 Welcome back to War Economy and State. This is the Mises Institute's foreign policy and international relations podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, executive editor with the Mises Institute. And here with me is, I don't know, I consider him our foreign policy consultant, Zachary Yoast. And Zach told me to read a book. And we're going to talk about this book today. This will be basically a podcast book review. And this book is called Human Nature and World Affairs. This basically, and the subtitle is an introduction to classical liberalism and international relations theory. It's an introductory level book. And I read the whole thing because it's a mere 165 or so pages. I told Zach. I'm not reading any books that are like more than 250, 300 pages. But this one, perfect, a nice introductory, easy to read text. And I think it's a necessary book, if not just necessary in the terms of you should probably read it if you're unfamiliar with IR theory, but also necessary in the sense that so little is really written on this topic. And so by the time we're done, I think you'll know a lot of these details. Zach, how did you hear about this book? Tell us a little bit about the author, Edwin Van Dihar, too, and where he's coming from, just so people have some context about the origins of his opinions and analysis. Right, sure. So I learned about this book because it was reviewed in Law and Liberty, the Liberty Fund publication. And it was a pretty favorable review. And I thought it sounded interesting. And because I'm a little familiar with Van Dihar's work already, a friend had told me about him because he wrote a much longer book, the name of which escapes me, but it's basically foreign policy of Mises and Hayek. And that book I looked into getting, it was like a hundred bucks, it's like an academic press book. So I've not read that yet. I've read some of his journal articles that I found quite influential, one of them being an article where he discusses classical liberal views on the role of trade and war, where he takes the line that free trade does not equal peace. There's the probably apocryphal Bastiat quote that when goods don't cross borders, armies will. In this article, which was one of the first things I read by him, Van Dihar says, that's not true. And what we think of as great classical liberals like Adam Smith and David Hume did not think that was true either. So that's how I became familiar with him. And it was, you know, a short book. And I thought it'd be worth discussing because not many books on international relations discuss Mises and Hayek or Ayn Rand. He's also written about Ayn Rand in foreign policy, which is not normal outside of sort of Ayn Rand Institute circles. So he's, I think, a serious thinker. He's also sort of an independent scholar. He has a PhD, but he sort of worked in private industry and has taught both in the he's from the Netherlands. He's taught in the Netherlands. And I think either in Japan or Taiwan or both. So all around an interesting guy who I think it's, you know, I don't agree with everything he says, but I think he raises some good points and takes the classical liberal tradition seriously as having a distinct voice in IR, which I think is good, but not widely held. So. And I'm assuming based on his name that he's Dutch. Yes, yes, he's from the Netherlands. Yeah. OK. And and just I'm looking at his bibliography here at the back. And just for readers who are interested, he his 2020 article in Economic Affairs is called Free Trade Does Not Foster Peace, which actually is in his position in this book. He would say that free trade fosters peace to peace. Just he wouldn't say that it causes peace or as a guarantee against war is my impression from the actual book. Maybe maybe he was more hardcore in that article on the topic. I don't know. He's also got he quotes a couple other books here, which are longer and go into more detail, which I think is relevant to this because I have some issues with his definitions of things, which I don't think are sufficiently well defined, but I think they're more defined in his longer books. So that'll just I'll just give him a pass on that. But he's got let's see, he's got a article in International Relations, the liberal divide over trade, peace and war. And oh, yeah, see here, he's got a whole article on Rand, fostering liberty in international relationship theory. The case of I ran international politics. That's a 2019 article. So maybe he's not he must not be very old because it seems a lot of his work is fairly recent as well. I think he's middle age because he was an industry slash, I think, the Dutch bureaucracy for a long while. Sure. OK. Oh, so he had a career first in the bureaucracy. So he's old like me. He's yes, a civil servant career. And now he's writing this stuff. OK, fine. Good. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about the book. And so I think just to for people who follow this podcast, I mean, this probably isn't news, but maybe if you're just coming to this, I mean, one of the points of this podcast is to introduce our listeners to the larger scholarship on international relations, which is a field of scholarship generally falls within political science departments. So if you were to be in a political science department, take classes in a political science department, you would probably notice pretty quickly that there are subfields. There's American politics. There's comparative politics. There's theory and then there's other ones, too. But then there's international relations and international relations. It involves matters of war and peace, often revolution. Also, a lot of the people I quote there, it's in I.R. Where you'll find a lot of the scholarship on state building, the origins of the state, the nature of the state, where does the state come from as an institution? These people are actually often very good on the state in the sense that they recognize that the state is a organization separate from the people, that it's not synonymous with the people, which a lot of people in other fields don't really understand or are at least sloppy about in terms of their thinking. And so then there's just a lot of topic studies in I.R., too. Like, here's a thing that happened in the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union collapsed or here's the state of China's defense capabilities. And there's a lot of theory in there. Also, often they'll use things like game theory, prisoners, dilemmas sort of stuff to try and understand international relations and that sort of thing. And so that's that's what Van Dahar is trying to do here, too. I think is introduce the reader to a lot of these topics because he makes the important point of saying that this just isn't really a topic that a lot of people in libertarianism, classical liberalism are talking about often. And you can tell your readsmeses.org because he does, quote, Rothbard a bit, quotes Rothbard, Rockwell, John Denson, like on the topic of arm neutrality, those sorts of things. So he is familiar with it and he's I think he gives it a fair hearing, too. But he says in his intro, quote, it is important to note that I.R. is a rather neglected topic among those people who identify as classical liberals, unquote. So what are your observations on this? I guess before we get into the deeper part, I mean, do you agree with this statement, Zach? I think I know your answer. