frenzy is necessary to get American commitment to support a war. American commitment is fleeting. Even Truman knew that public support for WWII was fading and he needed to end it quickly--the delay in ending it was the absolute refusal to accept any type of termination of the war conditionally. Even Eisenhower was adamant not to grant any conditions to the surrender of the German High Command--he stated in his book on the war, "this has become personal." Similar unconditional terms were forced on the Japanese and two atom bombs forced them to surrender their homeland. The unconditional terms did lengthen the war considerably, cost more lives and more money. Wilson similarly wanted Germany to be utterly beaten and the autocracy of their system defeated and eradicated completely. We, in America, have always believed that democracy and freedom are such fundamental natural rights that we cannot conceive of anyone in the world not wanting that for themselves. If only we can remove the dictator (insert name here) then the people will voluntarily support democracy, freedom, and yes, capitalism. The U.S. did not start WWI and WWII but some leaders believed strongly that we had to finish them to protect those things that we hold sacred and that many people may take too much for granted.

  Michael W. Popejoy, Ph.D.

  Published: June 29, 2007 9:30 AM

• George Gaskell

  And despite U.S. provocation -- it was the Japanese who chose to attack Pearl Harbor and lead us into war. Did FDR know the attack was coming? Many think that he did and he failed to warn the base there to create the war fever that was necessary to get a naive American public committed to war.

  FDR was engaged in the war in the Pacific for quite a while before Pearl Harbor. He authorized the Flying Tigers, and fought the Japanese in other ways using the Chinese as a proxy, all in direct violation of the Neutrality Acts. The only reason that Pearl Harbor came as such a surprise was that FDR did all of these illegal acts in secret.

  
  We, in America, have always believed that democracy and freedom are such fundamental natural rights that we cannot conceive of anyone in the world not wanting that for themselves.

  The problem is that democracy does not equal freedom, nor is democracy even particularly conducive to freedom.

  Published: June 29, 2007 9:47 AM

• Nat

  We, in America, have always believed that democracy and freedom are such fundamental natural rights that we cannot conceive of anyone in the world not wanting that for themselves.

  Who is this "we" you speak of? FOurtunately, the United States is NOT a democracy. It is, to quote Franklin, "A republic, if you can keep it."

  Published: June 29, 2007 10:09 AM

• TLWP Sam

  Well G. Gaskell, if Democracy is not particularly conductive to freedom but rather leads to the 'majority tyrannising the minority' then this can only mean two things.

  1. The majority are raving idiots who don't know what good for them.

  2. Probably more likely, the majority are thieves and bandits who want the most they can get with the least amount of effort and certainly don't care not where the money came from.

  After all, if the majority of people were decent and freedom-loving then Democracy would be strong against any would-be thieving minority and lead to an overall betterment of society. Guess the proof is all around us then?

  Published: June 29, 2007 10:30 AM

• fred

  "After all, if the majority of people were decent and freedom-loving then Democracy would be strong against any would-be thieving minority "

  Hey, isn't this a commonly used argument for anarchy?

  Published: June 29, 2007 11:27 AM

• Timothy Kelly

  The founding myth of the American Empire is 'the Good War.' We are told without US intervention in the Second World War, Nazi-Germany's 80 million would have conquered the world's 3 billion. Had it not been for FDR's foresight in embroiling the U.S. in that conflict, we'd all be speaking German now (or perhaps Japanese). For today's advocates of American Imperium, it is forever 1941 and every foreign leader who crosses Uncle Sam is a modern day Hitler hell bent on aggression, global conquest and is nothing less than the incarnation of pure evil.
  But even before the Japanese ''surprise'' attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler's offensive in Russia had been blunted by ''General Winter.'' In Asia, Japan was bogged down in China and was looking for a way to save face. It was the intransigence of FDR that led to the Japanese attempt at ''preventative war'' by attacking the U.S. fleet in Hawaii. Indeed, the United States had gone to war (War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish American War, World War One) for much less than that what was being done to the Japanese by the U.S. and Great Britain in 1941. Why was it America's responsibility to protect the status quo in Asia against Japanese aggression. Were the European colonies in Asia the responsibility of the United States? Was the Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere anymore unjust than the Dutch, French or British empires? These are questions that are hardly ever asked. Instead we a fed a morality tale of good versus evil. And as for those who say World War Two provides a ready-made analogy justifying American interventionism from here to eternity, I ask: why isn't the year 1917 ever used? That is the year Woodrow Wilson decided to embroil the United States in the great European slaughter then called 'the Great War'. It was U.S. intervention that not only prolonged the war but led to total German defeat and the Bolsehvik Revolution in Russia. Had it not been for U.S. intervention, Britain and France, then exhausted, would have been forced to come to terms with Imperial Germany. It is impossible to imagine how the Nazis would have been able to come to power if Germany had been able to achieve a limited victory in 1917. Had the U.S. not bribed and cajoled the provisional Russian government into staying in the war, Lenin would not had been able to sneak into Russia and orchestrate his coup in November, 1917. Imagine a 20th century without a Hitler or Stalin.
  It is important to consider this perspective because it was the Great War and its aftermath that led directly to Second World War and the Cold War. The United States, rather than being a benevolent interventionist hegemon, has been a dangerous and destabilizing international force. Our leaders tell us that our nation is ''indispensable'' and that we must ''lead the world.'' But history's graveyard is full of ''indispensable nations.''

