Transcript: The Foundations of a Libertarian Foreign Policy

 

Controversies in Libertarianism, Podcast 3

Date of recording: June 3, 2025, The Savvy Street Show

Host: Roger Bissell. Guests: Walter Block, Vinay Kolhatkar

 

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

 

Roger Bissell

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to The Savvy Street Show. My name is Roger Bissell, and I’m your host for this third installment of our series on controversies in libertarianism. Tonight’s topic is libertarian foreign policy. Is there even such a thing? And if there is more than one candidate, are any of them correct in their basics or, if not, can they be fixed? So again, here to explore this topic are my two guests, the eminent economist and libertarian theorist and author of the series, Defending the Undefendable, Walter Block. Welcome to the show, Walter.

 

Walter Block

Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure.

 

Roger Bissell

Pleasure for us, too, Walter, good to have you. And second, we have my friend and frequent co-host, a novelist and screenwriter, chief editor of The Savvy Street, and co-author with me of Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, Vinay Kolhatkar. Welcome to the show, Vinay.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you for having me.

 

Roger Bissell

Well, we’re going to just plunge right in. The first question is rather open-ended, just to kind of warm up with. Does a nation-state, such as the United States, have rights or obligations or any kind of moral principles that it needs to act according to? Walter, let’s have you begin, if you would.

 

Walter Block

On the one hand, I wear an anarcho-capitalist hat. And on the other hand, I wear a moderate libertarian hat; call it classical liberalism.

I guess I’m torn on this because I wear two hats. On the one hand, I wear an anarcho-capitalist hat. And on the other hand, I wear a moderate libertarian hat; call it minarchism or classical liberalism or something like that. Now, with the anarcho-capitalist hat, paradoxically, we’re not against government. We just want everyone to have one. So, from the anarcho-capitalist point of view, the optimal number of governments is about 8 billion, because there are 8 billion people here, and everyone should have one. You know, be the first on your block to have a government, and everyone should get one. And then my government should be nice to your government, Roger, and nice to your government, Vinay, and we should all follow the non-aggression principle, and we should all cooperate with each other. We don’t have to like each other, but we’ve got to keep our mitts off each other—unless we agree to put our mitts on each other, like in a voluntary boxing match or something like that. So, the foreign policy of me should be the same as the foreign policy of you guys, and that is to adhere to the non-aggression principle and uphold private property rights based on homesteading—and as Robert Nozick would then say, on anything subsequent like voluntary trade. So, if I homestead some land and you homestead a cow, and I produce corn and you produce milk, and now we trade, I now have the righteous ownership of the milk even though I didn’t produce it, because I can trace it back to homestead and voluntary trade.

Now for the tough part. Now we’re minarchists for the moment, or classical liberals, and what should the government do? Well, it’s going to collect taxes, which is a no-no, but now I’m not an anarcho-capitalist anymore. I’m schizophrenic. I’m now a limited-government libertarian. And yes, we’re going to have taxes, and the taxes are mainly for armies to protect us from foreign invaders; police to protect us from local invaders, rapists, murderers; and courts to determine, what should be the statutory rape age, or is my music too loud at three in the morning? Things like that. Or Vinay and I had a contract, and I say he broke it, he says he didn’t, so I’ll appoint you, Roger, as the court. You would decide, based on the evidence that Vinay and I give to you.

I don’t see anything in the bowels of libertarianism that says you can’t have any allies.

So, what should the foreign policy be? The foreign policy should be to protect the country. Don’t let any invaders come in and get us. Now, this leads to an issue. Should we have allies? Well, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have allies. I don’t favor an alliance with everybody from our country, let’s say that our country is the United States, but I don’t see anything in the bowels of libertarianism that says you can’t have any allies. So, I would say that if we’re the ally of Israel, and Israel is under attack, we help them; and on the other hand, if we’re under attack, we would expect Israel to help us. This leads to a whole can of worms. Who should be our allies? NATO? How about China? Better yet, Taiwan. Should the Taiwanese be our allies? That would be my opening answer to the question.

 

Roger Bissell

Okay. Well, Vinay, do you see it that way or do you have a different slant on it?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Governments only have rights that are delegated to them by their citizens.