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, it's sort of, yes. A lot of libertarians and classical liberals in America, at least, it seems their view of international relations extends to the Iraq war, Afghanistan, all these interventions are bad. Blowback theory, you know, war is bad. There's all these conniving special interests, you know, the military industrial complex. And that's about it. I actually come to think of it. I way back when I was in SFL in undergrad, there was a girl in my like campus coordinator class who was in an international relations program and ended up dropping out because she's like, actually, I don't know what I could do with this career wise, you know, in terms of like as a libertarian, not much, especially back then, there wasn't much going on. There's increasingly more now. But sometimes, and this is not always the case, but sometimes you'll find that there are people who are sort of aligned international relations scholars who aren't actually libertarian. They hold what we would consider a good views on foreign policy, but they're not libertarian in the rest of their thoughts and views and things. And it's also not exactly uncommon to find people in the think tank world who are have solid views about constitutional law or something who then have bad views on foreign policy. So I would say that finding the whole package is not exactly super common. And it I think it sometimes makes libertarians taken less seriously on these issues if they're just sort of like war is murder, which, you know, lots of war is quite bad and illegitimate and wrong. But that there's more to the field than that. So yeah, there's nothing wrong with the with being an in IR moralist, right, where, OK, let's let's study international relations. And by the way, I consider war to be illegitimate in virtually all circumstances. You won't find a lot of pacifists, I think, studying IR, because I just don't think that'd be very interesting to them. It would just be nonstop list of events that you find horrid and would never find justified anyway under any circumstances. But you can take someone who like even Rothbard thought that truly defensive wars were perfectly legitimate wars of national separation and determination and those sorts of things like the American Revolution were acceptable. So there's there's room then for IR analysis in there once you start to look at that sort of thing. But you're right. I think you find as you find people who stop at the moralism of it instead of going deeper into establishing case studies about what is moral and what is not in all of these different cases and knowing something about some of those hard cases where, OK, here's here's something that wasn't clear cut, right? Like I would think that most reasonable people and don't answer this question if you disagree would think that World War One was generally a waste of human life and treasure and ended up just causing bad things. However, not all conflicts are as clear cut as that in my thinking. So there are some far more complicated cases than where you've got to figure out, OK, how can I explain why this is bad? Also, there's issues of going back to the issue of, well, I'm not taken seriously if I don't know something about IR. I wrote a column once a while back when our buddy Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, had had said he was embarrassed a little bit. I don't think the interview really proved anything one way or the other. But he was asked about a lepo. This is back during the hot part, hottest part of the Syrian Civil War. He says, what is a lepo? And then the interviewer, who I'm sure knows nothing about a lepo, either had to explain to him what it was or whatever. And then, OK, when his memory was jogged, he had a fairly coherent opinion about it. That wasn't actually terrible. However, a lot of a lot of and I think this this proves Vandahar's point is then a lot of libertarians were saying things like, well, I think it's good that he doesn't know anything about foreign policy because that means he's going to be in favor of peace. He's not going to want to intervene anywhere because he's not interested in telling other countries what to do. I said, well, that's not the reality. If you were actually to be elected president, you would then come into the White House and be absolutely surrounded by all these foreign policy hawks, people just brimming with information about all these other countries are trying to kill us. And they would just overwhelm you with information. And a normal person simply isn't going to sit back and say, well, yes, you have shown me 50 different reasons why a million Americans will die if I don't do this intervention. And I'm just against it, guys, it's not going to happen. People need to appreciate the sort of pressure that's brought to bear by all these countless think tanks and all of these people who are going to go all day long telling you why non-interventionist foreign policy is just terrible, dangerous, horrific, et cetera. And I would add, even if you do have some sort of some semblance of half decent views and you know what you want, the bureaucracy will do what they want or at least try. I mean, we saw this in the Trump administration. There is literally the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times by sort of a nobody, but truly someone in the administration who was just like, we're working to stymie Trump's views. And also the whole disastrous Ukraine impeachment thing. Vindaman, however it's said. There were two of them. I forget which one is which. Maybe it was Alexander. He basically said in a congressional hearing that like, Trump was going against US policy. It's like, what? He's the president. He's supposed to be making the policy on these things. Yeah. On foreign policy, the president gets to make that policy. I mean, so, yeah, it's like, even if you even if you do know what you want to do, that's just half the battle. Then you have to engage in all the bureaucratic knife fighting in the smoke filled rooms and. Right. Even Ron Paul, who knows plenty about foreign policy would have just been constantly at war with these people with a well informed opinion. So you can only imagine how someone like Gary Johnson, he didn't know anything about it. He would have folded in 10 minutes to these guys. And so if you don't know anything about foreign policy, you don't have a well established view of international ethics. You just fold fast because you'll just be overwhelmed with it. And you can't say anything intelligent to come back to them in all of these constant meetings where they're telling you all the Iranians want to murder us all, which is BS. But when you don't know anything, how do you argue the point? So knowing foreign policy and knowing the realities of what's going on in the rest of the world actually are pretty important. And as I noted in that article, too, there isn't actually any correlation between not knowing about foreign policy in foreign countries and being against intervention. I showed a bunch of poll data showing that stupid ignorant morons are very much in favor of foreign interventions. In fact, one notorious poll asked people if they were in favor of bombing Agrabah, the fictional land of Aladdin and a disturbing percentage of people said yes, because it sounded Middle Easter. Yes, I recall the Boston bombing people