The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Ellen Frankel Paul, Laissez Faire In Nineteenth-century Britain: Fact Or Myth?
• I: Legal Philosophy
• The Minos: What Is Law?
• Obedience to Law
• Moral and Legal Justification
• Early First Amendment Theory
• The First Amendment & Freedom of Expression
• The First Amendment and Religion
• The First Amendment Vs. the Cpi
• The Economics of Strict Liability
• The Rule of Law In American Politics
• II: Political Analysis
• Society, State, and Right In Proudhon
• Human Rights and Political Change
• Carter's Human Rights Policy
• Locke's Tolerance: Prudence Or Right?
• Political Intolerance
• Hayek: Reason, Relativism, and Liberty
• Hayek On Coercion and Freedom
• “advanced Liberalism” As Managed Capitalism
• Common Good & Public Interest
• Uncrowding the “commons”
• Milgram: Obedience, Authority, & Legitimacy
• Syndicalism & “the Servile State”
• The Parisian League
• Conservatism In Spain
• Soviet Intellectual Orthodoxy
• The Clergy & the American Revolution
• Russian & American Defenses of Servitude
• Croce's Hegemony: How to Win Minds
• III: War and the State
• Just War and Rights
• Just Wars Vs. No Wars
• Walzer & Just War
• Wartime Propaganda Tactics
• Iran, Oil, and the Cold War
• The State and Oil Policy
• San Francisco & the Military Complex
• Protectionist Assaults On Developing Countries
• Government Military Behavior
• IV: Political Economy and Theory
• Three Kinds of “capitalism”
• Adam Smith: Economic Utilitarian
• Roepke: Laissez Faire and Social Order
• Government-induced Boom & Bust
• Austrian Vs. Neoclassical Methodology
• Professor Friedman's Instrumentalism
• Milton Friedman's Critics
• Entrepreneurship and Justice
• Externalities & Government Intervention

III

War and the State

Few requirements are as crucial for mankind's survival and the preservation of individual freedoms and rights as to understand and prevent warfare. The following summaries, accordingly, range from the opening considerations of theories of the just war to case studies of the role of governments in creating the economic incentives and ideological misunderstandings that promote hostility and belligerence. The present urgency of maintaining peace and eliminating undue risks of nuclear warfare make a study of these topics all-too-necessary.

Just War and Rights

David Luban

• University of Maryland at College Park

“Just War and Human Rights.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9(Winter 1980):160–181.

Theories of the just war have traditionally been elaborated by theologians and jurists. These doctrines originate in a moral understanding of violent conflict. Yet, when adapted for use in the realms of pragmatic politics and diplomacy, their moral content often vanishes. Prof. Luban provides a moral assessment of the justice of war to serve in the actual conduct of international affairs.

A widely respected document of international law, the Charter of the United Nations, condemns “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State ....” At the same time, it recognizes the right to “individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.” In this view, therefore, aggressive wars are unjust, whereas defensive wars are just.

International law in general asserts the duty of each state to refrain from intervention in the affairs of other states. At the root of this duty lies the notion of state sovereignty. But how, Prof. Luban asks, is nonintervention to be construed as a moral duty? Some have added the concept of legitimacy to add a moral dimension lacking in the usual international definitions. A legitimate state would thus have a right against aggression, because citizens possess a right to a legitimate state, which in turn implies human rights and social contract.

A legitimate state may be recognized by evidence of a political community's longstanding consent to be governed. Michael Walzer has written: “Over a long period of time, shared experiences and cooperative activity of many kinds shape a common life. ‘Contract’ is a metaphor for a process of association and mutuality ....” Yet, according to this standard, many parts of the third world are governed by manifestly illegitimate states. Are the populations of these territories to be exempted from the moral protections of just war theory? Obviously, comprehensive just war theory can not be derived from a governmental base.

