Libertarian Realism: A Challenge To Empire

Authored by Joseph Solis-Mullen via The Libertarian Institute,

When the late Justin Raimondo, co-founder and longtime editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote in 2011 that the anti-interventionist movement needed a “big picture” framework, he was attempting to distill decades of polemic into a theory of international relations. In his essay “Looking at the ‘Big Picture,’” he dubbed this framework “Libertarian Realism.” Though Raimondo never set down a book-length treatise, his insights remain an invitation for libertarians to articulate a systematic foreign policy rooted in their own intellectual traditions.

At its core, libertarian realism rests on two pillars: public choice theory and the non-aggression principle (NAP). Together, they provide both a positive account of how foreign policy is made, and a normative standard by which to judge it.

First, public choice theory rejects the notion that politicians act for some collective good. Instead, it insists that policymakers, like all other individuals, pursue their own interests—power, prestige, financial gain, or reelection. Raimondo applied this logic directly to international affairs. Foreign policy, he argued, is not the unfolding of some objective “national interest” but the function of domestic political incentives.

This point distinguishes libertarian realism from both the neoconservative, realist, liberal internationalist schools. Neoconservatives cloak their ambitions in rhetoric about Washington’s global hegemony and an empire of democracy; traditional realists invoke the “national interest” as a guiding principle; while liberal internationalists speak of upholding the “rules based international order.”

Raimondo’s critique cuts deeper; global hegemony and world democracy are a chimera that have bankrupted and destroyed actual American democracy. There is no “national interest” because there is no national actor; only individuals act, and they act for themselves—thus, American foreign policy reflects not the welfare of 330 million citizens but the ambitions of a relatively small political elite and the networks of lobbyists, corporate beneficiaries, and ideological courtiers around them. With regard to a “rules based international order,” such rules have only ever served as a cudgel in Washington’s hands to be applied to foes and potential foes and never to itself or its allies.

Seen in this light, wars of choice—from the Spanish-American War to Iraq—were not aberrations but predictable results of a system where power perpetuates itself. Libertarian realism’s use of public choice theory explains why interventions recur regardless of party, and why “limited wars” tend to metastasize.

If public choice explains what is, the non-aggression principle (NAP) prescribes what ought to be. Raimondo insisted that foreign policy consistent with libertarian principles must avoid aggression, whether in the form of invasion, forward deployment, or even “preventive” alliances.

With a little imagination, one can see that the NAP as applied to Washington’s relations to other states can be fruitfully extended further by drawing an illustrative analogy: just as individuals cannot “consent” to contracts made under duress, small nations cannot truly be said to consent to treaties with vastly stronger states. While the most famous line of Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue is doubtlessly “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” the more instructive is the line preceding it: “…questions of ‘right’ can only exist between equals in power.” From this perspective, NATO expansion, U.S. bases in East Asia, or bilateral “security guarantees” are not consensual arrangements but coercive impositions that would occur regardless of the “decision” of the corresponding state—this includes when a clear free-rider benefit on the part of the “accepting” state exists, since this is tangential or a second order effect.

Libertarian realism thus rejects the idea that America must police the world to sustain “order.” To coerce another society into Washington’s version of “liberalism” is no less an act of aggression than forcing an individual into virtue.

Recognizing that defense is a legitimate function of government until private arrangements are possible, libertarian realism counsels a restrained military posture. The United States faces virtually no threat of invasion. Its geography, economy, and nuclear deterrent already guarantee security. A minimal arsenal of nuclear weapons, supported by naval assets sufficient to protect its shipping and shores, would deter aggression without underwriting the pretense to empire.

By contrast, the permanent standing army—garrisoning hundreds of bases across the globe—serves not defense but dominance. Advocates of libertarian realism should therefore favor abolishing the standing army and replacing it with voluntary, localized militias. In this sense, libertarian realism echoes the Founders’ suspicion of professional militaries and the old republican insight that war is the health of the state. As James Madison wrote in his 1795 Political Observations:

“War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

Part of Raimondo’s polemic was aimed at rival schools of international thought who appealed to destiny, class struggle, or divine mission to justify power. He observed that what united these traditions, whether Marxists, fascists, Trotskyites and their neoconservative spawn, or Wilsonian liberals, was disdain for methodological individualism. In their view, nations or classes acted as collective bodies; individuals were mere instruments.

Libertarian realism, by contrast, insists that only individuals act, and that history is the cumulative result of individual choices. Policymakers are not swept along by “iron laws” of destiny but by incentives and illusions. This methodological starting point leads to sharper analysis: rather than attributing U.S. wars to abstractions like “democracy promotion,” we can identify specific officials, their ideological commitments, and the domestic interests that benefit.

Raimondo also emphasized that theory is not idle. To understand why wars happen is to be able to predict their recurrence and, more importantly, to resist them. Given that elites benefit from crises—financial, political, or military—war is always in the offing. This insight remains prescient. As tensions with Iran, China, and Russia are stoked, the never-ending Global War on Terror is extended to Latin America in the name of fighting so-called “narco-terrorism,” and one sees the same dynamics Raimondo diagnosed a decade ago.

Libertarian realism equips activists, scholars, and ordinary citizens with a framework to expose the war party, or uniparty, the duopoly of Republicans and Democrats. By unmasking its motives and methods, anti-interventionists can debunk the narratives that lead populations to sacrifice blood and treasure for elite gain.

Raimondo’s “Libertarian Realism” remains an underdeveloped but powerful lens. By uniting public choice theory with the non-aggression principle, it explains both why wars occur and why they are illegitimate. Its prescriptions—minimal deterrence, abolition of the standing army, and strict non-interference—are both radical and rooted in America’s republican heritage.

As libertarians look to articulate a coherent foreign policy distinct from progressive humanitarianism and conservative nationalism alike, Raimondo’s call for a “big picture” remains timely. A systematic libertarian realism not only deepens our theoretical arsenal but offers a principled alternative to empire.

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