confused Chechnya in Russia with the Czech Republic and there was so much vitriol online, the Czech Republic had to put out a statement like that's not us. And those people are fine with bombing foreign countries. They don't know where they are. They don't know who lives there. They don't know anything about the history of the country. But someone in Washington told them that that country is bad. So therefore we should bomb it. And I don't know how many conservatives I've met over the years who tell me one minute that the government can't do anything right. I don't trust anything that Washington says. And then 10 minutes later, well, of course, we have to bomb Iraq or Iran or Iraq or you name it, because they hate us. And Washington told me they want to kill me. So suddenly I believe everything that Washington says. So that's that's how people who don't bother to educate themselves on this topic think much of the time. So it's important. And yes, I also agree with Van de Haar's point here that, yeah, people who call themselves classical liberals, by which I would say incorporates libertarians for the most part, is a correct statement. Now, we're already using up tons of time. So let's get into the details of the book itself. Now, let's look at some of his definitions. I think maybe we got to talk about those before we can proceed. And I just just kind of alluded to this. His whole distinction between classical liberals and libertarians, I think is a bit suspect. First of all, a lot of his. So he uses for what he calls classical liberal theorists to analyze what is classical liberal international ethics or theory? So Adam Smith, David Hume, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. OK, you're going to have a hard time arguing that Hume and Smith are not standard classical liberals. These are 18th century guys anyway. Now, Hayek definitely arguable. Is this guy libertarian? Is he a classical liberal? Is there a big distinction there? Mises, I think it's weird to stick Mises in there and say, this is my non libertarian guy that I'm going to use to illustrate classical liberalism. Now, you could say, well, on foreign policy, Mises was more kind of in the classical liberal camp. Or he was a more moderate libertarian. And that's that's my thinking on the topic is that I don't think there's a shiny bright line between libertarian and classical liberal. I think libertarian is simply a more radical subgroup within classical liberalism. So if I had a whiteboard behind me, I'd draw you a Venn diagram. And we got classical liberals, a big circle and with completely within that. Although you could argue maybe there's some sliver of it that's on the outside, but virtually all libertarians, I would say, are classical liberals. Not all classical liberals are libertarians, but they come from the same premises of generally they're not all natural law theorists, but most are. They believe in this idea of individual rights, mostly natural law, limited, highly limited government is good, low taxes. What makes libertarians distinct is that they just they go farther in the direction of we want taxes either extremely low or abolished. We want wars to be either extremely rare or virtually never. But there's not really a big distinction there. I mean, Gustave de Molinari, who many people would consider to be an anarcho capitalist, he for 50 years or maybe even more edited France's leading classical liberal journal. So I don't know how you're going to argue that Molinari, a anarcho capitalist, wasn't a classical liberal. So I just the whole premise there, I think of creating a sharp distinction between Mises and the libertarians just doesn't really work for me. That doesn't mean the book doesn't have many insights, but just be aware when you're reading this that I think he's he's a little too pat in terms of these distinctions. And I think maybe he should just maybe merge them and say, OK, well, here's classical liberal foreign policy. And the more radical version of it is the libertarian version. I think he would be on more solid ground with that. But he doesn't do that. And I think he makes in one of his books a more he argues the point much more strenuously, based on the way he refers to some of his his other writings when he mentions the distinction between classical liberals and libertarians. So he doesn't really, I think, argue it fully here. I think he's relying on some earlier arguments he made. So that's fair enough, right? I'm not going to fault the guy for not spending 50 pages arguing that here. But I just don't think he makes the case sufficiently well. And I would say, don't make this don't make a clear distinction. Between libertarians and classical liberals, I think just read the libertarians as a more extreme version, a more radical version of the classical liberals. Yes, to me, labels, especially these days are largely useless in terms of if someone says they're a libertarian or a conservative or a liberal, I don't actually know what they mean by that until I like delve down deep into it. So it leads to situations where people sort of say, this is my definition of X and Y, but the rest of the world doesn't necessarily view it that same way. It's sort of like the word neoliberal. It's like, I don't know what that means. And then people will say, like, it's in this dictionary, neoliberal means X. Well, that doesn't mean the person using the word means it that way. So I agree that it's I think a lot of these distinctions are really based on vibes, as the youth say, you know, it's just sort of like if you're, you know, like me or you, who are just sort of just for a very long time, our whole sort of ecosystem is sort of libertarian, classical liberal, intellectual milieu, then we might have sort of a semblance that develops like a classification system in our head. But that's sort of to everyone's own sort of. Individual case, I would say, so the general public may think differently. Yes. Yeah. So there's that issue. Another definition we might go into is just for people who aren't that familiar with I.R. definitely don't confuse classical liberal theory with liberal theory. Now, he does make this distinction in the book many times, and I think he does it sufficiently well. Just when we're talking about it here, when we say. When we say liberal I.R., liberal theory, liberal international ethics, that's so different from what he's talking about in terms of classical liberal and liberal I.R. theory, I think is awful. It's very idealistic. It thinks that like total world peace can somehow be attained if we just give the UN enough power. Some liberals are these these liberal institutionalists are like, OK, we need the groups like the World Bank and the UN and NATO and all these groups will help international law function and the world will become more peaceful and all this. I don't agree with any of that, but that's standard liberal theory. And I would consider that all the disasters of the Bush years and bizarrely to me, some people try and pigeonhole those guys as realists, which I just don't think they are at all. Dick Cheney is not a realist. George B. Bush is not a realist. These guys were idealist liberals within I.R. theory. They thought we can make the world safer, democracy. We can invade all these countries, reform their institutions, bring them into international groups. And I mean, really, one of the goals was then we can dominate them politically and in the international fear as the United States. We can make the the American hegemon more powerful. But I think a lot of the moral arguments that went out to the public was, oh, we will make the Middle East this wonderful peaceful democratic place. And in reality, what they don't mention is and we don't care how many people we have to kill to do that. And that, to me, is liberal I.R. theory, all these remaking the world in this quote unquote liberal image. A lot of it's Woodrow Wilson sort of stuff, which many people pointed out amnesis.org. And so I think that's very, very bad. And so definitely something very distinct from classical liberal theory. I mean, you probably have some observations about liberal theory as well. I assume. Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's horrible. The key component of the nation building is the idea of democratic peace theory. Oh, if a country becomes a democracy, which is not as clear cut a definition as people seem to think, then they won't go to war. And this is all this is constantly disputed. But it is, in my view, it is a religion, basically a pseudo religion. And in in his not his most recent book, but his previous book, liberal delusions and international realities, I think it's called Meersheimer makes a distinction between what he calls modus vivendi liberals, which would be like Hayek, et cetera, and progressive liberals. For progressive liberals at the core sort of aspect of this is universal rights that must be enforced around the world. And there's a you know, there's the aspect of like, beneath every Iraqi is an American, you know, which has implications here at home. You know, it's like you can be an American, you're more American. If you've never been to America, but you hold the right beliefs than someone whose families lived here 150 years, you know. And there is this great line. I forget it's some French guy said it, but I know of it. It's quoted in democracy and leadership by Irving Babbit that if you start out thinking that, you know, all of the all of humanity is innately good, you inevitably end by wanting to kill them all. It's just sort of, you know, yes, it's. This is why I mean, this is a whole nother episode, sort of. Religious aspect of all of this, but it's just sort of like you have to break some eggs to make an omelet to usher in this new the end of history. You know, you're going to have to kill a lot of people along the way. So, yes, liberalism and our theory. Bad, bad. Well, and I just wrote an article for Mises.org on called humanitarianism as an excuse for colonialism and imperialism. And that that's a old concept. But the idea was, OK, we can reform these peoples by dominating the rest of the world. Militarily, we can make it a better place and everyone will live in better peace that way. It wasn't quite as idealistic as liberalism. So liberalism in many ways is like old humanitarian style, colonialism on steroids. And so, yeah, there's definitely a relation there. And that's why the UN has like responsibility, protect theory and stuff like that, that basically says, oh, countries can intervene in other countries in order to make them respect human rights and stuff. I mean, basically what they're saying is carpet bombing for human rights is the position there. And that's liberalism in many, many cases. I mean, a great classic example is Libya, you know, which took place under Barack Obama's administration. We need humanitarian intervention or else Gaddafi is just going to slaughter. Who knows how many tens of thousands of people? Well, look at Libya today, you know, literal slave markets. It's a complete disaster. But the impetus for the intervention was humanitarianism. We have to protect this town that's going to be just utterly destroyed and slaughtered. We had to destroy the village to save it. Yes. Yes. I mean, that's the that's the idea to work there. Well, the other than he doesn't go into as much talk about this, but realism is probably your other major international relations theory that you would have to at least talk about if you're going to write an IR book, I think. But you don't hear people talk about realism much in Washington because they hate it, because it tends to be, I think, more in the restraint school. And so that's why you got John Meerscheimer saying he's never, like in 40 years, been invited to consult with the federal government on anything. They're just not interested in realist views. But in terms of our scholarship and I think in terms of reasonable observations, the realist school is very, very important. And historically, it's certainly been very, very important because you got classical realists and then modern realists probably like the more. I like Kenneth Waltz. That's probably more your modern realist theory. And that's you're talking post 1970s and stuff in many cases. And I think that's worth reading a lot of the time. Well, Meerscheimer, of course. Meerscheimer's an offensive there. You can start getting into all of these likes. Meerscheimer's an offensive realist. I'm a defensive realist, which I think is more in line with with anti interventionism. But certainly, when you look at who's backing the idea of restraint in foreign policy, in terms of people who actually have a thick academic pedigree, it's realists among people who are feted as experts on foreign policy and stuff. They're usually liberals or some sort of idealist or the or if they call themselves realists, they're not really realists. They're like interventionist realists, which is kind of weird. And so realism just doesn't have as much respect in Washington, which by itself is probably some an endorsement of it. But Van de Haar does talk about it. And I guess now is a good time as any, just to bring up my issue with that. The my problem with Van de Haar is I think he's too much of a purist when it comes to realism. So realism has a view of human nature. But it's I don't think it necessarily has to be applied to everyone on earth. I think the important stuff about realism is that realism is talking mostly about regime behavior and talking about how states behave in the international sphere and modern realism, of course, because nation states exist now and sovereign states, however you want to modern states, however you want to define it, they exist and they're the major players in international relations. So much of realism is about how do these states relate with each other in the international field? I don't take that necessarily as a normative endorsement of the state, nor is it a claim that only states states are the only sort of institution that could function in the international sphere. That's just the world we live in right now. So you might as well write a book about that if you're going to write about what's going on in international relations, because states are doing most everything. But when states are the primary actors in a field, you got to speak in terms of how states think, how people who run states think and how they're going to behave, and it generally is very, very self-serving in terms of preserving the state, thinking in terms of what's profitable for that state. And so making the point that not all people think that way, that maybe people have other motivations, that maybe they could think in terms of international cooperation, I would say absolutely that describes non-state people, non-state agents are