Prof. Luban suggests that the moral discernment of a just from an unjust war can only be achieved through a consideration of human rights—“the demands of all humanity on all of humanity.” He first distinguishes a category of socially basic human rights. These are required for the enjoyment of any other rights and include security rights (freedom from torture, killing, assault, etc.) and subsistence rights (rights to healthy air and water, adequate food, and shelter).

Such basic rights are worth fighting for—not only by those to whom they are denied but also by others who take them seriously. Of course, this does not mean that an infringement of socially basic human rights is a casus belli. Here as elsewhere in just war theory, the doctrine of proportionality applies. Nonetheless, any proportional struggle for basic rights is justified—even one which involves attacks on the nonbasic rights of others.

Prof. Luban insists on the substantive differences which distinguish his definition of the just war from that of the United Nations. The UN approach would have us measure the rights of states against socially basic human rights, which may well constitute a comparison of incommensurables. Under Luban's definition, on the other hand, we are only asked to compare the violations of basic human rights likely to result from a war with those violations it is intended to rectify, a much more tractable dilemma.

Just Wars vs. No Wars

Inis L. Claude, Jr

• University of Virginia

“Just Wars: Doctrines And Institutions.” Political Science Quarterly 95 no.1(Spring 1980):83–96.

Prevention of war is not the only goal to which organizations are directed. Some organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations “have served as instruments for the implementation of the doctrine of just war.”

War has been viewed as either always justified, never justified, or sometimes justified. The pacifist, often religious, has taken the view that war, like murder, is never justified. Pacifism, thus destroys the possibility of deterrences. It was Christianity that first sought to systematically explore the idea of a just war as opposed to an unjust one. The rise of state sovereignty, however, implied that war was simply a right of the states, but governments still sought to legitimate their position among the people.

Much of international law developed as a means of establishing rules of welfare that would keep it within some rational bounds, and confirming the notion of neutrality. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations meant a return to a revised just war doctrine. These organizations—just as the Pope did earlier—would decide the justice of the case. Collective security divided military actions into three categories (prohibited, permitted, or prescribed) but has not functioned very well in practice.

Revisionists sought to distinguish between self-defense war as just, and aggression as unjust. In an age of anxiety with potential for massive destruction, “the preservation of peace took precedence over the promotion of justice, which had to be achieved by nonviolent methods or not at all.”

Since 1960, however, the world has increasingly returned to the idea of a just war. Aggression is justified in support of what the majority deems a good cause. We do not seem aware of the extent to which we have accepted war as a legitimate means to achieve approved objectives.

This can be observed in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 1974. Although it proclaimed the old Wilsonian view that no aggression was justified, it also allowed colonialism and racism as grounds for war. Thus, in the Third World much effort is expended to legitimize such actions as just wars. Ideological justification has thereby been intensified. “We are back to the position that it is legitimate for states to resort to war as in instrument of policy, if that policy is just. We should have an interesting time in the years that lie ahead, formulating a global consensus on the meaning of justice.”

Walzer & Just War

Hedley Bull

“Recapturing the Just War for Political Theory.” (Review Article) World Politics 31(July 1979):588–599.

The pervasive distrust of absolute values and the concomitant rise of “power politics” as a school of political philosophy have diverted attention from just war theory. The few serious explorations of the doctrine in our era have been written mainly by Catholic theologians, who retain a more traditional attitude toward ethical values.

In his widely praised book, Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer seems untroubled by the lack of secure philosophical foundations for modern views on the ethics of war. He confidently argues that the moral dimension is never absent from the decisions that lead to war as well as from the actions of those engaged in combat. In dealing with just in bello, for example, Walzer presents a very sympathetic view of the “war convention,” a set of rules which apply both to just and unjust participants in a military conflict. The central intent of the convention concerns the protection of the rights of noncombatants. While soldiers are always subject to attack (unless wounded or captured), noncombatants are not to be attacked at any time.