Well, a little different slant. First of all, I’ve held this view, I think, for many decades, which is a view that we do have allies [naturally]. So, for instance, if the three of us are walking down Central Park, let’s say somebody attacks Walter Block. He doesn’t have a gun, he doesn’t have a knife, and Roger being a big strong guy, I’m going to encourage him to intervene. [Laughter]. I will intervene as well, especially if it’s a physical fight, and poor Walter could be beaten to death, but three against one, we might have a better chance. And it’s an implicit contract because we’re friends or colleagues, we help each other out. But the critical question was, do nation-states have rights and obligations? And I found out that my answer is identical to [Ayn] Rand’s. She explores that in an essay called “Collectivized Rights” in the book The Virtue of Selfishness. She divides the world into black and white, no gray in that hypothetical, which is typical of Rand. So, let’s say there are nations that are fundamentally secular, democratic, and respect the rule of law, have a wall between religion and the state, and, most importantly, they respect the rights of their citizens. Now, she’s a little bit uncertain where to draw the line, and she’s drawn the line where the US, the UK, in her time—the 60s, would clearly fall on the good side. And her favorite villain, Soviet Russia, would fall on the bad side, as would Cuba, because they’re completely communist, and they respected no rights, it was a kangaroo court system out there. So, in those, she says firstly, that the governments only have rights that are delegated to them by their citizens. So, the right to protect them from internal strife [requires that] we have the police, the courts. But in this situation, [the government also has] the right, clearly, and an obligation to protect the citizens from outside threats.

But what if the threat isn’t imminent to the United States itself, taking the US as an example? And this is a statement I completely agree with. Then the government has the right to intervene, but not an obligation. That’s a statement that is absolutely right in one sense. If you’re going by the beach and you see somebody drowning, [and] it’s a complete stranger, not your own son or daughter or somebody that you love, then you do have the right to jump in the water and save him or her; but you may not be so confident of your swimming, you might drift away and you might drown yourself and such things have happened, and so you don’t have the obligation. You’ve got to make a split[-second] decision, a quick decision; but in foreign policy, we don’t have to make that quick a decision.

Governments like Iran’s, that abrogate the rights of their own citizens, have no right to exist, and any country has the right (but not the obligation) to help topple that kind of government.

Essentially, these kinds of governments, like the government of Iran, that abrogate the rights of their own citizens, have no right to exist, and we, or the US or any country, according to Rand, and I agree, has the right to help topple that kind of government, especially if the end result is going to be a better one.

Even Murray Rothbard, about as anti-war [an intellectual] as you can get, said that the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971 was a just war.

Even Murray Rothbard, about as anti-war [an intellectual] as you can get, said that the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971 was a just war, because you had East Pakistan on the east of the Indian subcontinent and on the west, you had Pakistan. It was a funny kind of unified country [the old Pakistan] with a large area in the middle that belonged to India. Apparently, Pakistan was raping, pillaging, and looting out in East Pakistan, and there were refugees coming in hordes crossing over the Indian border. To cut a long story short, the Indian army went into what is now Bangladesh. They repelled the Pakistani army, freed the people, and then they just came back, and they [people there] had a new election and called it a new state: Bangladesh. That was, even according to Rothbard, a just cause. Now, I don’t know how many Indian soldiers died in that, and somebody might argue, wait a minute, you’re still using taxpayers’ money to intervene, and even if one soldier died, what right did you have to put him into an external conflict? But there was a danger in the future to the Indian subcontinent from Pakistan winning against East Pakistan. So, I rest my case there. The principle is there. The particulars get very complicated.

 

Roger Bissell

They sure do. I like your example of our pal Walter [being] out there in Central Park, and he’s being set upon by some violent person. Now, let’s expand it a little bit to a situation where the guy has not attacked Walter yet, but we’re strolling along, the two of us, and we know Walter is not far away. Maybe he’s over at the food wagon getting a hot dog or something, and we hear this guy over in the bushes, and he says, “I’m going to get that blasted Walter Block,” and he’s loading up his pistol. Now, by the NAP [non-aggression principle] and the right to self-defense and the right to help your friend by defending them—this gets into preemptive stuff, right? —if there’s no policeman nearby, and our phones don’t have any charge in the batteries, then it’s up to us. Do we have the right to apprehend, subdue, disarm this guy, to initiate force against him? Or, in fact, is he initiating force already, even though he hasn’t laid a hand on Walter yet? He’s planning, and he’s loading up his gun. Maybe he’s mentally deranged, and he’s not really going to do anything, he’s just hallucinating. But what kind of chance do you take in a situation like that? Do you go after the crazy person? Vinay, go ahead and comment.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

If the threat is absolutely imminent, we do have the right to intervene.

