 My topic this morning is not a happy one it is my belief that the libertarian movement has a destructive pro-war pro-imperial fifth column and Some of this goes back a long time. I Remember a good many libertarians early on Who said that they believed in all the libertarian positions except with respect to a non-interventionist foreign policy and That attitude has been especially prevalent today among European libertarians Who slavishly endorse u.s. global leadership and these Example they believe NATO should not only exist forever, but it should expand and even become a global force you find so many of those kinds of hawkish pro-imperial libertarians endorsing the US led proxy war in Ukraine today now to them For a non-interventionist foreign policy is at best a Luxury option They can choose to adopt it or they can choose to adopt a much more hawkish policy. I would argue that as a fundamental error That Foreign policy avoiding war avoiding needless interventions is Not only a crucial issue. It is the most crucial issue As Randolph Bourne observed more than a century ago war is the health of the state and indeed So many government abuses so many expansion of government power have taken place because of our foreign policy because of involvement in wars and constant preparation for wars and The logic in that I think is unassailable The requirements of an imperial foreign policy are fairly simple you can't run a global empire on the cheap You can't do it. It requires high taxes It requires pervasive regulations all of course in the name of national security It leads to a powerful excessively powerful executive That is the origin of the imperial presidency that we're now dealing with That has so eclipsed the legislative branch and The judicial branch in terms of power It leads to pervasive secrecy Everything gets classified, you know, we have now nearly two billion classified documents all to protect back sides within the bureaucracy and to make it difficult for Critics to monitor what the government is doing We have spying and so many other abuses of civil liberties domestic spying not as It was sold to the American people with the creation of the CIA in 1947 To monitor possible foreign threats and deal with that Too many libertarians that come to government propaganda on foreign policy, especially on issues of war and peace so they fall for the hyped threats and the terrible crisis of the day And so many of them are bought into the slogan we must defend freedom and democracy And they don't mean in the United States. They mean around the world The reaction to the Ukraine war I think illustrates the problem Students for Liberty put numerous articles on an their website with respect to that topic More than half a dozen in just the first couple months All of them Endure strong support for Ukraine some even hinted and rather hinted Quite clearly About the need for Western military intervention No opposing pieces were published during that period. I am most familiar with the problem of the pro-war pro-imperial fifth column During my years at the Cato Institute Cato started out being staunchly non-interventionist and it was That at the time that I joined the Institute in 1985 anyone who argued even that Well, NATO may have been useful when it was created but has Outlived its exist its usefulness That was regarded as a horribly squishy position even if one Wanted to argue that the Europeans were now fully capable of providing for their own defense But it's gotten a lot worse in recent years For one thing the Institute clearly is de-deemphasizing Defense and foreign policy. I have a couple of examples of of that in 2017 for the 40th anniversary of the Institute's founding They produced a video About a 20-minute video on the work of the Institute and what it had accomplished over the years fine Defense and foreign policy got about 45 seconds in that 20-minute video and All of that was devoted to our work against conscription which Let's be blunt was not exactly a front burner issue in 2017 Nothing about Iraq Nothing about Syria nothing about Libya nothing about the Balkan Wars Which we had vehemently opposed and yet That wasn't considered very important Or recently a few years ago The foreign and defense policy program was downgraded within the bureaucratic chart Where it once had a vice president in charge of Those two specific programs that was now put under a new vice president as one of five programs including immigration trade and so on So again a luxury option that was clearly the message the Development that has worried me the most is the Institute's surprisingly militant anti Russia stance with regard to the Ukraine War The initial Statement put out by the defense and foreign policy department about three days after the Russian invasion Russia's invasion is in contravention of international law and shows a flagrant disregard for the truth sanctions focused on the Russian state are justified and the only reason that the phrase on the Russian state was included was because I Gave a screaming fit when I saw the original version and made absolutely no distinction It was just a blanket endorsement of sanctions I have argued for years and so many others including other skater skaters scholars have argued that sanctions are both cruel and ineffectual They're cruel because they victimize innocent people in the target country and they're utterly ineffectual and Research has shown this quite clearly in Compelling the regime to do what the US government wants it to do And yet here you have an Institute Supposedly libertarian endorsing that kind of policy worse than that we've now seen several Kato scholars in Dors both economic and military aid Ukraine They simply quibble about The extent of the military aid Javelin anti-tank weapons fine F-16 is probably not and then you debate about the Range of destructive weapons in between now fortunately the Institute and its scholars continue to oppose direct to US military intervention but They've largely embraced the current proxy war Which has been a horribly cruel to the people of Ukraine especially and to the people of Russia Going back to sanctions. I mean you have sanctions. So you put a 50 year old shopkeeper Who sells nesting dolls in st. Petersburg out of business? Because cruise ships are forbidden to stop there Great. So what have you accomplished? That's going to compel Vladimir Putin to withdraw forces from Ukraine Apparently, that's the logic. That's the logic of sanctions. That's the logic now embraced That by a good many people at the Kato Institute. I could go into detail about Statements made by Kato scholars Cultural studies fellow Kathy young for example who I Here is now left the Institute Which is a good thing for the Institute Said in the May 20 2023 issue of reason magazine that Ukraine's liberal democracy deserves USAID Ukraine has already paid its dues as a would-be Liberal democracy unless one buys into the Kremlin narratives about the 2014 US sponsored coup used in quotes It is clear that Ukrainians have Collectively cast their lot with liberty anybody who's studying what's going on in Ukraine today Knows that that is utterly utterly false Vice-president for international affairs Ian Vasquez the person who now supervises defense and foreign policy and for other areas republished an article in February 2023 That he had written shortly following Ukraine's Maiden revolution That statement that article Absolutely embraced the theory that this was a spontaneous revolution The United States and the other Western powers had nothing to do with it. It was an expression of Ukrainian distaste for the the elected president and a Statement of liberty That could have just been easily written by the US State Department There I don't think you'd find any daylight because that was the official US government account. It is also Thoroughly misleading senior fellow Tom Palmer in a May 2022 speech before Students for Liberty Embraced nearly every talking point About the Ukraine war put out by the State Department and the CIA Even denied that NATO expansion into Russia's immediate neighborhood into Turning Ukraine into a NATO military asset played any role in the Kremlin's decision to launch the invasion of February of 2022 Absolutely denied that that was that was echoing Russian propaganda Well, unfortunately for him NATO Secretary General just came clean on that admitting that the Russian military response was at least in large part a Response to an ever larger NATO Getting ever closer to the Russian border. So I I hope that Mr. Palmer Engages with Secretary General Yen Stoltenberg and Tells him how he was wrong like clearly NATO did not play any role in this I hate to say it, but Some of this goes back as far as the Persian Gulf War Palmer and even more so vice president Brink Lindsay and Vice President Jerry Taylor all Embraced the need to go to war with with Iraq Absolutely essential couldn't avoid it that Was certainly distressing coming from the Kato Institute in any way sure you perform But they spent far more of their time attacking anybody who opposed Going to war including their own colleagues. He took the non-interventionist position and That created an impression Valid one that Kato was divided on the issue of non-interventionism in this case that Shows a lack of commitment to a central principle of libertarianism As I said at the beginning you cannot Be a lip they an Imperial libertarian you cannot Embrace a policy of u.s. Military intervention around the world and hope to have a small Constitutional government at home that will not last it cannot last With friends like these I would argue the Liberty Movement doesn't need any enemies Foreign policy is not a luxury option So-called libertarians who embrace American Empire Undermine the cause of freedom at home and around the world We should call them what they really are Imperial apologists and pro-war fifth columnists Thank you very much