  Published: June 29, 2007 11:44 AM

• Matt

  I agree about WW1 being a disaster, the capstone of a wretched Presidency. However, to compare the European colonies to the Japanese or Germans is unfair. Nanking was not an aberration, and the Nazi's record with Jews, Eastern Europeans, Russians, and gypsies is well known.
  Those two nations, and the Soviets after them, were crimes against humanity that had to be opposed. Korea, Kuwait, and Grenada also qualify as cases where intervention was justified.

  Published: June 29, 2007 12:59 PM

• Anthony Gregory

  The US didn't jump into WWII to stop the Holocaust. The Final Solution didn't even kick into full gear until well after the US intervened. When the US intervened, in 1941, the USSR had murdered far, far more people than the Nazis, so coming in the war on the side of Stalin was not in any way motivated by international human rights concerns. The war didn't stop the Holocaust — the Holocaust was PART of the war! Indeed, FDR refused to bomb the rails to the concentration camps or even to let exiled Jews into America. One could theoretically argue that Hitler would have killed even more people had it not been for certain developments, but I find it more likely that he killed more than he could have had the war been more limited and ended earlier. Allied bombings and demands for unconditional surrender only prolonged the war and likely accelerated Nazi atrocities.

  The US jumped into the war because of Pearl Harbor. The fervor that overcame the non-interventionist sentiment of the 1930s, itself a reaction from the utter failure of Wilsonianism to produce anything but a world safe for socialism and fascism, was not a human-rights passion; it was a desire to strike back at the Japanese. Indeed, American culture was very anti-Japanese at the time. WWII was, from the point of view of America, much more a race war against the Japanese than any sort of war against racist oppression.

  As for national security, or the security of the world, the Nazis couldn't even cross the English Channel and invade Britain. They were not going to take over the world or America. Britain wanted support from the US because Churchill wanted to save not just England but the British empire -- he could have brought home his imperial forces from around the world to make the victory over Hitler even more of a sure thing. But he wanted to keep the British empire that had been dominating the world for so long.

  Ultimately, the Nazis were defeated by the Red Army and the Russian Winter, not by GI Joe. Most of the Nazi fighting was in the East. Most of the American fighting was with Japan. The end result of US intervention might have helped preserve and extend the USSR, but it did nothing decisive to defeat the Nazis. They would have been defeated anyway.

  The US should have stayed out of the war. It only led to an empowered US empire, an empowered Russian empire, much of Europe enslaved by Stalin within minutes of being liberated from Hitler, four decades of Cold War, millions more deaths, the origins of US meddling in the Middle East and its resulting blowback and the war on terror, and most of the domestic statism we have today.

  Published: June 29, 2007 1:16 PM

• Robert Brazil

  Anthony is obviously one of the hate-America left.

  (Of course, I'm kidding. I agree with him 100%. Just figured I'd beat the pro-interventionist posters to the punch.)

  Published: June 29, 2007 1:50 PM

• Michael Woods

  To the individual above who refuses to compare European colonialism to the policies of the communists and nazis, I strongly suggest reading a bit more regarding the Belgians in the Congo, or the French in Algeria.

  Published: June 29, 2007 2:50 PM

• Anthony Gregory

  Thanks, Robert.

  Great point, Michael. Leopold was a total monster. Certainly, he was worse than Mussolini.

