 Those of us who are old-timers in the movement will remember how the Premier Libertarian magazine in fact started as a little newsletter just duplicated which although always having an impressive content in format to begin with was rather amateur. I think this in fact sums up Robert Paul's strength that from whereas other libertarian organizations have tended to throw a lot of money into glossy formats and so on and then only survived a few years. Robert and his colleagues at Reason have built up a really enduring organization which is to my mind perhaps you know the core of the libertarian movement. Moreover they've done so without being excessively factional, without being devious and in fact being really nice guys. On top of that Robert is to my mind at least perhaps although other people lay claim to this title but in my eyes he really is Mr Libertarian who combines the virtues of rationality, tolerance and commitment to principle. I hope I'm not embarrassing him too much by this encomium but I think he deserves it. Robert has written on a wide range of subjects of late he's been interested in defense issues. Issues I certainly think need a lot more analysis, a lot more rational analysis than they've received from many parts of the libertarian movement and it's a great pleasure to introduce him today and to introduce him on the subject of defense. Thank you. Thank you very much Chris. Can everyone at the back here properly? Fine. National defense and the whole subject of foreign policy generally of which national defense is a part is probably the most difficult and divisive issue that libertarians today face. It's difficult and divisive for several reasons. For one thing I suppose most of us were something else before being libertarians either liberals in the American sense of that term or conservatives and have tended I think many of us to carry along with us into being libertarians many ideas from our former ideological stance without really rethinking them or thinking them through as to how seriously they agree with our overall libertarian principles. And in addition defense concerns very difficult and emotional subjects ones that many of us have strong feelings about that may precede our having become libertarians. So it's a difficult subject to think rationally and clearly about. It's also difficult because it's so complex and there's so much information needed to actually understand what's going on in the realm both of defense technology and in understanding which capabilities exist in which countries what information is really propaganda what is really fact. I think there's one final reason that this is a difficult subject for libertarians and that is because to the extent that we believe that there should be government functions at all and I think most libertarians do but not all of course do. We don't we have very little thought about an actual theory of given that governments exist what should they do and if there's any proper function for a government it's certainly national defense is one of those functions. But it makes us uncomfortable to be putting out positive statements about what governments should do as opposed to negative statements about things that governments shouldn't do. So again I think there's a there's a reason there why we haven't paid as much attention to proper principles of national defense as we otherwise might have and have gone into issues like deregulation or selling off state-owned industries. This whole set of problems really bothered us at the Reason Foundation and about three years ago we decided to do a major project trying to come up with a proper formulation of principles for national defense and foreign policy. We put together a team of nine people from different fields people with defense technology backgrounds people with economics history government backgrounds all of whom share basic libertarian values. The result after some two years of work was this book Defending a Free Society which has 11 chapters written by the nine people in which I didn't write any of but I served as the overall project director and general editor. And what I will be saying this morning is a summary of some of the major principles and ideas that we came up with in this book. Let me say as further preference what this talk is not about and what the book is not about. I'm not going to be addressing what might exist in some ideal world of libertarian countries dealing with other libertarian countries. That's a nice thing to speculate about and it's something that someday maybe some of us or our children will live to see. What I am going to be talking about is today's world as it exists with a lot of dangerous situations hostile powers and so forth and large nation states as the given reality. And the project for this book and for this talk is to talk about what can we as libertarians contribute to the debate on defense policy in the world as it exists to move things in the direction of a more libertarian world. In other words just as we do just as Madsen Peary said the other morning about making steps for domestic government policy that move in the direction of freedom and in the principles of liberty. Similarly we as libertarians ought to be able to apply our principles to make recommendations in defense and foreign policy that move existing free societies in the direction of further freedom in the area of defense and foreign policy. That's the kind of project not how would defense be handled in an ideal libertarian world. That's what I'm going to be talking about this morning. Now there are three basic areas that I want to cover just briefly. The first is the overall moral framework, the principles of moral philosophy that lie at the core of defense and foreign policy. Second is applying those principles to the very difficult issues of nuclear strategy. And the third point is to apply those principles to military alliances. All topics deserving of many hours in their own right. Let's plunge in and start first of all with talking about the moral framework that we should be looking at to to figure out what to say about defense questions. Now because I said we're starting with the world of of governments as they exist today so therefore we are going to be talking about in a free if as a free society what should government's role in national