very interested in cooperation. Look at people who are engaged in international trade. But I would say people are engaged in preserving the state, acting as state agents that they're much more concerned with competing with other states and dominating other states than normal people are. And so I'm not I'm not sure that Van Dihar makes that distinction. And Van Dihar seems to generalize too much when talking about why realism is wrong as realism just has the wrong view of human nature. I'm not sure that realism's view of state actors is necessarily applied to a view of human nature in general. So I would say when you're reading this book, go a little more easy on realism than Van Dihar does. Right. Yes. He has this line that I was like, what? When I was reading it, he says, realism is often associated with conservatism and in recent years with neoconservatism. So that in the American context is flat out completely wrong. I don't know if neoconservatism means something else in the context of Europe where he's used to talking about it. Here in America, that's just flat out wrong. And I think a story that is pretty relevant to demonstrating this dichotomy is in the run up to the Iraq war. Almost entirely realist, there's a few other people, but all these international relations scholars got together. And John Riersheimer was one of the lead people on this and wrote. They won. They used fifty thousand dollars of their own money to run a full page ad in the New York Times saying that war with Iraq is not in America's national interest. And I've listed all these reasons, disasters, bad bad, all came true. And as Mirsheimer has said many times, the only realist that supported the Iraq war, any realist of any prominence or distinction was Henry Kissinger. And there's argument about to what degree he was actually a realist. But, you know, it's. I think his realist pedigree is kind of weak. Yeah, it's, you know, it's like the realists put their money where their mouth was literally. They paid 50 grand of their own money to warn the country, oh, this is a disaster waiting to happen. So in the context of America, that's not true. And this sort of makes me think of another point that I think was quite good, actually, that Van de Haar raised, which was that American classical liberalism and libertarianism skews analysis of international relations because of America's unique position. If you're Poland, then you will have a different view of what a prudent foreign policy is than if you're America, you know, if you live in the United States. So I think that was also a very good point. But in the American context, realism and neoconservatism are not in the same boat at all. Yeah, they I don't know what he means by neoconservative there either. I could see it meaning something different in Europe, and I'm just not sure. So I'll give them a free pass on that. But they, you know, mentioning, however, how, yeah, the American views on foreign policy being very much skewed by the American position, right? We've discussed this in previous podcasts. Yes, many times. So safe oceans on other sides. It's only countries that border us are either countries that have very similar foreign policy interests or they're just generally in the liberal camp. And by now I'm talking like economic ideology. They're they're they're not like Marxist countries or anything like that. They want to trade with the US. They know that peace with the US is beneficial. They're not on ideological crusades, at least not internationally. I mean, Canada's got plenty of horrible stuff going on. Domestic, right? But the Canadians would welcome us as liberators. And so they're just not a problem internationally. That's not like being Lithuanian, having Russia on your border. This is just a totally different situation. Plus, the United States is the largest country around in terms of it doesn't have any immediate neighbors that are potential competing hegemons. So this is just very different in terms of American foreign policy interests. And so people look at that and they think, you know, just get rid of the military and it'll be fine. Now, I have outright advocated for the abolishing the standing army and just anything that's troops based. The Navy was the Navy is the reason that no one bothers to ever mess with the United States. The military could be cut by 80 percent and we'd be fine. That's similar to the UK, you know, classically, it was an outrage to have a standing army in the United Kingdom. You know, and before that, whatever was called, because they're an island and, you know, to invade would be quite an effort. Contrast that with France, you know, France, it was just sort of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of sort of nonstop violence in part, probably a large part, because of their geographic position. So, yeah, there's a reason that the French monarch and the Prussian monarch raised huge armies because they were in the thick of it in terms of land invasions, all that. And a lot of that they brought on themselves because they were state builders and expansionists and antagonize their neighbors. And I think we could definitely provide a libertarian analysis as to why those countries didn't need as much military prowess as they had. But you could see why if you're in central Europe, a land army is a very different situation than for England. So these are the sorts of things you need to incorporate into your analysis. And Americans just generally don't do that a lot of the time. And that's one of Van der Haar's, I think, critiques here, although it doesn't mention it toward the end that I noticed. But yeah, it was a very good observation. But I do think it's also relevant to let's note that Van de Haar also incorporates into his analysis two very closely related issues, which are immigration and free trade, that these have implications for foreign policy that cannot be ignored. Now, I just let me clarify that I am a dogmatist on free trade. And I think it's pretty much a litmus test for are you a classical liberal or a libertarian immigration is a little bit different because it involves the movement of political actors as opposed to the movement of goods. But clearly both relate to foreign policy. And that is a place where Americans, they need to put themselves in the head of a Polish person, which is right next to Russia. Well, I mean, they got Belarus in between. Well, Koenigsburg, Kaliningrad, I think borders Russia or borders Poland. Right. Yeah. So technically, they do have a border. Technically, Belarus and Russia are in like some union state. And it is. Yeah, it's a close ally to say the least. So Poland views Russia as an existential issue for them. So you got to think you got to at least grant them that if you're going to start talking about things like immigration in Eastern Europe and such. You have to at least take the issue seriously. It's not just a matter of, well, can we increase increase our per capita GDP by letting in a million Russians? That's that's a very different sort of calculus. Again, Americans don't have to care about that nearly as much. And the fact that the United States has a huge economy means that trade from other countries simply are not any sort of geopolitical threat. And I would say that no, China. We do not need steel tariffs. And this is this is pretty much like self-evident to me that the Americans don't need this one could argue