  Published: June 29, 2007 4:27 PM

• josh m

  Years of indoctrination undone in 10 minutes. I love this blog. :)

  Published: June 29, 2007 5:10 PM

• Timothy Kelly

  A recapitulation of the war crimes committed by the Axis powers is unnecessary. No serious person doubts they occurred and while there may be disagreements over the death toll, there is no doubt it exceeded four million. But what is not generally appreciated are the war crimes committed by the Allies. By 1941, Stalin had already killed most of his 20 million . How is it obvious that the United States should assist the Soviet Union when it was attacked by Nazi Germany? Hitler's decision to turn east in 1941 signaled his designs on England had been thwarted. This might have been an opportunity for Churchill to sue for peace and buy the United Kingdom a respite. And if FDR had stuck to his presidential oath and not been so enthusiastic about getting the US into the war, Churchill might accepted Hitler's olive branch in 1940. Given the situtation in Asia, this might have been the prudent choice.
  The Final Solution did not become policy until 1942 and was as much a part of the war as terror bombing and blitzkreig. The duration of the conflict and its intensity contributed to barbarization of all the belligerents. The Allies resorted to indiscriminate bombing killing over 1 million Japanese and German civilians. While some argue ''terror bombing'' was a regrettable but necessary strategy against a stubborn and evil enemy, the Allied bombing campaign not only blurred the moral distinctions between the two sides, it prolonged the war by stiffening German resistence and destroyed a thousand year old urban culture. The Allied policy of unconditional surrender only drove the Germans to fight for Hitler to the bitter end. The Nazis had been made aware of the Morganthau Plan to de industrialize and divide Germany after war. Henry Morganthau said ''I don't care if 20 million Germans die after the war. Germany must be destroyed.'' The Allied proclamation also undermined whatever resistence there was to Hitler within Germany and guaranteed half the continent would be overrun by the Red Army.
  In the Pacific, Japan had been beaten by 1945 and had been making peace overtures. Again the Allied demand for unconditional surrender needlessly prolonged the war in Pacific resulting in the moral calamities of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombings.

  Published: June 29, 2007 6:34 PM

• Axel Riemer

  My dad is a bit of a history buff and does a lot of reading of the standard stuff (Churchill, Lincoln, Solzhenitsyn, Eisenhower, Sandburg's bios, and so forth), but he's no fool. We got to talking, and he mentioned how WW2 is viewed through rose-tinted glasses still. Armed forces are organized through the bureaucratic method, an inherently wasteful method of allocating resources. The history of armed forces is littered with massive corruption, waste, misjudgment, and miscommunication. He brought up the most famous, stated best general of the Civil War - General Lee. This "best" general's tactic of choice was the frontal assault, seen in every single one of his attacks, and epitomized in "Pickett's Charge." History now condemns the trench warfare of WWI as foolish wasting of life and supplies. But where are the history books that tell us of the idiotic decisions of our commanders in WWII? I can see the bombing of civilian populations figuring strongly, and the massive destruction propagated by the war machines. Those idiots, what were they thinking? And all the waste, where is it documented? Where is the food delivered to the wrong location, and broken equipment sent to the front? Don't tell me it didn't happen.

  I guess it's always true - we're always fighting the last war.

  Come the day we stop fighting.

  Published: June 30, 2007 12:34 AM

• George Gaskell

  Where is the food delivered to the wrong location, and broken equipment sent to the front? Don't tell me it didn't happen.

  Of course it happens, a lot. But in addition to the screw ups that are seen, don't forget the importance of what is unseen -- the equipment that is never built, the efficient allocation of resources that never sees the light of day, and is thus never examined and analyzed.

  Published: June 30, 2007 8:59 AM

• lester

  matt- disagree about Kuwait. look at the can of worms it opened. The kuwaitis knew they could piss off saddam to no end and we'd back them up, loyal oil slaves we are.

  Published: June 30, 2007 2:04 PM

• bwp

  There I was extolling the virtues of Mises blogs and how we are all capable of listening to alternative view points and you censored the whole thing, removing my contribution and Dains and the wayout John's.
  Wow- and I thought you guys were with it. So when it comes to Political Correctness even you, the current guardians of the LvMI, happily subscribe. May Murray forgive you because I never will. You're lucky David White wasn't watching.

  Published: July 1, 2007 1:07 AM

• DJ

  I read the Rothbard piece with rising disappointment. Rothbard was a brilliant economist and a worthy protege of Von Mises.