If the threat is absolutely imminent, we do have the right to intervene. I’ll give you a couple of other examples. Even in a libertarian society, you would probably take away the firearms from a person who is a paranoid schizophrenic, has a history of violence, has been in and out of jail, has been warned plenty of times but can’t help himself, and has already shot at a few people. He’s not in jail because fortunately his aim was pretty bad, and he ended up injuring people in the leg or the arm, hasn’t killed anyone simply because he’s not as good a shot, but he keeps doing this, and even a libertarian society would take away his firearms. And in cases otherwise, even this person may have made many threats to Walter, he has mailed him [threats], has shouted from his soapbox that “I don’t like Walter’s existence, he should be eradicated from the earth.” And suppose in this case, Roger and I are policemen, so it makes it a little bit easier than us unarmed taking on an armed, deranged person. We are policemen, we sight him, and he is right behind Walter, about to draw his gun. Yes, we have every right at least to use the taser guns on him to disarm him and disable him. And if nothing succeeds, and he lunges at Walter with a knife, and there’s only five feet between them, at that stage we have the right to shoot [the assailant] in the chest or the head area.

 

Roger Bissell

So, you’re going to wait till you see the whites of his eyes or something? You wouldn’t preempt him if he’s just off in the bushes loading his gun and muttering ominously?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

In that case, we have a right to withhold him and disarm him. We don’t have the right to kill him at that point, but we have the right to take him into custody and disarm him, absolutely. Because he’s already violating the law by loading a gun when he’s not allowed to, if he’s got that kind of mental history.

 

Roger Bissell

Walter, how do you feel about that? Does that sound like a good deal?

 

Walter Block

There are no positive obligations for libertarians.

I guess there are really two issues here. There’s the cop. We all have a right to stop this bad guy, but does the cop have an obligation? I would say he does because he was hired to do just that. On the other hand, if it’s a passerby, as Vinay said with the drowning, he has a right to save them, but not an obligation to do it, because there are no positive obligations for libertarians. That would be one issue. Another issue is, how much of a threat does he have to be? And this is a continuum issue. It’s very tough to determine that. It’s like the statutory rape age. We know that five years old is way too young, and 25 is way too old. But should it be16, 17, 18, and some girls of 16 are more mature than other girls of 17. So, you get a continuum problem. And I’m now going to threaten Vinay. Here’s my fist. Well, that’s hardly a threat, and we’re friends, so it’s just silly. Or if it’s in a movie or a play, and one actor threatens the other, the other actor has no right to shoot him because it’s obviously not a threat. But again, there’s no line that you can draw. You can’t say, if it’s less than five feet, you can shoot him. If it’s more than five feet, you have to wait till five feet. There’s context. So, there is no right libertarian answer, and I think the way we libertarians would deal with it is, assuming we had a film of this or we have the facts, a jury or a judge would determine whether this was too preemptive or not.

The US is not the policeman of the world.

Now, another issue…I want to speak as to what Vinay said before. I don’t think I agree with the idea that the US has a right to go to Iran or to China or to Russia or somewhere where people are having their rights violated, because as he correctly said, it’s a delegation. The only right that the government has is one that is delegated by us. Now, I assume under limited-government libertarianism that we delegated to the government to protect us, not to go around protecting the whole world. The US is not the policeman of the world. On the other hand, there is this case in the Spanish Civil War where a whole bunch of people formed a Lincoln Brigade, which was just private individuals who went over to Spain and fought against fascism. I’m not sure they were on the right side because it was fascism versus communism, but even Mises was on the side of the fascists vis-a-vis the communists. That’s a different issue as to which way they should go. But I would say that if the three of us decide that what’s going on in Haiti is no good, we shouldn’t get the government of the US to go into Haiti and shape it up. We three should go there with our buddies and whip them into shape if we want and take the responsibility for ourselves.

You can only delegate to the government what you have a right to do/

So, I think that Vinay makes an excellent, exquisitely important point about delegation, that their only obligation is to what we delegated to them. Delegation is a very important issue. I once said to a friend of mine who was sort of a commie, “Look, do you have a right to come up to me with a gun and say, give me money, I’m going to use it for good purposes?” He said, “No.” And I said, “How, then, can you get the government to do that to me? Because you can only delegate to the government what you have a right to do, and you’ve just admitted that you don’t have any right to compel me to be a do-gooder. So, how can you support the government being a do-gooder?” And he had no answer to that. So, I think that Vinay put his thumb on a very, very important point about this delegation business.