defense be. Our definition is that it should be to protect the rights and freedoms of the people who've hired it within a framework of law. Now that is a very limited definition and it is not at all the kind of charges that our existing governments in in the United States or Western Europe give to themselves. The purpose of defense then can only be to defend against real threats to the lives property and freedoms of the people of a country whose whose government we're talking about. Cannot be grandiose collectivist kind of ideas that say lead the free world, protect vital interests and make the world safe these kinds of things that that have led to to grandiose crusades and gigantic levels of taxation in the past. Secondly there's a question of jurisdiction where where does this defense take place? Given that other governments exist around the world and if we believe in the rule of law I think we we need to to acknowledge the reality of other governments and other legal systems existing I think it's it is consistent to say that that the jurisdiction of national defense is properly to defend the territory of the very of whatever society we're talking about and not to be trying to right wrongs that exist within other countries. On the other hand that principle alone doesn't say doesn't restrict defense operations outside strictly the borders of a given country assuming that country is a free society that we're talking about. There are large areas that are beyond the jurisdiction of any government the high seas outer space being specifics that I have in mind and we know I know of no principle that says that it violates anyone's rights or jurisdiction to have defensive operations taking place on the seas defensive operations taking place in outer space and and as we will see in in further discussion such things can play a vital role in serious realistic national defense. Now a third point is what kind of means can be used if we're if we're talking about a free society what kind of means can be used in the name of national defense. Does is anything is it in anything goes situation as long as the the goal is to defend the lives and freedom of the people within the free society. I don't think so. The means obviously libertarians are people who believe that the principle of means justifying of ends justifying the means is wrong. Obviously the means must be consistent with the ends if we're talking about defending freedom it's completely illegitimate to violate freedom in order to do that and that means that for example such commonly accepted things as as conscription of drafting people against their will to provide a means of defense we cannot agree with as libertarians. Ultimately the same argument applies to drafting or conscripting people's money. You cannot be consistent in principle to defend freedom by taking away other people's freedom. On the other hand let me let me make the point that it is possible to separate the issue of what kind of forces and functions what kind of actions in preparing for war or in preparing to defend a society it is legitimate for government to take. In other words the operational aspects of military strategy force structure and so forth that's a separate question a separable question from the issue of how does defense get paid for and so within the scope of the reason foundations project and within the scope of this book and my talk this morning I am not going to be trying to solve the very naughty problem of voluntary financing of defense that's a subject that we are planning further research on at the reason foundation we did not find any well worked out theories we found a few sketchy ideas on voluntary financing of defense and so we did not feel comfortable putting out to the world for general public consumption half baked ideas on voluntary financing we identified it as a problem and said this is something that needs further work in the meantime we go on to look at the questions of how to properly versus improperly use military force in the defense of freedom that's a very important qualification finally then we come to the question of when to use military force when is it justified to act in the name of national defense and how do we decide that this really has two parts one is is when is it justified to get into a situation of actually using force and once you do what are the principles that govern how you use that force now those two questions constitute a branch of moral philosophy branch of political philosophy that historically has gone by the name of just war theory some people have an instinctive negative reaction against the term because they don't like to really think that about war injustice in the same breath but that's that that's a traditional name for this branch of political philosophy so I think we might as well use it now in our book in our project we looked at seven possible alternative theories of of just war of what are the moral principles involved for using military defensive force ranging all the way from principal pacifism on one end to the idea that once you're attacked then anything goes it's life or death and and there are no governing restraining moral principles and evaluating the the rationality the consistency of all those positions we came out at some at one of the intermediate positions as being the most justified and we call that a just war defense principle basically it says that the limitation on using force in self-defense is is the following that all defensive force must be targeted against aggressive force now that sounds like a very simple principle but as soon as you start talking about applying that to real-world situations you immediately come up against some tough moral dilemmas what if the aggressive force that's launched against you is made up entirely of conscripts people who are there against their will is it still justified to shoot back are those aggressive forces in the sense that we that we mean what if the aggressor uses human shields and even so far as to go as literally to to strap human beings on the front of of his tanks and and roll those tanks against you with the idea that that will prevent you as a moral person from shooting back what if the aggressor by design places his his rocket launchers his gun emplacements in the midst of civilian villages with the idea