  He should have stopped at that.

  The above writing is amongst the most ridiculous and "blame America" or the West, pieces I have read.

  How Rothbard lurches from capitalism to anarchism and the resultant revisionist history blaming of America will itself always be a mystery.

  It is a pity, a great pity and might I add to those who participated and saw first hand the results and aims of all the tyrranies America has had to face, offensive.
  

  Published: July 1, 2007 1:05 PM

• Anthony Gregory

  DJ, I don't understand why criticizing US government policy, which Misesian economics informs us will always produce distortions and have unintended effects, is the same as "blaming America," much less "the West." Western Civilization is wonderful to the extent its great values are upheld, but western powers have frequently eschewed those values. I mean, the Nazis were part of "the West," too.

  Published: July 1, 2007 1:49 PM

• Robert Brazil

  Did I call that one or what?

  Saying the U.S. should not inject itself into foreign wars is not the same as blaming America for the atrocious behavior of foreign states. Why can't some people make this distinction?

  My guess is they have an emotional dependency, instilled from childhood, on the mythology of "indispensable" America and its "good" wars, through which they vicariously make up for their own perceived shortcomings.

  This leads to thought processes like the following:

  If mass murder of innocents = evil, then Nazis = evil.
  BUT
  Allied bombing of civilians (with death tolls in the hundreds of thousands) = GOOD! and Stalinist death squads (with death tolls in the tens of millions) =

  Therefore, mass murder, and alliances with mass murderers, are the appropriate courses of action to rectify the injustice of mass murder. And only the inhumane would object to this.

  Don't you see the logic?

  Published: July 1, 2007 2:40 PM

• CVW

  IMO Murray Rothbard provides a ringing endorsement of today's Leftist history revisionism in America. Note that in his opinion nearly every war America has been involved in we are the "bad guys" and Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo are by default the good guys.
  He contends that the Cold War was a reflection of US imperialism's designs on taking control of Eastern Europe. The fact that Stalin had already incorporated Eastern Europe into his fold doesn't appear to be a factor, because of course, "It is about time that Americans learn: that Bad Guys (Nazis or Communists) may not necessarily want or desire war, or be out to "conquer" the world (their hope for "conquest" may be strictly ideological and not military at all)." Oddly Rothbard fails to mention that when the Soviet communist regimes imploded, Eastern Europe welcomed America with open arms, claiming they had truly been “liberated“. Secondly he leaves us to wonder , if America was intent on having another war over Eastern Europe, why America delivered Eastern Europe to Stalin at the end of WW II. Is there a disconnect with reason here or was America slow in realizing the importance of Eastern Europe?
  Remove Rothbard's name from this article and the reader could easily believe that Noam Chomsky was the author. Sadly Rothbard's influence in this area has lead America's extreme Right, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul types, to share nearly identical positions on trade and national security with the American Socialist Left. When free traders and believers in Republicanism finds themselves in league with John Sweeney, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, it's time to check the compass and see which way we're going.
  

  Published: July 2, 2007 10:56 AM

• RogerM

  While I think Rothbard goes overboard on his criticisms of the US and democracy, a lot of newer history seems to back up a few of his points. Niall Fergusson (Harvard historian) in "The War of the World" writes that Japan and Germany launched WWII partly out of self defense. Both were highly industrialized and imported most of their food and both held firmly (as did the rest of the world) to the mercantile doctrine that trade has to be balanced. So Germany and Japan believed they had to sell their manufactured goods to other nations in order to be able to pay for imported food. Without being able to sell manufactured goods, Japan and Germany believed their people would starve. Both had an increasingly difficult time selling their goods because of rapidly rising trade barriers, especially in the US, one of Germany's chief food suppliers. The Japanese and Germans decided early in the 1930's that they would have to conquer farmland because they would not be able to import food. Japan chose to conquer Korea and China while Germany chose the Ukraine. Germany even had a name for its policy--lebensraum, or "living room."

  Dramatically reducing trade barriers may have prevented WWII, but it's hard to say.

  The US was definately imperialistic in the 19th century, having started the War of 1812 trying to take Canada, launching the Mexican American war and stealing half of Mexico, stealing the land of Native American nations who had modeled their new governments on the US pattern, and starting the Spanish American war for no good reason except empire. You can view the civil war as imperialism on the part of the North, too.