 

Roger Bissell

Agreed. Both of you have touched on the issue, or maybe even delved more into it, about alliances and treaties and the like. Two of our first three presidents made important speeches about avoiding entangling alliances, and we were a small, vulnerable nation at that point. That kind of policy, just from a practical standpoint, made very good sense. Now, is there a deeper libertarian base to avoiding alliances? Or is it more a matter of, we are on our own two feet now, we’re powerful, self-supporting, we’re not worried about being snuffed out by France or whoever. Are alliances something that there is a moral case to be made for it, or a libertarian case, I should say, or is it still good advice? I think Ron Paul was pretty much of that opinion. He thought we should stay back, don’t get involved, just defend our country, but don’t hook up with other countries—non-interventionist, basically. Walter, what do you think about that?

 

Walter Block

I am a big fan of Ron Paul. But I have to respectfully disagree with him on this.

Well, I am a big fan of Ron Paul. (He and Murray Rothbard are two heroes, if I could put them in that category.) But I have to respectfully disagree with him on this. From a practical matter, it all depends upon whether the alliance will help us or hurt us. And we can’t say, deontologically, or we can’t say without knowing the specifics. The big question is not the practical, from the libertarian point of view, but the deontological one—namely, is there something in libertarianism that says, “No alliances”? I can’t think of one.

Is there a violation of the non-aggression principle in what I just said? No.

Now, it’s a little difficult when you think of it with the government, but let’s get back to anarcho-capitalism just for a minute. We can wear two hats. Can I make an alliance with Vinay? And the alliance is that if anyone attacks you, Vinay, I’ll help you, and you reciprocate and help me. Is there a violation of the non-aggression principle in what I just said? No. It’s just like, “Vinay, I’ll sell you this pen if you give me a paperclip.” It’s a contract, and we’re now having a barter. He’ll give me a paperclip; I’ll give him the pen or whatever it is. I’m now making a different agreement, a different contract, and I’m saying, “I will give you my services. I’m a big, strong guy,” or I’m a 90-pound weakling or whatever I am, doesn’t matter. “If you get attacked by Roger, I’ll help you; and if Roger attacks me, you’ll help me. I don’t see any per se violation there. So, an entangling alliance might have been a good idea, or not, I’m not sure. I’m not a historian or a person and an empiricist who knows whether it was a good idea or a bad idea. I’m more of a libertarian theorist, and I don’t see anything in the bowels of libertarianism that says no, you can’t make such a contract or an agreement.

 

Roger Bissell

Agree or disagree, Vinay?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

I completely agree; and if I can more than agree, I’d like to share another illustration. Between  friends, we have an implicit contract. If it is the three of us walking in Central Park, and we have a little old frail lady with us, and the poor lady gets attacked, assaulted by somebody who does not have a gun or even a knife, if we just stand there, do nothing, we won’t be able to look at ourselves in the mirror the next day. So, all three of us would absolutely intervene, try to make a citizen’s arrest. We might fail, but at least we would help the lady from being assaulted, and that’s just the implicit contract between friends.

Now, across governments, I think of defensive alliances and unqualified alliances. We [Australia] have an alliance with the United States. We have AUKUS which is an alliance with the US and UK. We have ANZUS which is an Australia, New Zealand, US [military] treaty. We also have a Quad [in] which Japan, India, Australia, and the US share intelligence about what China is up to.

So first, the Quad: intelligence sharing is a big tick; as long as you’re dealing with other somewhat libertarian or somewhat-free governments, you can trust them to share intelligence. The kind of bad guys we’re thinking about here are North Korea, Iran, and maybe China or Russia that have gone down the extremes of authoritarianism. So, Israel and the US absolutely and easily at least can have an intelligence-sharing pact.

If America’s attacked, we have to get drawn into war; but if America wants to have an adventure in Iraq, Australia shouldn’t get drawn in.