that you as a moral person will therefore not shoot back because you by doing so you would you would inevitably be wiping out innocent civilians what about those questions well if you think those problems through my conclusion the conclusion that we reached on our project team was that you have to cope with those moral dilemmas and that the only coherent consistent way of coping with them other than going back to a principled pacifism which says that you really basically cannot defend yourself and that you you have no right to retaliate the only coherent answer to those questions is that you must be able to shoot back in those tough situations of conscripts human shields or innocent bystanders but you have a moral obligation to do so in the least destructive way the way that minimizes all possible harm to innocent bystanders to human shields the moral responsibility for harm that occurs to to the conscripts to human shields to innocent bystanders rests on the shoulders of the aggressor who has put those innocent people in that position by his own actions it is not it does not rest on your shoulders as someone who is simply trying to defend himself against that tough situation but obviously as moral people as morally responsible people if a gun emplacement is in the midst of a village we don't want to shoot back with something that by definition wipes out the whole village we want to shoot back with something that does the best job possible of hitting the gun in placement with as little harm to the surrounding innocence as possible so that's the kind of general principle that we've come up with and think about it let's go back one more time to to the alternative to that if you are not willing to to respond with defensive force when the aggressor uses those those very vicious and evil techniques of of relying on your sense of morality to avoid killing the innocent people that he puts in your way then you have left yourself completely open to being wiped out by the most ruthless of aggressors because if the if the aggressor knows that that's your moral position then all he has to do in order to guarantee winning is to be as as ruthless and evil as possible to use only conscripts to always use human shields to always place his aggressive force in the midst of of civilian concentrations knowing that thereby you can do nothing so I think you know once you once you realize this moral dilemma you really are faced with either being strictly a pacifist or being willing to respond in accordance with the guidelines that I've just laid down now the implications of these moral principles are very far reaching these can be applied directly to both nuclear and conventional arms strategy tactics and and types of weapon systems that people would procure the general principles before going into details are because of these moral dilemmas about potentially wiping out many civilians obviously you'll prefer shields to swords you'd prefer to be able to ward off blows as much as possible rather than having to retaliate in situations where you might kill many innocent bystanders so that certainly says that you would want to have things like anti ballistic missile systems and civil defense and other protective measures rather than relying strictly and solely on retaliation but secondly the other implication that I draw is that it is morally acceptable to retaliate and that therefore you also besides defensive shield types of systems and procedures obviously you also need retaliatory forces but retaliatory forces that can be used in a discriminating way they're therefore they should be as accurate as possible and with the amount of destructive power that's proportionate to the task at hand and not any more than that and that poses some very definite constraints on what kinds of weapon systems you purchase and how you use them in if you ever have to use them now if you contrast these general ideas with the principles that have governed nuclear strategy in in the last 30 years the general principle has been called mutual assured destruction which is the idea of that the only real defense should be massive retaliation of a sort that is so horrible because it's premised on destroying the the enemy's society with massive nuclear attacks it's that kind of philosophy is exactly the opposite of what I have just laid out as being in accordance with libertarian principles the mutual assured destruction philosophy stresses large city busting nuclear types of weapons as opposed to highly accurate small-scale discriminate types of weapons so we have very much of opposing philosophies here contending for for the allegiance of libertarians let me also as a footnote note that this problem the moral dilemma of of hitting innocent bystanders in retaliation against an enemy aggressive missile silo or whatever is really not a problem that arises only in in nuclear strategy any sort of response to aggression whether it's a tank crew firing against an enemy tank or against enemy soldiers whether it's even a rifleman aiming a rifle has the same moral dilemma built in there's always the possibility and in some cases probability of innocence bystanders of civilians being in the vicinity and possibly being hit by accident and so you can't escape this dilemma by by trying to uninvent nuclear weapons and saying this only arises because of the nuclear age this is a problem that's inherent in any kind of armed conflict it's not strictly a matter of of nuclear policy all right let me let me now move from the moral philosophy into trying to apply these ideas a little bit more in detail to the nuclear strategy question what is fascinating to to be aware of here and and much of the nuclear debate today acts as if many of these facts weren't true is that there's been a tremendous technological revolution in nuclear armaments over the last 30 years back in the 1950s the only kind of of nuclear strategy was city busting the nuclear weapons that existed then were huge multi-megaton bombs that were carried on bombers that were dropped by gravity with very large inaccuracy and if you hit something within a mile you were you were doing good through the development of ICBMs and today with with even more precise missiles and guidance systems it is now possible to hit targets over long distances even intercontinental distances within