  Published: July 2, 2007 12:26 PM

• Robert Brazil

  CVW writes: "Sadly Rothbard's influence in this area has lead America's extreme Right, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul types, to share nearly identical positions on trade and national security with the American Socialist Left."

  Ron Paul's position on trade is entirely different from that of Pat Buchanan. Buchanan is a protectionist, while Paul favors truly free, unfettered and unmanaged trade. (Paul opposes NAFTA and other false "free trade" agreements that foster trade managed by governments for the benefit of corporations.)

  CVW: "Note that in his opinion nearly every war America has been involved in we are the "bad guys" and Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo are by default the good guys."

  Even if Rothbard outright said that "we" (meaning the U.S. government) are "the bad guys" (which statement he did not make, to my knowledge), that does not make anyone else "the good guys." Libertarians, including those of the Old Right, and including such American founders as Thomas Jefferson, have always displayed a healthy distrust of all governments, including — and especially — their own. This reflects the reality that, most of the time, one's own government is a greater threat to one's liberty than any foreign government.

  I always like to remind people that there is no Hitler tax deducted from my paycheck; there are several FDR taxes, though. It is not Bin Laden who locks up peaceful Americans for nonviolent drug use, who collects rent on their property and deprives them of its full use, who bullies and gropes them at the airport, who regulates their toilet flushes and violates their freedom of contract and association.

  "American" should be synonymous with "liberty." Supporting government policies — including an interventionist foreign policy and its corollary, war — that diminish liberty is as un-American as you can get, no matter what Hannity and the other loudmouthed, neocon morons (redundancy alert!) would have us believe.

  Published: July 2, 2007 1:39 PM

• Anthony Gregory

  It's interesting that Rothbard allegedly agreeing with Chomsky on an historical point would clearly make him wrong, yet the US government allying with Stalin, delivering to him millions of victims in Operation Keelhaul, and so on, do not automatically challenge the notion that the US was completely in the right in that war. If merely agreeing with Chomsky about something is damning to your sense of truth and justice, one would think helping Stalin murder people would also count against you. Or was Stalin only evil when he was a US enemy, sort of like Noriega, Osama and Saddam?

  Published: July 3, 2007 6:16 PM

• Anthony Gregory

  Also, how could we say that "Rothbard's influence in this area has lead America's extreme Right, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul types, to share nearly identical positions on trade and national security with the American Socialist Left"? This seems to me a strange criticism, given that Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan don't agree with each other on trade. Buchanan believes in protectionism. Paul is a free-trader. On war, they perhaps have more in common, but Paul is more of a non-interventionist than Buchanan, I would have to say.

  One of Rothbard's truly great accomplishments was helping to show people that peace and liberalism go together, that war and liberty are at odds. This had been a forgotten lesson in America. Paul is helping to spread this lesson further each day. Thank goodness.

  Published: July 3, 2007 6:20 PM

• Timothy Kelly

  Revisionism is a necessary exercise if history is to have any beneficial influence on our understanding of the past and if it is to provide any lessons for the present day. While it may be true the victors write the history books, courageous revisionists like Murray Rothbard, Charles Baird, Robert Higgs and others ensure that there are at least counter currents to the mainstream.

  This isn't to suggest that all revisionism is correct and those who have a critical view of the United States make a fetish out of it. This would be an intellectual and moral error. But an unpleasant truth is what has been retailed to the general public as ''history'' has been statist propaganda, a quilt of lies, half truths, political mythology and fairy tales that tells a Parson Weems view of history. While the political correctness movement has staged a considerable assault on the mainstream, it has been waged largely in the name of identity politics and is itself an affront to academic freedom and intellectual integrity.

  Those who wish to study history must be willing on occasion to play the role of iconolcast. Myths of been created and monuments erected that must be torn down and smashed.

  It is clear now the Bush administration invaded Iraq on false pretenses. There is very strong evidence indicating the administration manipulated intelligence and lied in order to secure congressional support for its war. For some this may be hard believe. Why would a president lie to start a war? But U.S. history is replete with examples of presidents doing just that. President Polk lied in order justify his war of conquest against Mexico. President McKinley and a compliant ''yellow'' press colluded to start the Spanish-American War. Woodrow Wilson was able to embroil the United States in World War One by telling distortions and lies to the American people. Franklin Roosevelt's deception prior to the United States entry into World War Two is no longer disputed. Indeed, FDR's duplicity is now celebrated as a sign of his ''statemanship.'' LBJ's lies regarding the Gulf of Tonkin resolution have been exposed. In each of these cases, presidents violated public trust and abused their offices in order to spread war fever and get the nation involved in wars that had little or nothing to do with national security.