for some other small countries that they need to foster certain domestic industries. I don't think I would necessarily agree with that. But I think it's an argument that one could be made that one could make and not look dumb. So you just need to to consider all of that when talking about all three of these issues, whether we're talking about war and peace issues, we're talking about immigration, we're talking about free trade. They all should really be discussed in light of IR theory to some extent. And Van Dahar does that here. And I think he's right. Yes. Yeah. On the on like the steel issue, actually one of my friends who's a Mises U alum is actually working on a project right now, sort of looking at the ways in which American, well, really the state has sort of shot itself in the foot of like steel industry and things like that with the labor laws, you know, unions and all that and regulatory environmental stuff, yada, yada, yada. It's sort of like, well, no wonder the Chinese who, you know, just it's I mean, the technical degree to which China is polluted isn't the same. So if you're just dumping waste into the street practically, well, OK, yes, their steel is going to be cheaper. But, you know, in the US, we have a lot of things we could do to make American Steel more competitive before getting to tariffs. So and actually, this has been a huge issue, actually, because I'm in Pittsburgh. US Steel was the Nippon steel. Japanese Steel is trying to buy US Steel. And some people are having an egg about that, as it were. Yeah, because, you know, the Japanese are such a global threat to the United States, I guess. But on the immigration point, I really like what he says because he channels Mises here. And this is something that drives me nuts. When people sort of usually advocates for just straight up open borders will be like, Mises was in favor of open borders. And it's like, that is not correct. That is a not. You didn't read that whole chapter. So in what Vandahar says, yet Mises recognized that the debate is not about economics alone, which in a lot of libertarian arguments, it's just like GDP go up equal good. People living in states that are attractive to potential immigrants feel threatened by the idea of a large flux of foreigners. Immigration may, in some cases, make indigenous people feel that they become a minority in their own land. He goes on to say, in a world where some states are powerful, it is understandable that a national minority may expect the worst from a majority of a different nationality. And that Mises felt that the only solution to this fear of immigrant majorities would be the introduction of a completely liberal state, i.e. one with limited responsibilities and powers. And if you open up Mises's book, liberalism and you go to the section on the free movement of people, this is exactly what he says. And he, in fact, he says that the intractable problem of the free movement of people will never be solved as long as the state is overwhelming and powerful. That is not saying open borders is fine and dandy. He says it'd be great to have the free movement of labor, but there are realities that get in the way of that. By the way, on this topic, some of the best analysis I've seen on this topic is by Joe Salerno, who did a lengthy essay for Mises.org. I believe it's called Mises on nationalism and migration. Check that out, because he he puts together what Mises's whole vision was on migration and the issue of how do you deal with people moving over time? Because Mises does recognize, right, the current borders of the nation state are not put there by God. They're going to change over the over time. People are going to move around the culture of different parts of the world are going to change over time. And Mises had a whole vision for how borders would actually because Mises was a full blown secessionist and he understood that borders need to change to accommodate new realities and that even with borders, people are going to still move because economic realities, people need workers, people are going to move because their families are there. There's all sorts of reasons that people migrate. And over time, this is going to have a real effect. Mises didn't think that was bad and he recognized it's a reality. So yeah, check out Salerno's I think it's maybe on secession, nationalism and migration. But that explains like how borders would shift over time, depending on how population migration changed. And it's actually kind of this orderly evolution in the makeup and the borders of states. And it's all very reasonable and quite impressive. I don't know if Mises even understood he was building this vision, but Salerno lays it out as what's all there in Mises. But yes, for geopolitical reasons, which Mises didn't really claim, I don't think, to be a great expert on this. But I think he recognized it was a problem and an issue. And of course, he says in that section, he says what you and I say about the United States being different. He says, oh, there's all these concerns about how migrants are going to ruin the local culture and they're going to overwhelm the locals. And he says explicitly in the United States, these fears are probably overstated, which is probably true, right? It's going to take even with our current border disaster. It's going to take a lot of that before you're just overwhelming the native population that has a certain American view of the world. But his other so. Well, just on that, I would add, it's especially true with like, there's all the fear of America's going to become a majority minority nation, yada, yada, yada. And there's the great replacement and all that. Historically, Hispanic immigrants within, I think it's three generations no longer identify as Hispanic or Latino. It's it's not it's it's a very poorly defined. It's not even in ethnicity. It's just sort of according to the government, you know, you hail from a Spanish speaking part of the world. You know, so there are people of Volga Germans who left Russia in like 1900 and moved to Argentina are just as Hispanic as an Afro Cuban. You know, it's it's not up. But anyway, it just this identity as it's sort of in America, there is the idea of the melting pot. Everyone, more or less, there's a lot of melting into whiteness, whatever that means. You know, it's it's not it's I think, as you say, it's we're not, you know, Lithuania or Latvia or Estonia who have Russian speaking minorities that are like agitating. Well, it sort of goes back and forth. They're like, you can't speak Russian. And then Russia is like, hey, you better not, you know, be beating up on our minorities. This is exactly what Mises talks about happening and being a problem. He says, you know, it is especially language, which Salerno talks about a lot in that article, if I'm thinking of the same one. For me, it's this language defined nationality. And he's like, it's a big deal when the state is trying to suppress your native tongue. And lo and behold, oh, look, that's a big issue in Ukraine that contributed to all the Eastern oblasts breaking away. It's like, oh, you can't have Russian speaking TV or school or this or that. So Mises is quite prescient. And as I think we've said before, if you've mentioned Mises came from the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, there's like 10 official languages in the army. You know, it's like he saw firsthand how