Then you have the offensive alliance, which is what I think Australia shouldn’t get into. There are a lot of complaints about Australian soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t know in detail what the actual agreement says. I think it’s a defensive alliance, so if America’s attacked, we have to get drawn into war; but if America wants to have an adventure in Iraq, Australia shouldn’t get drawn in. But we have an American military presence [in Australia]—in Darwin, the northwest of Australia; we have [American] military ships docked in Perth on the west[ern coast] of Australia, or near Perth. I think there was political pressure that was put on [re Iraq], so even though the alliance is strictly not entangling other than defensively, practically it became an offensive and offensive alliance. If you choose to have a war in another region of the world, we’ve got to follow you, which shouldn’t be the case. So, if Walter’s the one who lost his mind and suddenly pulls out a knife in Central Park, Roger and I don’t have the obligation to disarm him, but we definitely shouldn’t be helping him, and we should try to warn everyone else to run away. If we can disarm him, we should. So that’s the answer on entangling.

One other aspect is, we’ve always said, among libertarians, we don’t want entangling alliances of the sorts you get into with the WHO, with the UN authorities—where if they declare something a pandemic, it is a pandemic. No, we should determine it for ourselves. This is the sovereignty of the land, and the government has delegation—I’m not even sure they should—to call something a pandemic. They could call something an epidemic, but just not follow up with lockdowns.

 

Roger Bissell

I want to explore this issue just a little more, and Vinay, I’m going to ask you first. There’s a general issue called attractive nuisance. Maybe that’s not exactly the concept I want here but suppose one of the people or countries you’re allied to has a habit of starting trouble, and you have a mutual defense treaty, and suppose they want to, for some reason, go to war with a neighboring country, so they rig the circumstances so that it looks like they’ve been attacked when in fact they engineered it. First of all, it would be really good to be sharp enough with your intelligence to know that that’s what happened. Then you could say, “No, you picked this fight so we’re not helping you. You started it.” I’m thinking of NATO. How many countries are in NATO right now? And do we really need something like NATO? Vinay?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

The non-Soviet Russia is still an authoritarian giant. Putin very likely murdered his political opposition.

My answer is, absolutely not. From the way I see it, and I could be wrong, Soviet Russia obviously disassembled in 1989. The non-Soviet Russia is still an authoritarian giant. Putin very likely murdered or ordered his political opposition [murdered], particularly Navalny, to be murdered and/or to be tortured. So, he’s not a good guy. And Russia certainly isn’t a good guy, but Russia was provoked in many ways by NATO. And there was a chance, as I understand it, to avoid the war, which wasn’t taken. So, in that instance, it’s very clear. Number one, there is no Soviet expansionist threat anymore; they just want to secure their borders, so NATO should just be dissolved completely. But where it is the other sort of unnecessary provocation—for instance, you had asked me once, what if the US meddled with the Houthi rebels, and therefore Yemen attacked the US, is Australia obligated to intervene? Well, there the question gets a little easier when it’s the other way around because the US is so big it will swat the fly [Yemen]; they really don’t need any help from Australia or the UK or anybody else in the alliance. But if it was the other way around, it always depends on the specifics of the case.

Iran is already engaged in a proxy war, and therefore the United States had a right to drop bombs on their nuclear facilities.

If you get to start talking about Iran, which I think we will, they declared their intent by 1981. There was a whole philosophy of proxy wars primarily targeting Israel that started back then and has continued. You [may] think it’s just Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis, the three Hs and the Muslim Brotherhood, but a lot of funding has come from Iran. Basically, Iran is already engaged in a proxy war, and therefore the United States had a right to drop bombs on their nuclear facilities. It’s not preemptive action. It’s like somebody who is in your face threatening you with violence for so long. He has a history, and then he finally takes a big swing. Now, hopefully you’re quicker than him and you do a quick jab on his face and you hit him before his big fist hits you and knocks you over. So, at that stage, it’s not preemptive.

 

Roger Bissell

Right! With your bunker buster! Walter…

 

Walter Block

Yes, I agree with Vinay on Iran. It’s certainly not preemptive. Iran has been initiating violence directly and indirectly through the Triple H: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. I entirely agree with Vinay on that.

Just because the Soviet Union is internally vicious, nasty, evil, doesn’t mean that their foreign policy is expansionist.

I wanted to mention something Murray Rothbard used to say, and I think correctly, that just because the Soviet Union is internally vicious, nasty, evil, doesn’t mean that their foreign policy is expansionist, and all too many people deduce from one to the other. So, it might be that the Soviet Union is a charnel house, and I think it was; but that doesn’t mean that they’re expansionist; it doesn’t mean they want to take over the world. I think Murray made an excellent point there.