Since, in the twentieth century, whole populations have been mobilized for war, this protective principle would seem to have become null and void. Walzer seeks to save it by reformulating the doctrine of the “double effect.” According to this teaching, an act of war which causes injury to civilian bystanders is justified if the effect is not directly intended. By the same token, injury may not be done to civilians in order to spare the lives of combatants. In fact, “if saving civilian lives means risking soldiers' lives, the risk must be accepted.” Double effect also bars such techniques as sieges, guerilla and counter-guerilla warfare, and terrorism, because they expressly disavow any effort at protecting innocent bystanders.

In Walzer's view, only when collective survival is at stake may political leaders consider the violation of basic human rights. They are not, however, free of guilt when they do so. Walzer upholds the rationale of the Nuremberg trials that statesmen and military leaders may be tried and condemned for crimes committed in the name of a warring nation.

While Prof. Bull finds much to praise in Walzer's approach, he feels nonetheless that Walzer errs by failing to discuss the ethical foundations of his position and by rushing immediately into the realm of practical morality. Walzer's views seem subjective and vulnerable to attacks against which he provides no defense. For example, pacifists would deny that there is a legitimate distinction between a just and an unjust war. His “exceptions” to the war convention in order to avoid universal cataclysm or the extinction of a collectivity do not take into account the objections of those who uphold the absolute moral imperatives. Furthermore, Walzer's distinction between “practical” and “theoretical” morality ignores the basic unity of the two realms. In fact, it is at the level of foundations that the most important disagreements about the everyday morality of war be resolved or at least clarified.

Prof. Bull contends that Walzer has regrettably provided us only with his unfounded opinions about just and unjust wars.

Wartime Propaganda Tactics

Michael Stenton

• University of Bristol (U.K.)

“British Propaganda and Raison d'Etat, 1935–40.” European Studies Review 10(January 1980):47–74.

In the years before the Second World War, British officials realized that the nation would require a coordinated “information” or propaganda policy to promote its views during a period of increasing international tension. The groping, tentative measures taken by the Chamberlain government to establish such a policy resulted from the fact that England was a country whose traditions opposed the very notion of official propaganda.

The English government's general inexperience in the field of information resulted in five years during which even the aims of propaganda were a matter of debate. Was government information to strike a high tone of rationality and elite idealism or appeal to the visceral hatreds and stereotyped thinking of the lower classes? Should the government concentrate its information efforts on the home population or on the populations of Britain's potential enemies: Italy and Germany? Who should control the official campaign: a Ministry of Information? the Foreign Office? the military services? Fleet Street? The period described witnessed every possible combination of these alternatives, resulting in a vacillating and often contradictory approach to the problem.

The process of deciding upon a definitive policy gave rise to furious struggles for power and prestige among politicians, civil servants, and competing government ministries (i.e. Chamberlain vs. Churchill, Reith vs. Vansittart, the military services vs. the newly established Ministry of Information, etc.). Particular attention is focused on the information fiascos arising out of Germany's invasion of Norway in April, 1940. Among a long line of errors, news of the British recapture of Bergen and Trondhjem was issued even before attacks had been launched against the Germans. Statements of English determination to remain in the yet unoccupied parts of Norway preceded a complete evacuation of British forces from the country. Official rumors of massive counterattacks against the Nazis never came to fruition.

The Norwegian crisis thus brought disgrace to both official government information and to the leadership of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Summing up the attitude of the British public, a high-level propagandist declared: “People came not to believe in anything.”

Chamberlain's dilettantism and plain incompetence in the areas of information and rearmament opened the way for Winston Churchill's ultimate rise to the premiership. Skillfully manipulating the hunger for credibility, success, and “strength” in the face of the German threat, Churchill managed to present himself as the only securely warlike candidate for the office of Prime Minister. The failure of the early British propaganda effort thus helped to effect a decisive change of leadership, bringing to the fore the man who would guide England through the uncertainties of the war years.

