Rothbard On the Ukraine War

August 31, 2023

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. GoldSeek

My title seems odd. How could Murray Rothbard comment on the Ukraine War, when he died in 1995? Of course, he can’t comment on current events. But the principles this great thinker wrote about tell us what he would say about today’s American foreign policy. He would tell us to stop sending money and arms to the Ukraine and to end all sanctions against Russia. What goes on in that region is none of our business. Getting involved risks a nuclear war that would destroy the world.

Murray made the case for non-intervention in this way:

“The libertarian position, generally, is to minimize state power as much as possible, down to zero, and isolationism is the full expression in foreign affairs of the domestic objective of whittling down state power. In other words, interventionism is the opposite of isolationism, and of course it goes on up to war, as the aggrandizement of state power crosses national boundaries into other states, pushing other people around etc. So this is the foreign counterpart of the domestic aggression against the internal population. I see the two as united.