a few hundred feet and with cruise missiles and the kind of guidance of active guidance systems that they now have it's possible literally within within tens of feet to hit targets now that makes possible things that just were not even conceivable 10 or 20 years ago you can you can measure some of of the change that's gone on by by looking at the size of nuclear arsenals the US nuclear arsenal measured in terms of the megatonnage millions of tons of explosive power of of the total set of bombs that exist in 1980 was only one quarter as much megatonnage as in 1960 few people are aware of that but that's because of this progressive miniaturization of nuclear warheads because of more accurate guidance systems and more precise means of delivery this this process is continuing the technology is not at all static every it's it's sort of like in computers the miniaturization of computing power the same sort of thing although not quite as dramatic has been going on and still is going on in nuclear weapons since 1967 the United States government has phased out two nuclear warheads or weapons for every new one that's been added so there's been a very large change going on over these years the ironic thing about this is that a number of libertarians at least in the United States favor the idea that's very popular of a nuclear freeze which would have a treaty negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union that would call a halt to all development of nuclear weapons it would say whatever you have today stop and maintain that as your nuclear arsenal well the US nuclear arsenal and the Soviet nuclear arsenal still contain hundreds of of very very large inaccurate nuclear weapons multi-megaton type city busters that are still there in the arsenal the nuclear freeze would guarantee that those those awful weapons that cannot be used in the discriminatory manner those would have to remain in the nuclear arsenal so I think libertarians really need to question that idea as much as as on first glance it may sound like a move toward toward peace of some sort it would in fact call a halt to this tremendous technological evolution that's been going on and that is continuing and which is moving us in the direction of making possible a much more principled set of doctrines and tactics for the use of nuclear weapons now I said a few minutes ago that according to the moral principles that I laid out we should prefer shields to swords that ideally a weapons a defensive system would consist of a combination of defenses and precision retaliatory forces now what kind of what would that consist of in fact what could that consist of and what's technologically possible you've all heard a great deal about Star Wars and in the year and a half since president Reagan announced a at least a rhetorical commitment to building nuclear defenses in the United States the idea has been given a lot of play and a lot of attack last week's economist has this lead editorial or or leader as I guess you call them in this country about space weapons and and makes the what are now the conventional arguments three different arguments saying why this is a bad idea well I happen to think that that all three of those arguments are wrong and I will I will tell you briefly why the most probably the most persuasive argument against nuclear defenses is the idea that unless a defensive shield of some of a set of anti ballistic missile weapons unless it's practically perfect it's not worth doing well there's two things wrong with that first of all many of the people who make that argument argue that there is no likely technological way to get 90 or 95 percent perfection let's say 90 or 90 percent 90 or 95 percent interception of all the attacking warheads or missiles now in the first place what what that idea ignores that that is based on the common sense idea that it's very expensive to get 98 or 99 percent reliability or or quality in any sort of system and that this is a very complex technological problem which it is and that it's so it's it's could only possibly be done at a huge cost more than anyone would want to afford what this ignores is that all the proposals that are being seriously talked about call for doing the job in several layers not having one system that has to be 90 or 95 percent effective but having several different systems in sequence in in layers if you will let's let's think about the mathematics for a minute let's assume that we can build three different types of ABM technologies one to intercept missiles in their launch phase one to intercept them in the coasting ballistic phase and the third to intercept the new warheads on re-entry okay that those are the kinds of things that are being seriously talked about let's assume further that we don't ask for 95 or 99 percent interception capability on any of those but we only ask for 90 capability on each of the three layers suppose a massive attack from the soviet union were launched say against the united states of 5000 5000 missiles attack if the first layer is 90 effective and hits 90 percent of the boosters in their boost phase that lets 10 percent through or 500 now you have 500 coasting through space and the second layer which is 90 percent effective again hits 90 percent of those 500 that leaves 10 percent or 50 to re-enter the atmosphere and the the attacking now 50 is still a lot the third layer by again by assumption is 90 percent effective hits 90 percent of those 50 which leaves 10 percent or five okay five nuclear warheads landing on any country even this country is larger the united states is still a lot of destruction but it's not 5000 and five nuclear warheads produce a certain amount of blast and fallout and the areas that they hit as ground zero will certainly be destroyed but the amount of fallout and collateral damage from five nuclear warheads is something that can easily be protected against with fallout shelters and other relatively modest forms of civil defense far less extensive civil defense than is in place in present in sweden and switzerland and several other countries so the idea of a coordinated effort of of civil defense and several layer defensive technology uh is an eminently feasible one and reduces what would be a massive destruction of a country to a serious problem but not at all the the end of