Iran, Oil, and the Cold War

Stephen L. McFarland

• University of Texas at Austin

“A Peripheral View of the Origins of the Cold War: The Crises in Iran, 1941–47.” Diplomatic History 4(Fall 1980):333–351.

The American-Russian confrontation in Iran at the close of World War II has been regarded as one of the early clashes in what became known as the Cold War. It did not occur in a historical vacuum, however, and the actions of the Iranians themselves were a factor.

Early in the war the Iranian leadership saw the United States as a possible buffer against the British and the Russians, both of which had posed the greatest threats to Iranian sovereignty. The Iranian rulers sought American intervention, asking them to take over the operation of the main railway, and later (often with considerable exaggeration) informed the United States of every Soviet action in the area.

Internal politics in Iran pitted the Shah and the army against the police and a Parliament made up of a hodgepodge of at least eight factions of left to right persuasions. The Shah proved most adept at utilizing the old strategy of movanzansh (equilibrium), playing one side against the other. He secured American support for the army and also other advice and help.

By the end of the War, however, this strategy began to backfire, for all three—Great Britain, Russia and the United States—asked for various oil concessions. When Iran refused, it was Russia which reacted most firmly and thus insured that the United States would back the Iranians.

Americans often found it difficult to gain information about Russian actions in northern Iran. What was obtained has usually been filtered and distorted to suit the purposes of the Iranians. The Soviet-American confrontation intensified in 1945–46 as separatist forces pressed for autonomy in the face of repression by the Iranian government, whereupon the Russians began to support the insurgents. The Iranians continued to feed the Americans exaggerated reports of large Russian troop movements.

In his struggle with Parliament led by Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam, the American support of the Shah's army was critical. Qavam also opposed the Russians, but he was increasingly seen by American leaders as less anticommunist than the Shah.

When the Russian oil concession was cancelled in 1947, it is interesting that the Soviet analysis of what had occurred did not so much criticize the United States for promoting a policy of confrontation, but recognized the Iranian initiative as an aspect of internal power politics.

The State and Oil Policy

Stephen D. Krasner

• University of California at Los Angeles

“A Statist Interpretation of American Oil Policy toward the Middle East.” Political Science Quarterly 94(Spring 1979):77–96.

Four episodes in American Oil Policy toward the Middle East are examined to illustrate “how a state-centric or statist model can be used to analyze problems associated with foreign economic policy in which concentrated benefits are enjoyed by specific groups and costs are diffused throughout the rest of society.” Treating the state as an independent actor is judged a more accurate analytical approach than either instrumental Marxist or liberal interest group approaches.

The aim of some American policymakers and the oil industry in the Middle East were in conflict as World War II drew to a close. Harold Ickes was the most radical advocate of plans to involve the government in a future oil concession to insure supplies. This approach was opposed by domestic interests in the oil countries and political conservatives in Congress. The fragmentation of the American political system made it impossible for the central policy makers to pursue their view, but members of the government had advocated policies contrary to ideas of private property, policies hardly compatible with Marxist views of the State as the instrument of the capitalist.

By the 1950s policymakers were concerned to preserve conservative noncommunist regimes in the oil producing areas. It was agreed that higher payments for oil should be made to Saudi Arabia. Since the oil companies naturally opposed such measures, an agreement was worked out giving the oil companies a favorable tax treatment to compensate for these payments, and the American taxpayer thus absorbed the added costs.

A third example concerns the Iranians in the early 1950s. Concerned with the radical Massodegh government, the U.S. government pushed reluctant major oil companies into the oil consortium, at the cost of downgrading the antitrust suits then pending.

The final example cited involves the oil crisis of the 1970s. It was the oil companies who wanted early on to take a hard line against the oil price increase introduced first by Libya's Qadhofi and later by others such as the Shah of Iran. But government policymakers undercut this approach and accepted the Shah's demands as a part of larger geopolitical considerations.

These cases tend to substantiate the interpretation which sees the state as an independent actor in international discussions.