I also agree with Vinay on this business of NATO and Ukraine and Russia. When East Germany and West Germany were reunited with the permission of the Russians, what should have happened is [that] NATO should have disbanded, and the Warsaw Pact should have disbanded, and we had peace. The promise was made that NATO would not move east. Now, the Russians are a little weird. They don’t like being invaded. Bunch of perverts. And yet, Germany has invaded them several times, and they don’t like being invaded, especially by Germany. If I could put words in their mouths, they don’t like being invaded by anyone, but they have a thing about Germany. Also, the US has invaded Russia. Russia never invaded the US in the 1917 war. So, what happened was, NATO broke its promise. NATO kept moving eastward, and the Soviets kept saying, “Hey, that’s a red line,” and NATO moved eastward further, and now they’re right on the border. Ukraine is right on the border. Now let’s get back to what happened in 1962. In 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US had foreign military bases all over the place, all surrounding Russia. Russia had nothing, and then they got one in Cuba, and the US went apoplectic: “You can’t do that.” Well, this is a little…not equal.

So, I think that just because Russia is very bad internally doesn’t mean that they’re bad externally. And just because the US is pretty damn good internally, certainly compared to Russia, doesn’t mean that the US is good on foreign policy. No, the US is not good at foreign policy. And Murray Rothbard makes a great play on this. I would say that we should leave NATO, which gets me to the point about what you said initially, Roger. Suppose you’re an ally with a country that keeps getting into fights, and I don’t mean defensive fights. I’m now an ally of Vinay, and I didn’t realize that Vinay keeps picking on all sorts of people and not defensively but offensively goes out and does all sorts of bad things. I would then end my relationship with him. I would end my contract with him. I would end my allyship with him, and I’d say, “Look, you’re on your own. I will protect you, Vinay, if you’re attacked. But when you start attacking other people, then all bets are off.”

So, I think that Russia—I hate to say it, it sounds horrible, but they were in the right. NATO kept moving eastward and they promised not to. And if you look at the US, when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, they were getting close, only 90 miles away from Florida. Well, Ukraine isn’t [even] 90 miles away from the Soviet Union. They touch. And you want to put nuclear power in Ukraine? I support Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine in this one. And I think that Vinay makes an excellent point also with Iran. Israel is the little Satan, the US is the big Satan, and [Iran keeps] saying that Israel is going to be obliterated, and Israel doesn’t say Iran is going to be obliterated.

The question is, who started the fight? You know, if I start punching Vinay, and he punches back, I’m in the wrong. He’s in the right, even though we’re both punching. So, you can’t say that Israel is bad because it’s bombing Iran or bombing the Houthis or Hezbollah—and the US with the bunker busters. The last thing the civilized world needs is Iran with a nuclear bomb. They might use it, they’re so crazy.

 

Roger Bissell

Isn’t it interesting that in this latest round, where we dropped those large bombs, Russia and China, who are in league with Iran, did not make much of a peep. I think they know that Iran is really an instigator, not just some poor, defenseless little flower who got attacked by the big mean bullies out of nowhere. They probably thought [that Iran was] skating on thin ice, and the ice kind of cracked, so now that’s [Iran’s] problem.

But you mentioned weaponry and the Cuban Missile crisis, the nuclear weapons, 90 miles from America’s shores, and [being] worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons. What about nuclear weapons in general? There used to be a lot of talk about disarmament, getting rid of them and staying [with] strictly conventional weapons. In this day and age, do we need to hang on to those, or are they superfluous? Is there something else we should try to do? Do you have any thoughts on that, Walter?

 

Walter Block

Well, MAD, mutual assured destruction, has kept the peace for I don’t know how many years, so you can’t denigrate it too much. On the other hand, I think Murray Rothbard, again, who was my mentor in many things, was absolutely right on nuclear bombs. The problem with them is that they necessarily impact innocent people. Now, if I have a pistol or a rifle or a bazooka or an ordinary bomb, I can pretty much get the bad guys. But with a nuclear bomb, all bets are off. You’re going to kill innocent people. In one of my articles, I said, look, if you want to have a nuclear bomb, fine, let’s go live on Jupiter, and everybody has 10,000 square miles, and you want to keep a nuclear bomb in the middle of your place? Fine, God bless, but not on Earth because Earth is too small.

Hamas hides behind innocent people. Hamas uses the Gazans as a shield.

