Anti-war and
non-interventionist American libertarians were highly influenced by economist
Murray Rothbard and author
Karl Hess. Rothbard criticized
imperialism and the rise of the American empire which needed war to sustain itself and to expand its global control. Rothbard said: "Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening
military–industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription". This tradition is continued in the anti-war analysis of the
Cato Institute's
David Boaz and former Representative
Ron Paul. Some libertarians have criticized
conservatives and those
libertarian conservatives who supported the United States'
2001 invasion of Afghanistan and
2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupations. However, others like Randy Barnett and John Hospers supported the
Iraq War. In 2010, the
Libertarian Party criticized conservatives for supporting a "trillion-dollar foreign war". Some libertarians also criticize from a libertarian perspective the actions of foreign governments like
Saudi Arabia and
Israel. In "War Guilt in the Middle East", Rothbard details Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs", confiscatory policies and its "refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them". Rothbard also criticized the "organized Anti-Anti-Semitism" that critics of the state of Israel have to suffer. In "Property Rights and the 'Right of Return'", professor
Richard Ebeling writes: "If a settlement is reached between the Israelis and the Palestinians, justice would suggest that all legitimate property should be returned to its rightful owners and that residence by those owners on their property should be once again permitted". In "The Alienation of a Homeland: How Palestine Became Israel", attorney Stephen P. Halbrook writes: "Palestinian Arabs have the rights to return to their homes and estates taken over by Israelis, to receive just compensation for loss of life and property, and to exercise national
self-determination". Even though the writers behind
Ayn Rand Institute and Ayn Rand Lexicon define themselves as
Objectivists and are more often opposed to libertarians, large minorities of right-libertarians, mainly in the United states, use aspects of
Ayn Rand's
Objectivism to justify their foreign policy beliefs on the
right of defense. A very common view on
dictatorship among these is the view that a dictatorial society is an outlaw that can claim no rights and that any free society has a right to
forcibly change any dictatorial society into another free one, but should absolutely not assume this to be any kind of
self-sacrificial duty. When it comes to broader
American foreign policy, these libertarians believe that the crux of American foreign policy should be
free trade, including abolition of
protectionism as a
corporatist element. Many libertarians will argue from perspectives most associated with Ayn Rand Institute to justify siding with Israel over the
Arab League, regarding the
war that the Arab League
launched against Israel in 1948. Some libertarians will use Objectivist arguments to criticize the tendency of many of their own to focus on trivial crimes by free societies instead of severe crimes by tyrannical societies.
Pew Research Center found overwhelmingly in 2011, with new and updated data in 2014, that
libertarians in the United States are about as close to evenly split as normal Americans on foreign policy. In 2014, they found through polling that 54% of libertarians oppose American involvement overseas and that 43% are in favor of it. The finding unique to the 2014 polling is that libertarian opinion on whether American involvement overseas does more harm than good is almost evenly split as 47% say no while 46% say yes. Regarding foreign policy views since 2011, libertarians side more with
multilateralism over
unilateralism, more with
realism over
idealism, more with opposing the
end of Gaddafi over supporting it, more with supporting quick end to
the Afghan War over opposing quick end, more with friendliness to
China over hostility, are evenly split over trade deals, side more with opposing the
United Nations over supporting them and more with seeing
Islam as Earth's most tyrannical
organized religion over seeing some other religion as such. It has also been found in both years' reports that nearly all libertarians oppose
privacy compromises like the
Patriot Act. Distinguishing
military policy from
foreign policy, one will find that libertarian views on foreign policy are almost evenly divided between those who are more often diplomatic and those who are more often militant. A nearly half minority (48%) believe that the best way for American military to ensure peace on earth is to stay the strongest military of Earth, and an identically sized minority also think that the best way to defeat a terroristic ideology is to overwhelmingly and militarily crush that ideology on its soil. == See also ==