civilization or the or the wipeout of a country and so by proper understanding of the of the technology and of how to put the thing together i think you can see that something can be less than 100 perfect and still be very valuable to do still provide very valuable amount of defense now another another objection that's raised that's raised in the economist editorial and raised in in the united states is that maybe it's doable but it's far too costly and and it would be a waste of money uh because it would cost 200 billion 300 billion 500 billion dollars now i'm not going to dispute that sort of of ballpark of the numbers because i think to do a a full-fledged three-layer system over a period of 10 or 15 years probably would cost in the range of 250 to 500 billion dollars to protect a country the size of the united states but what you have to ask uh in the same way that walter williams asked yesterday about uh the nurses salaries you have to ask compared to what all right say let's say 300 billion dollars over over a 10-year period compared to what right now the u.s. defense budget is is close to uh it's between 200 and 300 billion a year over the next five years and it's not providing any real defense it's providing a huge amount of potential retaliation it's providing all sorts of tanks for europe and so forth but it's not providing one ounce of protection for the united states against a nuclear attack so to spend what would amount to maybe 10 percent or 15 percent of that budget per year to build a real capability to defend against an all-out destruction seems to me to be an eminently reasonable proposition and not at all a kind of expense that bankrupts the country and you also have to look at would you keep everything else the same or would you make other changes reduce other things in order to have in order to make affordable the kind of expenditure needed for this sort of system and i think clearly you could and should a third a third kind of argument uh and this is a little more sophisticated one is that building defenses against a nuclear attack is too dangerous a thing to do it's provocative it's destabilizing it would provoke the soviet union now i think if you carry that kind of logic to its ultimate conclusion it would say that anything that you do to defend yourself is dangerous and would provoke the soviet union so why not give up now rather than rather than bothering going through the motions of spending the money and building systems but the specifics of that argument are that an effective capability to defend against nuclear attack would amount to imposing disarmament on the soviet union and therefore the soviets seeing that coming would launch a preemptive attack before you got it built now the same people who make that argument are the people who have been arguing over the last 10 years that no new offensive nuclear weapons systems should be built such as the mx missile the trident submarine the b1 bomber because the united states already possesses so much retaliatory power on its submarine force that the soviets would never attack and even if they launched a first strike they could be retaliated against with the submarine launch missiles and therefore uh it would be suicidal for them to launch an attack and so on and so forth so the same people on the one hand are saying that that the united states is so safe with its existing weapons that the soviets would never launch a nuclear attack and now they're saying that with those same weapons in place the soviets would launch a nuclear attack if the united states started to build a shield and I think that is not really credible to maintain both things things simultaneously the other point to keep in mind about this is that what those critics are arguing is that the possession of a of the upper hand let's say that that a defensive shield if the US had a defensive shield and the soviets didn't this would give the united states government the ability to launch a first strike without necessarily being wiped out in return uh that was the case all through the 1950s and till about the end of the 1960s the united states government had what was considered clear cut nuclear superiority for two decades and did not use it and and uh this did not provoke world war three and so I think to argue that to go go back in a sense to a situation where the united states government had nuclear superiority over the soviet union would not necessarily I mean you cannot assume that the fact of nuclear superiority on one side would lead to to war because for 20 years when that situation existed it did not lead to war in fact it preserved peace so that the argument doesn't strictly follow from from the premises that are that are laid to it okay I think that's enough except possibly for people's questions about defensive systems I said that a proper nuclear strategy would involve a mix of a defensive shield and proper kinds of retaliatory systems and what would those retaliatory systems be unlike unlike some of my libertarian friends who advocate strong defenses I argue for the abolition of land-based ICBMs and we we do so in the book uh on the grounds that along several grounds uh among them being that uh they there is not a real military need for them uh now this this point can be argued by by defense technologists and I'll be glad to take questions on it if people have questions but that uh when you look at the pros and the cons there is really not sufficient need to justify the expenditure of of fixed in place large-scale ICBM systems like the mx missile that the kind of targets that they are called for to be used against which are mainly heavily hardened soviet missile silos really do not make that much sense as as prime targets now that that may strike that may sound strange uh the arguments for that is twofold one assuming that the united states does not plan a first strike against the soviet unions against the soviet union then if a if a system is truly retaliatory then most of the silos that the soviet union has now assuming that they actually contain ICBMs those ICBMs would have been launched in a first strike at the time that a retaliatory decision is made and so empty silos would be there rather than full silos and so to configure a very large percentage of your retaliatory force against empty silos doesn't really