Ron Paul - A foreign policy of freedom: peace, commerce, and honest friendship

P EACE, COMMERCE, AND HONEST
FRIENDSHIP WITH ALL NATIONS
ENTANGLING ALLIANCES WITH NONE .

T HOMAS J EFFERSON
F IRST I NAUGURAL A DDRESS , 1801

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my children and grandchildren and to future generations of Americans in the hope and prayer that wisdom and peace may prevail so that no other American father, mother, son or daughter will ever again be asked to fight and die in another undeclared, unconstitutional foreign war.

A FOREIGN POLICY
OF FREEDOM

PEACE, COMMERCE,
AND HONEST FRIENDSHIP

R ON P AUL

Copyright 2007 the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Paul, Ron, 1935

ISBN-13: 978-0-912453-00-2
ISBN-10: 0-912453-00-1

Cover Design: Kathy White, The Mises Institute
Typesetting: M&M Graphics and Advertising

Printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

FOREWORD

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr .

Ron Paul has always believed that foreign and domestic policy should be conducted according to the same principles. Government should be restrained from intervening at home or abroad because its actions fail to achieve their stated aims, create more harm than good, shrink the liberty of the people, and violate rights.

Does that proposition seem radical? Outlandish or farflung? Once you hear it stated, it makes perfect sense that there is no sharp distinction between the principles of domestic and foreign policy. They are part of the same analytical fabric. What would be inconsistent would be to favor activist government at home but restraint abroad, or the reverse: restraint at home and activism abroad. Government unleashed behaves in its own interests, and will not restrict itself in any area of life. It must be curbed in all areas of life lest freedom suffer.

If you recognize the line of thinking in this set of beliefs, it might be because you have read the Federalist Papers, the writings of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or James Madison, or examined the philosophical origins of the American Revolution. Or you might have followed the debates that took place in the presidential election of 1800, in which this view emerged triumphant. Or perhaps you read the writings of the free traders prior to the Civil War, or the opponents of the War on Spain, or those who warned of entering World War I.

Or perhaps you have read the speeches and books against FDRs New Deal: the same group warned of the devastating consequences of World War II. Or maybe, in more recent history, you understood the animating principles behind the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994: a generation had turned away from all forms of foreign and domestic nation building.

Not only does this Paulian view have a precedent in American history; it sums up the very core of what is distinctive about the American contribution to political ideas. The proposition was and is that people are better able to manage their lives than government can manage them. Under conditions of liberty, the result is prosperity and orderly civilization. Under government control, the result is relative poverty and unpredictable chaos. The proof is in the news every day.

How unusual, how incredibly strange, that Ron Paul, who has stood for these principles his entire public life, is criticized by some as a radical, outside the mainstream, and influenced by experimental ideas that are marginal at best. And why is he treated this way? Because he takes the ideas of Washington and Jefferson seriously, just as seriously as he takes the idea of freedom itself, and he does so in times when faith in Leviathan remains the dominant political ideology.

Ideology is such a powerful force that it has propped up policy inconsistency for more than a century. The left has a massive agenda for the state at home, and yet complains bitterly, with shock and dismay, that the same tools are used to start wars and build imperial structures abroad. The right claims to want to restrain government at home (at least in some ways) while whooping it up for war and global reconstruction abroad.

It doesnt take a game-theory genius to predict how this conflict works itself out in the long run. The left and the right agree to disagree on intellectual grounds but otherwise engage in a dangerous quid pro quo. They turn a blind eye to the government they dont like so long as they get the government they do like.

Its one thing for the left to grudgingly support international intervention. It makes some sense for a group that believes that government is omniscient enough to bring about fairness, justice, and equality at home to do the same for people abroad. In fact, Ive never been able to make much sense out of left-wing antiwar activism, simply because it cuts so much against the idea of socialism, which itself can be summed up as perpetual war on the liberty and property of the people.

What strikes me as ridiculous is the right-wing view that government is incompetent and dangerous domesticallyat least in economic and social affairsbut has some sort of Midas Touch internationally such that it can bring freedom, democracy, and justice to any land its troops deign to invade. Not that the right wing is principled enough to pursue its domestic views, but Im speaking here of its campaign rhetoric and higher-level critique of government that you find in their periodicals and books. The precise critique of government that they offer for the welfare state and regulatory measuresthey are expensive, counterproductive, hobble human energiesapplies many times over to international interventions.

But the right always seems to have an excuse for its inconsistency. In the early fifties, many on the right said that the usual principle of nonintervention had to give way to the fight against communism because this was a uniquely evil threat facing the world. We have to put up with a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores (words used by W.F. Buckley) for the duration in order to beat back the great threat abroad. And so Leviathan grew and grew, and never more than under Republican presidents. Then one day, communism went away, the regimes having collapsed from self-imposed deprivation and ideological change.

A few years went by after 1990 when the right was inching toward a Paulian consistency. Then 9/11 happened, and the great excuse for Leviathan again entered the picture. Never mind that, as Congressman Paul pointed out, the crime of 9/11 was motivated by retribution against ten years of killer U.S. sanctions against Iraq, U.S. troops on Muslim holy lands, and U.S. subsidies for Palestinian occupation. No, the American right bought into the same farce that led them to support the Cold War: Islamic fanaticism is a unique evil unlike anything weve ever seen, so we have to put up with Leviathan (again!) for the duration.

Well, Ron Paul didnt buy into it. He is unique in this respect, and this is especially notable since he has been underpressure from his own party and at a time when his party has ruled the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. He stuck by his principles, and not merely as a pious gesture. His critique of the post 9/11 warfare state has-been spot on in speech after speech. He foresaw the failure of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. He never believed the nonsense about how U.S. bombs would transform Iraq into a modern democracy. He never went along with the propaganda lies about weapons of mass destruction. Nowadays, we often hear politicians say that they have changed their minds on the Iraq War and that if they had known then what they know now, they never would have gone along. Well, hindsight is childs play in politics. What takes guts and insight is the ability to spot a hoax even as it is being perpetrated. In any case, they have no excuse for not knowing: Ron Paul told them!