this can lead to trouble. Yeah, he knew a thing or two about that topic. Might know, by the way, that the Baltic countries last time I checked have language tests where you only get citizenship if you can prove that you speak the local language, which are not easy languages. Necessarily, especially Estonian, which is one of those weird languages related like only to Hungarian and Finnish or something. Yes, Estonian is not a Indo-European language. Yes, it's some regrets. So good luck learning that one. Yes, it's not similar to Russian. Certainly not a romance language. So so there's that issue. And then, yeah, to contrast when when Mises says, oh, the American situation might be overstated in terms of the threat of cultural overwhelming. I don't know if that's a word. But the the contrasting example he gives is Australia, right? Australia, when he's writing this, there's probably, I don't know, like 10 million people in the whole country, maybe. And they're sitting right next to China, Indonesia, the in Japan at the time, which was an expansive power. And he's saying, look, if Australia just opened its borders, I mean, it would cease to exist as Australia like within years. Because you just you have you have countries that are so much larger right next door. So we're just looking at that as just the geopolitical reality of the situation. And some might say, well, yeah, culture doesn't have a right to exist and so on. OK, well, that's one argument, though. That's like a cultural preservation argument. That's a little bit different from the geopolitical argument. If you actually if you have Australia that has 10 million Australians and then suddenly there's 30 million people in Australia, but there's 20 million Chinese. Well, now you're just basically China now. So and China would have no problem annexing that territory, then. There would be no real resistance, at least not from any meaningful minority. Or certainly there would be no majority anymore. So this is a real geopolitical issue that you have to admit is the reality. And in some parts of the world, it's something that could very much happen. Not in North America yet, again, we would note. But in some places, that's an issue for a small country next to a large country in terms of population. So again, you got to look at it in terms of international relations theory. And it just it can't just be ignored by saying, yeah, yeah, well, my studies have shown that if a bunch of foreigners move your country, that your standard of living goes up. That's a whole lot of Ceteris paribus you've included in that analysis. You're assuming the political system remains unchanged, which is a terrible assumption. So yeah, you get you got to you got to consider that. And Thomas Sowell, in one of his books, I don't remember if his conquest in cultures or the the other one, racist liberals and white, I can't remember which one. But he talks about red necks in there somewhere, right? The word red necks. Yes, red necks something. A black red necks, I think. White racists or something in black red necks. Yes, I think that's close. That's very close. One of those. He talks about Germans in Eastern Europe. It's like for hundreds of years, there were just basically German colonies all over Eastern Europe that were politically distinct sort of little self-governing ghettos and everything. And that proved to be a huge issue after World War Two. I mean, there is ethnic cleansing of Germans because, you know, we can't trust us Germans after what just happened. So yeah, that's another good sort of historical point on that. And then real quick, just because I just remembered it, I wanted to raise a point on realism versus liberalism. One of the reasons I would say realism is makes a lot of sense is because it's based in historical reality. If realist books are just stuffed full of history, whereas I are liberalism is very idealistic. It's very theory driven, but not theory rooted in history. It's theory rooted in sort of what what Kirk would call the idyllic imagination. It's utopian and Vandahar says so on more than one occasion. Yeah, that's one key difference. But then I think we should also talk about trade because I think it's point is quite relevant for today's goings on. Well, what should we? Yeah, so what should our takeaway on trade be from Vandahar? Yeah, that trade does not equal peace necessarily. And in some cases, trade can actually contribute to conflict. And I think a perfect example of that is the situation with the Houthis right now in Yemen. So if you're not up to speed, the Houthis are this rebel group in Yemen. They've been rebelling against the government. Then the government, they overthrew, joined them in this rival government. And it's been a big mess. Saudi Arabia was bombing them with our help for about a decade. And then they stopped that. Well, then once the Israel Hamas situation broke out, the Houthis, who are a Shia branch of Islam and are connected with Iran, have been using all these nice Iranian weapons to just sort of attack shipping in the red sea headed to and from the Suez Canal. And now a lot of international shipping companies, because insurance rates have shot through the roof are now going all the long way around Africa. It's a big mess. And lo and behold, the US, because we're supposedly the global hegemon, you know, so that naturally means it's our job to keep the sea lanes open and enforce freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas, according to the liberal line. We're doing we, along with our, you know, many me, our, you know, Stooge, the UK have been bombing the Houthis for about a week now or so, about as of this recording, trying to put a stop to their harassment, their piracy. They also did attack and seize a giant cargo liner when this all started. And we're spending all this money. We're doing all the work. The US has like no trade that goes through the red sea or the Suez Canal. We're doing this all for China, India and Europe. So this is another good example, actually, of a way in which European slash other places around the world, their interests differ from American interests here. The America could say, and this is what I had to advocate saying, you know, this is not our concern. Everyone else can take care of it. And that's not going to happen. We're going to the at first it was like these are going to be perfunctory sort of retaliatory strikes. Then it was announced just the other day that we're envisioning in an open ended long term mission here, not like Iraq or Afghanistan, but we're going to be engaged in this for a while. So here's a case of trade leading to violent conflict involvement in by the US at the very least in a new conflict. And there's the line people always go to is not actually real. Bastiad quote that when goods cross, if goods don't cross borders, armies will. Well, every lots of people who are critical of that point to like the UK and Germany, Wilhelm Germany were like each other's largest trading partners before World War One. Perfect refutation of that idea is that as of last year, I don't know if it has changed in the past few months, Russia was still paying the Ukrainian government for transit fees for gas and oil for their pipelines, gas from pipelines going to Europe and Ukraine kept taking that money and transiting the gas and oil. So they're literally trading while the war is ongoing. You know, historically, that