make a lot of sense if it really is a retaliatory force now the counter argument to that is made well the soviets have developed and tested and and we have watched from space with with reconnaissance satellites exercises to reload those silos with new missiles and so those those still should be good targets that's what's really in question is whether those silos would be reloaded whether there would be good targets there now several of the people that I respect greatly in the in the nuclear field argue that it's very unlikely that there would be missiles in those silos waiting for a retaliatory strike and they argue in fact that what is known about soviet missiles from reconnaissance satellites and other means of intelligence in fact is very little that the soviets have for decades very actively practiced all sorts of techniques of concealment and deception and that is very unlikely it's that it is very likely in fact that us reconnaissance satellites have observed and photographed silo reloading exercises because they want us to think that more missiles are going to be in those silos and that in fact the rest of their missiles are probably not in silos they're probably in all sorts of other locations that are not visible to reconnaissance satellites such as barns tent caves and all sorts of other sites that that cannot be seen by reconnaissance satellites it's very implausible think that just because we being being honest and honorable people put all of our missiles in known locations where they can be targeted in advance it's not really credible to think that the soviet union operates the same way given all of its history and all that we know about it so the argument is that instead of that the best way to to intercept a soviet icbm is not to try to hit a hole in the ground where it might or might not be but to hit it once it's been launched and that the that the same investment that might go into hitting holes in the ground really ought to go into intercepting missiles that are on their way to hit you so what kind of retaliatory systems does that leave we argue in the book for a strong reliance on on cruise missiles on on mobile small missiles that are not vulnerable to being wiped out because they're sitting on the ground in a known location and for smaller submarine launched missiles with the idea that here you have forces that are largely invulnerable because they can move around can't be targeted in advance but at the same time use the modern advanced guidance systems and small warheads so they can be used in a morally precise way strictly against military targets and there are there are vast numbers of military targets in the soviet union other than concrete holes in the ground that could and should be targeted some of which are targeted now more of which could be targeted finally my time is running short let me just say a few words about the third subject that i want to talk about and that is military alliances i think most of you who are who are europeans or from from other countries know that american libertarians have have been strongly critical of the present nato alliance and i think for good reasons there there's nothing in principle that we can come up with wrong with the idea of mutual defensive alliances particularly for small countries that are close to a hostile neighbor so that if we were thinking about defense policy for for small european country or let's say for any european countries that are that are close together they're not protected by large oceans that have a large hostile neighbor nearby a mutual defense alliance in that context among free societies in europe makes a great deal of sense it doesn't make sense to to allow free society to be picked off one by one because they could be prevented present a strong front together and it's that kind of logic that's extended to the united states as a partner of europe saying that that same situation basically holds and that it is in the interest of the united states as a free society to maintain the present structure of the nato alliance now that present structure in fact is amounts to a form of welfare we call it defense welfare but that is what it amounts to it is for the first time this year official u.s. government sources have identified the amount of the u.s defense budget that exists essentially because of the nato commitment because of the troops on the ground in europe because of the troops that are committed to be brought into to europe uh in in case of a soviet invasion and because of other forces that are that are there and that basically would not be needed if it were not for the u.s. commitment to nato and that amounts to well over a hundred billion dollars out of that two hundred plus billion dollar u.s. defense budget and ladies and gentlemen that it is dawning on american taxpayers not just libertarians that that is a huge amount of money and that that money if it continues indefinitely going to defend europe uh is not available to defend the united states the realization is also dawning that it that there are are negative aspects as well as positive aspects to this idea of the united states gaining something real by spending almost half of its entire defense budget on defending its neighbors in europe one of those most important points is that this idea of the nuclear umbrella that the ultimate defense of europe by americans is the threat to launch a nuclear strike from the united states against the soviet union if the so-called conventional forces on the ground in europe don't hold uh a soviet invasion well you can get military opinions on both sides but an awful lot of people don't think that the the relatively modest number and extent of ground forces in europe could hold against the soviet invasion and so that the only thing that is the real deterrent is the u.s threat of of world war three now what that says in fact if you look at it from an americans perspective is that the american citizens and american taxpayers are being asked to risk their own cities their own country uh to defend their neighbors whom we like and wish to continue being friends with but that's that's a lot to ask it really is uh and in terms of the principles that we talked about about what the proper role of a free society's government is and and how much can be can be asked of people to do i