San Francisco & the Military Complex

Roger W. Lotchin

• University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)

“The City and the Sword: San Francisco and the Rise of the Metropolitan-Military Complex, 1919–1941.” Journal of American History 65(March 1979):996–1020.

Since the Farewell Address of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Americans have been conscious of a powerful coalition of business, government and the military, ominously called the “military-industrial complex.” Analyses of this complex have generally focused on national policy and ignored its urban dimension. They have also concentrated on the period since 1940, emphasizing World War II and Cold War anti-communism as causes. A few historians have noted the formation of a national and metropolitan military- civilian coalition as early as World War I. One of the major centers of its activity was the West Coast, where cities competed fiercely for the favor of the military, particularly of the Navy. Prof. Lotchin demonstrates the reality of the urban-military complex between the world wars, concentrating his attention on its operations in one great urban center, San Francisco.

The Civil, Spanish-American, and First World Wars had already endowed San Francisco with impressive military assets, and city leaders were quick to recognize how military spending stimulated the city's growth. By 1920, however, San Francisco entered upon a critical period of its development. That year's census revealed the loss of the city's West Coast preeminence to Los Angeles. Through the thinly disguised rhetoric of “national defense,” San Francisco sought to make use of the military to accelerate its faltering pace of development.

Coincidentally, for much of the period, the Navy found itself in a similarly embarrassing position. The Naval Limitation Treaty froze its strength, while government neglect and hostile public opinion kept it below treaty tonnage. This mutual dilemma of relative decline created ideal conditions for enhancing the Bay Area's military end, particularly, maritime development.

At a purely public relations level, civilian San Francisco wooed the military and Washington through a series of civic campaigns and military carnivals. By an overwhelming margin, San Franciscans approved a $4 million bond issue for a war memorial to honor the ideals of the services. Army Day, Defense Week, Navy Day, receptions for the fleet, Armistice Day, and especially Harbor Day became occasions for extravagant demonstrations of the city's support of the military presence in its midst. The Navy responded to this display by fleet open houses, lavish shipboard receptions, marine sham battles, in addition to the launching of the cruiser San Francisco in 1933.

In the military development of the Bay Area, economic rather than strategic considerations took precedence. At both the local and national levels, political leaders looked upon military development primarily as a means of allocating resources and stimulating employment. The Navy itself seemed more preoccupied with the brute expansion of its equipment and personnel than with its efficient deployment. It swamped available facilities with equipment and men. That justified more ample shore facilities which, in turn, required still larger expenditures.

Samuel P. Huntington has argued that, during the interwar period the military services were hampered by a resurgence of “business pacifism.” Prof. Lotchin's description of San Francisco's experience justifies the exact reverse of this conclusion. Bay area political and commercial interests provided broad, consistent, though little-noticed support for rearmament as well as valuable public relations for the services. At the same time, the general entanglement of “city and sword” encouraged the unprecedented entrance of the officer corps into the rough-and-tumble of local politics.

Protectionist Assaults on Developing Countries

G.K. Helleiner

• University of Toronto

“The New Industrial Protectionism and the Developing Countries.” Atlantic Papers 39(1980:7–28.

The economic problems plaguing industrialized nations during the past decade have revived protectionist policies in international trade. Protectionism has both bolstered the positions of industrial powers under the guise of seeking a more “orderly” economic environment and hurt underdeveloped economies (where alternate employment possibilities are more limited). Prof. Helleiner offers a detailed assessment of the present and future effects of trade barriers on embryonic economies.

The chief sectors in which protectionism thrives are the labor intensive branches of manufacturing in which underdeveloped countries possess a clear advantage. Since traditional primary product exports are quite susceptible to the uncertainties of weather and the business cycle, it is especially galling to developing countries that new man-made uncertainties will further hamper their expansion into the less vulnerable areas of processing and manufacturing.