  The history of America's wars can be summed up as ''lies, lies, and more damned lies.''

  Published: July 4, 2007 8:16 AM

• Thucydides

  There is an important principle to keep in mind in understanding U.S. foreign policy, and for that matter political action in general: namely, the principle of over-determination of policy. That is, there wasn't just one constituency.

  The U.S. war against Iraq occurred due to a convergence of interests. These included: U.S. corporate energy strategists seeking access to secure, lucrative, and relatively long term energy resources; Zionists seeking to eliminate potential military threats to Israel; military strategists seeking permanent military bases in critical areas of Eurasia in order to secure "full spectrum dominance" over potential strategic rivals (the so-called lily-pad doctrine); war profiteers seeking to ensure a reliable flow of highly profitable military contracts into the foreseeable future; defenders of the dollar fiat currency system ensuring that the U.S. paper currency remains backed by military control over the world's oil supply; the neo-colonialists aiming to demonstrate overwhelming military power against any states or peoples daring to thumb their noses at the U.S. dominated international system.

  The political discussion preceding the war didn't generally mention the actual interests involved. Most people were nonetheless overwhelmingly opposed to the war, as reasonable people understood that the purported reasons for the war were morally and practically inadequate. Even supposing Iraq actually had a WMD program, which was in doubt, people understood that that program could be contained both by the inspections system as well as the overwhelming deterrent other major powers could bring to bear. There was no reasonable cause for war. Many people correctly reasoned that other interests were involved.

  Timothy Kelly is entirely correct in seeing America's wars as founded on lies, (from Jenkins', still attached, ear on). Public propaganda is hardly a sufficient guide to understanding the actual reasons for war.

  Published: July 4, 2007 7:18 PM

• An

  It is about time that Americans learn: that Bad Guys (Nazis or Communists) may not necessarily want or desire war, or be out to "conquer" the world (their hope for "conquest" may be strictly ideological and not military at all)
  were Cuba or Afghanistan only ideologically conquered? not to speak of all the African countries that still suffer form the "brotherly help" given by the USSR?

  Democracies that wage war need to produce much more propaganda to whip up their citizens, and at the same time to camouflage their policies much more intensely in hypocritical moral cant to fool the voters. The lack of need for this on the part of dictatorships often makes their policies seem superficially to be more warlike, and this is one of the reasons why they have had a "bad press" in this century.
  I'm not sure that one should speak of the same type of propaganda when it comes to a democracy or a totalitarian state. While in the former the critique of the "general thinking" is not only free but seen as very legitimate, in the latter any critique is a crime and punished as a consequence. I don't have here the space to develop the functions of the ideology, a Weltanschauung that makes impossible not only the deliberate critique (limited by the almighty armed force) but even the free thinking, even private (by an all life socialization from craddle to grave, from the kindergarten, the youth associations, the working-class associations etc.). there's nothing more significant here than the critique of the marxism-leninism, the communism etc. by ancient believers (from the "grands" such as Kolakowski or Milosz to the unknown "désenchantés").
  "the United States, Great Britain, and France — the three great "democracies" — to be worse than any other three countries in fomenting and waging aggressive war"
  I can't find anything more criminal than the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and the waves of destruction over Poland immediately after. What distinguishes a democracy from a dictatorship remains the fact that the latter declares war on its subject population,a war that denies the right at any critique, a war that makes people betray their families or even admit crimes they have not committed...I think this kind of war is more perverse than any other.
  I find upsetting the comparison between the West ant The USSR regarding the dominance over (Eastern) Europe. let's remember how did the americans act in the "occupied" Western Germany and how did the Russians act. I think HH Hoppe has a chapter in his "A theory of Socialism and capitalism" about the Democratic and the Federal Germany after the war. While the american dominance meant free market, the soviet dominance
  meant crimes, nationalization, Goulag for the opponents and a societal destruction that is still visible in the present (and in other countries still more visible).
  I don't know what it means when M. Rothbard says that : "the US and Britain felt they had to launch a Cold War to oust Russia from the dominance over Eastern Europe which it had obtained as a natural consequence of the joint defeat of Germany". I would not say the the coup d'Etat in 1945 in Romania or the "suicide" of the Czechoslovakian PM in 45, or the salami technique in all the occupied countries would qualify as "natural". 50 years of communism makes one think better about the significance of "dominance". finally, a word about "imperialism". As an Easterner I had my share of the uses and abuses of this word (even after 1989 when the neo-communist governments spoke against the privatizations and the free market- "we are not selling our country..." a comment which is very telling about the real significance of the word imperialism for communists).
  "America has now become the world colossus of imperialism, propping up puppet and client states all over the undeveloped areas of the world, and fiercely attempting to suppress nationalist revolutions that would take these countries out of the American imperial orbit." I sincerely don't understand this sentence in the general thought of the austrian school. This tiermondisme (I would quote here Hannah Arendt, "the Third world is only an ideology")? How can we forget about an other form of imperialism, violent, through "popular revolutions" armed by USSR in the 70s all over Africa and even Asia? Do we have the right to forget the "boat people" after the retreat of the Americans?
  I am for all reconsideration of history in light of new proofs, I believe that history is never written once and for all and that each new generation needs to reconsider it and in no way ignore it. But I believe also that in the struggle against a bad guy-the democratic state( by its fundaments a wrong construction, and I appreciate Rothbards' Ethics of liberty as a brilliant attempt to offer a new vision of the "living-together") we shouldn't ignore the even worse guy. worse than a propaganda for war is a propaganda for war that kills/imprisons his opponents. I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe that every state/power which allows the freedom of speech leaves the door open for freedom, for the moment when one decides to think.
  indeed, America has changed since the discussions around the "Federalist papers", but this doesn't change the fact that the crimes remain on Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao's side more blatantly, not because they had more victims or because they aren't the most powerful leaders of the world, but because their crimes went always together with the monopoly of truth and of speech.

