Just as COVID begins to wane, another historical event comes rumbling into the headlines — lest we breathe a sigh of relief. As I am sure you are aware, early on the morning of February 24, Russia launched an invasion into Ukraine. While an invasion seemed like a possibility for several months, it has no become a reality. For the first time in decades, war has come to Europe. As of the writing of this article, the fighting has not yet concluded and the ramifications of Russia’s invasion are still unfolding.
As is the case during the time of all conflicts, war fever is in the air. Footage and reporting on the conflict are all over the news, propaganda abounds all over social media, and it dominates all conversation. The response of Libertarians to Russia’s invasion has been near-uniform: a condemnation of the war, state conflict, and aggression in general. For those familiar with Libertarian beliefs and ideals, this should come as no surprise. Libertarians, first and foremost, are opponents of aggression in all of its forms. War is a form of aggression — a particularly extreme one at that — and is condemned by the Libertarian as morally illegitimate and ethically impermissible.
But for the Libertarian, war carries with a unique degree of hatred and animosity. War is the utmost form of aggression that human beings can carry out against each other. Nothing can be more violent than to take the life of another. As an addition to these evils, wars are initiated and fought by the foremost agent of violence in society: the state. Corresponding to its violent nature, the state uses violent means in order to sustain the wars that it fights. Wars are never fought principally or solely through voluntary means, but through involuntary means.
In order to fund wartime operations, the state must employ its special form of legalized theft, more commonly known as “taxation”. The state has no goods or services that it sells to consumers in order to receive revenue, so in order for it to pay for the numerous expenses associated with war, it must coercively take a portion of the incomes of the people that live under it. Taxes are never an optional payment to the government, but taken with the threat of force for those who are noncompliant. These forcible levies are only exacerbated under wartime conditions, as armed conflicts are always very expensive affairs. Without these violently-obtained revenues, the state could never think to carry on wars against other states.
Not only must the state use violence to obtain the funding for its wars, but it commonly uses violence to compel its citizens to fight them. This practice of military slavery, often dubbed as “conscription”, is the practice by which the citizens of a state are forcibly placed into the armed services and ordered to fight against the kill the citizens of another state. If they refuse to do so, they are punished; generally, by court-martial and execution. In our modern age, we like to believe that slavery is a barbaric practice of the past, but the state has kept this practice alive and well in its armed services through conscription.
Not only are the means by which the state obtains its troops often coercive, but the very system that it uses for fighting its wars operates solely through the use and threat of force. The militaries of states have always been structured as rigid hierarchies. Those in the rank above you give an order and you are compelled to obey it. You have no choice to resign your position, or to refuse an order, or to break off your contract with the military. The pure bureaucracy of the military dictates that all relations with it and within it are completely involuntary. Orders are always orders, and those that refuse those orders are always punished.
Furthermore, the end goals that a state wishes as the result of its wars are almost invariably the exertion of aggression and force upon still more people. Wars are carried on to conquer more territory, and the inhabitants therein are taxed and regulated by their new masters. They are brought up into its armies, which are used for future wars and conquests.
Thus, the full nature of war is the state utilizing violent means to attain violent ends. It uses violence to attain the soldiers, funds, and military necessary to fight other states. These wars are almost always initiated for the purpose of instituting further violence. War is not merely associated with violence, but is thoroughly saturated with it. War without violence is a contradiction in terms.
The Libertarian, most fundamentally, opposes aggression and violence. War is the initiation of violence by a violent actor using violent means for the purpose of violence against others to initiate further violence once it has triumphed. Thus, the Libertarian opposes war on a fundamental and visceral level. It is completely anathema to everything that the Libertarian holds dear.
War is the most violent of all things. As such, war is the worst of all things. It is because of this that the Libertarian, more than any other form or manifestation of violence, hates and despises war. He opposes it at every turn, no matter the aggressor; whether it be Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine, Adolf Hitler invading Poland, or any future conflict to come. War is the strongest enemy of liberty, and as such, is the strongest enemy of the Libertarian.