think you really have to say that uh if we're thinking of of moving european governments in the direction of being free societies as we're trying to do in the united states that that free societies ought to be defending themselves and not permanently dependent on someone else for a large share in fact for the for the ultimate uh deterrent that they rely on and what that means is that if if it turns out and i think it does that nuclear weapons are still the the ultimate deterrent of the soviet attack or intimidation of western europe that means that western europe needs to have its own nuclear weapons under its own control uh and not have that tied in to the united states government making the key decision or having a finger on the trigger and it means that something that europeans as well as americans have to face up to and start arguing for uh or figure out some way of doing it without nuclear weapons my own technical and political judgment is that i don't see a feasible way to do that at the moment there's a lot of of neat high tech gizmos coming out but uh i don't see that any of them yet is more cost effective than than properly structured nuclear forces and so i think there's a big choice that uh is going to have to be faced by europeans in general and including european libertarians same goes for japan japan like western europe is an economic superpower but it's but it's a military pygmy and that kind of situation cannot continue indefinitely world war two is long over free societies like those speaking in broad terms of western europe and japan historically do not make war on one another the empirical evidence is overwhelming that wars between pairs of free societies virtually never happen uh since we've had free societies develop in the last 200 years uh wars do occur between pairs of unfree societies between free societies versus unfree societies wars virtually never occur between free societies and so that we as as residents of relatively free societies have the least to fear from other free societies having nuclear weapons so we should not sit and quake in our boots about nuclear arms for west germany or nuclear arms for japan we should encourage realistic self-defense with the most modern technology that's available for all free societies the nightmare vision of the soviets is not per se that that the us would pull out of europe but that the u.s uh that that europe in particularly germany would get its own nuclear weapons and that the soviet union would face not just one nuclear superpower but two or three or four nuclear superpowers uh i think it is it should be our job as libertarians who are responsibly concerned about national defense to help make that nightmare for the soviet union come true thank you thanks very much robert we've got about six or seven minutes for questions so if you could keep them brief uh david david butler could you possibly do the honors with passing the microphone around thanks dean armed first um bob there was one of your arguments i thought i saw a weak point i'd like to bring it up not just as a criticism but to offer a way you can strengthen it good and that was on the question of whether setting up a star wars type of defense or an effective nuclear umbrella would cause the soviet union to therefore strike first before it was fully developed and your argument was that well the united states went through a period in the fifties and sixties where it could have done that it didn't so therefore the soviets really wouldn't be afraid of this i think this in itself is a weak argument because in the first place we shouldn't underestimate soviet paranoia i know it's a mistake to underestimate american paranoia or british paranoia or anyone else's paranoia uh so that's always a factor um secondly the united states has never said it wouldn't strike first which shows no indication that it's going to make any such claim now and therefore it's not totally paranoia in the third place the united states did use nuclear weapons first in world war two 1950s and 1960s united states and soviet union were not actively involved in a war direct confrontation anywhere and whereas when it wasn't a direct confrontation with japan they didn't hesitate to use it so the soviets still might have with some justification uh go through that thought process now i think there's a better argument to use and i'm really um dismayed that it hasn't been used more because i got this from all places a guy who works at the pentagon on the star wars uh technology and when someone brought up this objection to him he said oh but don't you understand that we give them the secret in other words everyone everyone will be given the capability of having a nuclear umbrella so that nuclear weapons will become absolutely obsolete and this is very important because even apart from the fear of american aggression what why should the soviets dismantle their nuclear weaponry if they're afraid that uh pakistan or iran or or france or china is going to lob one on them good i think i think what i agree with largely with what dean said i think i would i would not feel comfortable right at the outset giving the entire technology to the soviets i think what we're in fact are likely to see the soviet unions are well is well along in developing this sort of thing also they may well not have as sophisticated a computer capability and some of the other things uh they're they are further ahead in terms of living and working in space at the moment uh but i i basically agree that it's going to have to come to that that everyone is going to have to have the technology uh to do this and that the world will be far safer when they do so thank you for the point and i think i think your other points were well taken about about the argument the weakness of those other arguments okay good let me let me make comment on the first question first there's an ambiguity about us read nuclear retaliatory policy uh on the one hand there's been a lot published that says that uh the decision to push the button to launch nuclear missiles would only be made after uh nuclear weapons had actually landed you know hit the ground and exploded in the united states uh that seems to be from from what you can glean from unclassified sources that that is the declared policy in the event of a nuclear attack on the