  Published: July 6, 2007 5:50 AM

• Timothy Kelly

  The Soviet domination of eastern Europe and all its related horrors were consequences of the demand for unconditional surrender by the United States and her allies. Not only did this policy prolong the war, it resulted in a power vacuum in central Europe that would inevitably be filled by the Soviet Union. There were critics within the U.S. government, the Vatican, and the German military who sought to end the war before the continent was reduced to rubble and overrun by the Red Army. Indeed, even Winston Churchill privately expressed doubts regarding the Allies' demand. The Allied bombing campaign coupled with the impending onslaught by the Red Army against Germany appeared to vindicate the worst Nazi propaganda. The Roosevelt administration planned for the total destruction of Germany (Morgenthau Plan) and appeared either naive or indifferent to Stalin's territorial ambitions in Europe.

  A key point regarding U.S. participation in the war is that U.S. leaders lied about or exaggerated the risks to national security in order to garner public support for intervention. Roosevelt went even so far so as to brandish a forged map, eagerly provided by the British, showing Nazi designs on South America. Considering the Nazi war machine had been frustrated by English Channel, making the claim that Hitler planned to attack the United States via Dakar to Brazil, was brazen even for someone as decptive as Roosevelt. The U.S. had become a de facto belligerant in Battle of the Atlantic when FDR ordered armed escorts and started providing air cover and intelligence to the British ships. In China, the president illegally ordered the military intervention against the Japanese by establishing the 'Flying Tigers.' Throughout the summer of 1941, the Roosevelt administration cornered the Japanese in order to provoke a war in the Pacific. This policy came to fruition on December 7, 1941.

  The U.S. government also engaged in deception and exaggeration at the start of the Cold War. President Truman announced his ''doctrine'' of supporting ''free peoples'' against communist aggression. George Kennan sent his 'Mr X'' telegram. Winston Churchill toured America and gave his ''Iron Curtain'' speech warning of impending Soviet conquest. The British, now bankrupt, signalled they were no longer able to support the Greeks. Nonetheless, public support for continued U.S. presence in Europe was not forthcoming. So the Truman administration, in order to get its program through the Congress had to, in the words of Senator Arthur Vandenburg, ''scare the hell out of the American people.'' General Lucius Clay, in his memoirs, admitted to being pressured to exaggerate the Soviet threat in order get support in Congress for increased military expenditure. And of course, there were the material circumstances of the day. The Soviet Union had just waged a four year war against the Nazi war machine and had sustained losses in excesss of 20 million. Economically Russia was devestated and her armies in poor condition. Most of her resources were devoted to securing occupied territory and she was in process of tearing up railways and confiscating industrial machinery for shipment east for use in her domestic economy. This was hardly the posture of a nation-state preparing for aggressive warfare. It has also been exposed that the U.S. government constantly exaggerated Soviet conventional military strength in order to justify the huge expenditures that enriched the military industrial complex.