The present tariff structures of industrialized countries originated in the five GATT tariff bargaining rounds held between 1947 and the early 1960s. Breaking with a tradition of product-centered reciprocity, the Kennedy Round of the 1960s implemented (with some notable exceptions) an across-the-board tariff-cutting formula. Nevertheless, contradicting the spirit of the GATT agreements, industrialized countries have substantially maintained the old pattern of effective discrimination against weaker trading partners by multiplying exceptions to non-tariff barriers (NTBs): this gravely threatens developing countries and free trade.

Even while hampering economic development in poorer nations, the new protectionism so favors the larger international trading companies and transnational corporations that 46% of U.S. imports and exports are “intrafirm.” Highly diverse and skilled in information collecting and management of legal and institutional procedures, transnationals are resourceful in the face of bewildering regulations. In contrast, independent exporters in third-world countries, highly specialized and bereft of information, have proven themselves particularly ill-suited to current protectionist developments.

Given this transnational advantage, trade barriers now being erected will divert investments from fledgling third-world industries to those areas dominated by the huge corporations. The costs imposed by these distortions in developing countries will likely (in the short-to-medium run) hinder their ability to repay commercial and official debts.

What then are the possible remedies to the current situation? Prof. Helleiner calls for intergovernmental “management” of world trade, which would replace current ad hoc measures with firm, consistent rules. “The politics as well as the economics of ... trade policy,” Helleiner concludes, “... must be better understood— and influenced—if any progress on this front is to be achieved.”

Government Military Behavior

William R. Thompson, Robert D. Duval, and Ahmed Dia

• Florida State University, State Courts Administrator's Office, Florida Supreme Court

“Wars, Alliances, and Military Expenditures: Two Pendulum Hypotheses.” Journal of Conflict Resolution: 23(December 1979):629–654.

Social science abounds in explanations of why wars begin. The number of these theories is matched only by the variety of variables they emphasize: alliance structures, polarity patterns, aberrant personalities, atavistic instincts, technological change, even Freud's death-seeking impulses. Even when we are in a position to test some of the ideas found in “war etiology” literature, the empirical results often reveal weak and ambiguous relationships.

A case in point is Alcock's (1972) dynamic two-phase theory of war and his assertion that the theory accounts for the timing of 38 of 39 international wars and 75% of the war variance during the 1946–1971 period. The authors of this article test two fundamental hypotheses of the Alcock theory, using an expanded data base comprising the 1900–1965 war and alliance record of the great powers. This strategy, they assume, provides a better foundation for evaluating the predictive and explanatory capacities of Alcock's theses.

Alcock's two central hypotheses are the following: First of all, wars tend to break out, he asserts, in periods when armament is increasing, though at a steadily decreasing rate. At this point, the “military mind” decides that war is expedient because: (a) the state is as strong as it will be for several years and (b) a war might arrest the downward swing in military spending. Secondly, Alcock claims that in periods of escalating military spending, leaders will tend to form alliances with compatible allies in order to increase their power still further. At the outset of their analysis, the authors question Alcock's use of the term of “war” to describe the 39 events occurring between 1946 and 1971. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the incidents in Goa, Quemoy-Matsu, and Czechoslovakia could hardly be termed wars in any conventional sense. Nonetheless, they all involved some international use of force. As such, they may be considered pertinent to Alcock's assumption that the military would seek to prevent a downward swing in expenditures.

Correlating spending rates of the great powers with their involvement in international conflicts or alliances, the authors detected no systematic support for either hypothesis. Focus on international uses of force yielded only three cases (Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States) which confirmed the predicted relationship with declining military spending. Yet none of the three equations was statistically significant or capable of accounting for much more than 5% of the estimated variance.

Test data likewise failed to establish a significant correlation between increasing spending rates and alliance formation among the great powers. In fact, the most prevalent coefficient pattern turned out to be the exact reverse of the hypothesis, i.e. decreased spending correlated with increased formation of alliances.

The authors conclude that Alcock's theory does not represent an advancement of our ability to predict or explain the military behavior of great powers.