united states however however and this is very important however under the the policy of of of the nuclear protection for europe and this is what dean was referring to it is also declared policy that if the use if if an invasion of europe of western europe by the soviet union was not being held back sufficiently by whatever was deployed on the ground in europe then the united states does reserve the right unilaterally to launch a nuclear attack on the soviet union without a single missile having to launch against the united states first so that that constitutes a retaliatory in the sense of europe first strike in the sense of from the united states to the soviet union so there's this kind of dual policy that's in effect and that i worry a lot about because that is the most likely way that the united states could get itself involved in a nuclear war is is by getting into that kind of situation of having to go to the defense of europe by using nuclear weapons first now your second point was about what military intelligence in peacetime we have a whole chapter in the book incidentally there are there are copies of the book for sale in the back of the room we have what i think is is one of the one of the most interesting and innovative chapters in the book it does cover military intelligence in in one minute it's very hard to to try to summarize that we do argue that some sort of military intelligence capability intelligence in the sense of gathering information about the potential capabilities and intentions intentions of enemies that have declared that they're your enemies like soviet union is obviously needed and justified what exactly are the limits on that is a tough question to decide we try to do so in the chapter we definitely argue against covert action types of of capabilities like like the cia has historically carried out trying to prop up dictators and so forth that's not intelligence anyway in the classical sense true military intelligence i think is an integral an essential part of any kind of serious credible defensive effort you have to know what you're up against and try to psych it out in advance and so know that you can buy order design and order and buy weapons that are adequate to the task so but read the read the chapter again about the you you're arguing about taking out any kind of weapons that could be used for a first strike a couple points on that is it is it wise to assure a ruthless enemy that that you would never do that um i mean i'm not talking about threatening to do it but silence is not a threat and nobody would argue against against people possessing guns because the mere possession of a gun is a threat um secondly and and and i i mean so much of of war and the avoidance of war is governed by fear i mean wars happen when one one country uh thinks that it's not in danger and thinks that and appears to be be weaker and and doesn't doesn't realize it um the second thing is along the same lines um well of the retaliatory situation you were just talking about i mean would we really want if the soviet union all of a sudden launched a massive nuclear campaign against half of the world i mean would it really be in our interest not to in some sense retaliate and that would be in as you said in the sense of first strike i mean i don't think it's inherently unreasonable to think that in a situation where the destruction of most of the world is involved that we that we wouldn't want to do that and wouldn't want to do that as as libertarians who are interested in in freedom those are those are good and thoughtful points leaders the on the first i i spoke a little bit in precisely in in talking about weapons which are inherently first strike weapons because as you as you point out by analogy just with that we even with a handgun uh a weapon itself doesn't have any intentions uh the intention is in in whoever possesses it and and how the possessor decides to use it and so strictly speaking it is not true that that i mean i suppose you can you can you could think of of doomsday bombs or or huge dirty nuclear weapons that would only make sense uh well even there they they they would be wrong to use probably under any circumstances but they could they could be thrown back in retaliation or used in a first strike so it's not really the characteristics of the weapon as such but it's rather the the policy under which they'd be used i don't i don't think the the first strike potential of a weapon like the mx is really an argument against having it okay i think if the decision for other reasons and i cited some other reasons and i didn't go into all of them if the decision were made not to build or to cancel something like the mx which is characterized by propagandists especially soviet propagandists as an evil first strike weapon i think you could then you could score some important propaganda points to the world by saying look we don't have weapons that that people characterizes first strike weapons we only have weapons that are that designed more precisely to use against military targets you could score some propaganda points by that but that's not the reason to do it now your other point about if half of the world were were about to be wiped out by the soviet by a soviet nuclear attacks should the united states do something about it i i hadn't i hadn't really thought about that particular scenario before i think there could certainly be a case for for doing so just simply on the grounds of it of it being like a like a raging epidemic that was about to be out of control and that any reasonable person would under under a kind of a lifeboat ethics would have to take some action in that situation i think you'd want to to look at in actually trying to design and plan an order of military forces look at whether there was any reasonable likelihood of that scenario before deciding you needed to gear up to do it on the other hand it may be that you would have the capability anyway justified for other reasons so that it would be available to use in fact i think you probably would simply to be able to retaliate against that kind of attack on yourself you might well have that capability available then it would just be a decision of is now a justified time to use it i think it probably would but i'm willing to listen to arguments thanks well thank you very much