  But Rothbard's main point is not only did U.S. intervention prolong the war and ultimately render the U.S. more vulnerable (in this case the war ushered in the nuclear age and therefore created the only conditions by which America could suffer significant destruction at the hands of a foreign foe), but the justification for each intervention (World War One, World War Two, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, and now Iraq) has been based on lies.

  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were certainly tyrants and responsible for the deaths of tens of million of people. But the historical evidence suggests they were consequences of U.S. interventionism, rather than being a justifications for it.

  Published: July 7, 2007 7:00 AM

• Dr. Michael W. Popejoy, Ph.D.

  If the U.S. is indeed the black hat in all the 20th century conflicts, as I have been reading in this blog--then has someone written any counterfactual historical account of what the world would be like today if the U.S. had simply remained neutral in all world conflicts of the last century? This is a serious question because I do not know for sure if anyone has explored the possibilities of a world without U.S. military, economic, and/or political intervention. Would it be a better world, worse, or roughly the same? Have we Americans made a difference? I recently wrote a counterfactual history piece published in Public Voices (Rutgers University) on my thoughts about the 19th century if Alexander Hamilton had not been slain in a duel by Aaron Burr (Alexander Hamilton: What if Aaron Burr Missed?). Whether you would agree or disagree with my musings on how he could have made a difference, the fact remains that his life ended and so did any of his potential future contributions. History can be revisited, but it cannot be undone. There is some "fun" in counterfactual history, but we have to live in the reality of what is done is done. If we had stayed out of WWI, WWII, Korea,Vietnam and the current Middle East crisis, would things simply have resolved themselves for the better? I wonder.

  Published: August 10, 2007 2:35 PM

• michael

  I must say that I read the comments on Rothbards article with mixed feelings. On one hand It is quite interesting taking in new perspectives on history that I have not heard before.

  Intervention, in economics as well as in foreign policy, always leads to unpredictably consequences. And preparing for, and conducting war inevitably demand more state intervention in peoples lives. As a previous uncritical supporter of US foreign policy I must say that I am not quite as sure of where I stand today on these matters.

  But I am also getting the feeling that the dislike for the concept of government (which I share) is getting so strong that proportionalities are getting lost. Surely history should be revised in the light of new facts. But just because present America is not living up to Rothbards dream of a libertarian society (and to be perfectly clear, it is a dream which I share), and because some historical US foreign interventions may have had tragic consequences or may be unjust, this does not imply that the US is responsible for all tragedies around the world or that all consequences or unpredicted sideeffects attributed to US intervention are the moral fault of America. Claims, such as this, are way out of proportion:

  “Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were certainly tyrants and responsible for the deaths of tens of million of people. But the historical evidence suggests they were consequences of U.S. interventionism, rather than being a justifications for it.”

  Have we all turned marxist now, believing in some kind of historical determinism? Was it American intervention that per default created the bownshirts in pre WW2 Germany, that automatically determined Germans to adopt a totalitarian ideology, beating up opponents and confiscating the property of jews? Was is American intervention that automatically made Stalin and his fellow communist to murder millions? Was it American foreign policy that created the rationale for murdering thousands of polish officers, who at the same time belonged to the anit-communist intelligentsia, in Katyn? Was it American foreign policy that made the Soviet union support nearly all socialistic revolutions throughout the third world after WW2? Is American foreign policy to blame for 9/11? If it is, why are we not seeing terrorist from south America, an area heavily influenced by US foreign policy, targeting American civilians?

  Surely, US foreign policy has throughout history created butterfly effects. This should warn us about the dangers of such a policy. But this does not mean that people who in some way or another are “effected” by American foreign policy can’t, or shouldn’t, use their own minds, or make moral judgments. Blowing up civilians in present day Israel or beating up political opponents back in the 1920-1930s in Germany is not a legitimate answer to US intervention. And should not be used as an argument against the state. Our enemies enemy is nor our fried. It is time to put an end to this ridiculous and irresponsible relativism.
  

  Published: August 12, 2007 7:56 AM