Now, I also want to talk a little bit about killing innocent people because Israel has killed innocent people in Gaza. But what [Hamas does is that they] hide behind innocent people. Hamas uses the Gazans as a shield. Now, I have two Ron Paul dolls, but forget about [them being] Ron Paul. They’re my two children, twin boys of age two, and I strap them into my chest, and I come in with a rifle [holds up a pencil], and now I’m going to kill Vinay. I’m sorry, Vinay. Got to pick on somebody, and I don’t want to pick on the moderator because he could shut me off. You’re fair game. So, I have my two children here, and I’m going to shoot you. Well, actually, I’m not going to shoot you. All I have is a knife because you’re Israel, and I’m Hamas, and you’re stronger than me. So, I’ve got a knife here, and I’m going to kill you—not only you, but I’m going to kill all your children who are standing right behind you, and your back is at the wall, and you can’t run away. And there are two issues that come up. One, should you shoot me? Now, it would be nice if you shot me in the head because that would save my children, but you’re not that good a shot, whereas if you shoot me in the chest, my chest is bigger than my head, and you’ll get me for sure.

So, one question is, where should you shoot me? Another question, should you shoot me at all? And the third one is, if you shoot me, who is responsible for these deaths of my children? Now, the answer is clear, that if he shoots me in the chest as he has every right to do, because he’s not that great a shot—look, if he were a crack shot, an Olympic shooter or something like that, I would say he should shoot me in the head, but he’s not, he’s just an ordinary pistol person, and he shoots me here [in the chest]. Who is responsible for my children’s death? I am, just as Hamas is responsible for those people that Israel is shooting. The second question is, should he shoot me at all? If he doesn’t, I’m going to kill him. Libertarianism is not a suicide pact, so I think he has an absolute right to shoot me, and when my children die, it’s my fault, not his. So, it’s sometimes OK to shoot innocent people if they’re used as a shield and the only way you can save yourself is by shooting them.

 

Roger Bissell

Agree, but see, if you had had Murray Rothbard dolls instead, it might have made a big difference. Vinay, comments?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Well, I agree 100% with the analogy and what Walter just said. I fear that Hamas is not just putting their babies in danger, they’re doing something worse. I think they deliberately want tens of thousands of people to die because then they can go up in heaven and get their 72 virgins or whatever else the women get—I don’t know what they get and the children what they get, they get some big reward apparently—so that Israel would be framed for genocide because they go to the media and say, “Look what Israel has done. They killed so many.” There are reports that Hamas have even taken supplies of food and stolen them and hid them so more people would starve, effectively. So, there’s no question there about who the aggressor is and what tactic they’re applying.

Should everybody lose their nuclear weapons? And here’s where realpolitik comes in. We can’t turn the clock back.

But your original question was, should everybody lose their nuclear weapons? And here’s where realpolitik comes in. We can’t turn the clock back. We’re too far into that. So, that’s one thing. The second thing is, we have to be concerned that some people won’t obey the pact. So, if you did a pact and everybody started to disarm and Pakistan [keeps] a nuclear bomb; Iran hasn’t got one yet, but they were getting close, they already have the capacity for a dirty bomb with 60% [uranium] enrichment. Let’s say [Iran is] in the pact, and everybody gets rid of all their nuclear weapons over five years, but Iran hides their dirty bombs, and then they go [bomb someone]. So, the mutually assured destruction is a good principle [we can’t be sure everyone will get rid of their nukes]. But like we said in the libertarian context, someone who has a history of being a paranoid schizophrenic, very violent and has done it repeatedly, shouldn’t have a gun, shouldn’t have a permit for a gun, and it’s the same thing. The Iranian government, let me phrase that correctly, is the problem—the ayatollahs and the mullahs, not the Iranian people. So, should they form a brand-new government, then if it proved to be a very peaceful government trading with Israel, being very peaceful with Israel and all its neighbors for let’s say at least a decade, and we were all confident they have changed completely, then yes, they [would then] have every right to build a nuclear bomb just as anyone else has.

 

Roger Bissell

Yes. I think it’s extraordinary just looking back over what I’ve heard from you two fellows this evening. [It was] very unexpected to me how much we see things in a similar light. We’re going to try to remedy that in our next discussion. Two weeks from tonight, July 15th, Tuesday, we’re going to have our fourth discussion. And Vinay is going to moderate, and I’m just going to be one of the humble guests. And we’re going to talk about immigration. That should be fun. Maybe we’ll be able to come up with some more controversy here.

Thank both of you very much for your good comments and insights, and I want to thank everyone who tuned in to see us. So, thank you, everyone, and good night and good luck.