was the case with a lot of countries. If you read Benedict Anderson's book on nationalism and I think called imaginary communities and he talks about the issue of how nationalism created this idea that you're not allowed to have any interactions with this country that you're at war with now in the age of nationalism. So, oh, my country, England's at war with France, so therefore I can't go to France. I can't have friends in France. I can't like go sip cappuccinos in France because it's France. So it's my enemy. That's like a modern idea. Whereas historically, it'd be like, oh, the English regimes at war with the French regime, but I'm going to keep trading with French men. I'm going to go on vacation there. So that that's the more historical European idea. And so, of course, trade continued between countries that were at war much of the time, unless it was a particularly awful, internecine war. Even if they didn't want it to like Napoleon's continental system. I mean, there was the French army was like outfitted with smuggled in, you know, British cloth and whatnot. So it's yeah. That nation of shopkeepers was willing to sell the French whatever they wanted. Yes. And I think another part of that criticism, I forget who wrote it, was that if if the British people could buy Union Jack flags more cheaply from the French, that's where they would buy their flags. You know, that's all that's all to the benefit. I think those are all compliments to those countries that that sort of thing happens in spite of their war going on. But you're right. It illustrates your point that war and trade are not necessarily totally incompatible that now Van Harwood say, oh, trade is a good thing and has many and can increase international cooperation and it should happen. Just that it's by no means a guarantee that war will not exist. And I think he's just dealing with that issue of, oh, this claim that if we we don't need an army because if we just free trade with everybody, then we don't we don't have to worry about conflict. But I would say, yeah, historical realities have shown that's not actually. Yes. There used to be this ridiculous idea called like the McDonald's rule or index. I can't remember what's called. This is a very little chapter, I believe, in Thomas Friedman's book, the Lexus and the olive tree. I seem to remember. I've never read him. I find his column is annoying. At the very least. But yeah, that oh, two countries that have McDonald's have never gone to war. It's like, even when he wrote that, my understanding is that wasn't technically true. But I think the war in Serbia broke out like the next day or something. I'm reading the theory. It wasn't there had been a period where it was true, but it wasn't a very long period. Yeah. Oh, look, the Cold War ends. All of our enemies get McDonald's. Yeah, the Belgrade McDonald's was bombed into a crater the next day. But yeah, that was an issue that, yeah, again, just doesn't prove that economic relations get rid of violence. And we can also point, we've sort of talked about this before. This theory was sort of underlaying the like the 90s liberal response to China. Like, oh, we bring them into the international system. They'll become a good little boy who follows the rules. Like, oh, well, that didn't exactly happen. But it sort of gets back to one of our early episodes on nearshoring of, you know, if trade way out in, you know, East Asia, we have to defend Taiwan because of chips or because of access to Indonesian markets or something. That that's an example of the logic of trade leading to war, of we need to preserve access to this market, so we need to fight a war for it. Whereas you can say free trade in the Western hemisphere, you know, we'll defend the sea lanes of the Western hemisphere, you know, from all of those pirates in Somalia, you know, there are no pirates in the Western hemisphere. We don't have to deal with that. So it's like, I think that's a point that Vandahar was one of the first people that made me think about that when I read one of his earlier articles. And I just think that's a good point that people should think about is that. The if we don't have to defend the sea lanes and free trade can happen. It's free trade has trade offs, I suppose, is how I would put it of it can have trade offs that might negate the economic benefit. Yeah, if you view the proper role of the regime as guaranteeing the sea lanes stay open. Yes. Then then you've got a lot of government involvement there. Impossible full scale wars. I think one could argue that a Jeffersonian type from those days would have been a higher bunch of privateers to go and open up those sea lanes. And that would be a better solution for sure. And would not even involve the state directly. But that sort of 18th century thinking you will be told is very obsolete. And we should not do that. Yes, which I think the equivalent would be insurance. The insurance industry to some degree of, you know, if there is a free market in global trade, which there's not. And he points that out about the World Trade Organization and all that. But even it's just in a way you could say trade is subsidized by the US Navy. Well, if the US Navy wasn't there, the market via insurance rates would probably naturally adjust to market conditions, one might say. Also, some of the insurance companies would have their own fleet of ships designed to deal with some of the more troublesome pirates. This is a very interesting topic one could go more deeply into. Which Vandahar actually gives a pretty decent summary of the whole insurance scheme as far as foreign policy goes. As I say, he does provide, I think, a fair hearing of the hard core and archicapitalist kind of raw. Yes, I think he name drops Hapa of you. Hapa stands out there, you know, which is another reason I think the book is good. It's like taking all of our thinkers seriously, you know, which normally they're just ignored. So even if it's this is slightly critical of Hapa's insurance sort of talk. But even being intelligently criticized as a compliment, in my view, if you're sort of in the intellectual. Well, he's obviously not afraid to confront these ideas and admit in the book that, hey, I read Mises dot org and I read books edited by Hapa. And some of those sources were not Hapa directly, but articles in Hapa's The Myth of National Defense book, which has lots of great essays. I would definitely recommend it on the issue of guerrilla war. Guido Hulsman is a great article in there on that. And yeah, if you want to get into more, some of the more serious stuff related to foreign policy from the libertarian side. That I mean, I don't I don't think Vandahar actually gives that book enough credit because I think that book really does try to deal on a very, very serious level with some of these issues related to defense without just taking waving a moralistic hand of war was bad, so we refuse to participate. That's not what Hapa's book does at all. Lots of great authors. I mean, Guido Hulsman's writing an essay in there. Guido is not he's a European who is very well aware of the realities of of what happens in Europe in terms of national defense. So definitely check that book out because I don't think you'll get a full sense of it here. But since we're at over an hour, we should get into the list of on page 139 here, he just kind of gives bullet points as to what is proper classical liberal IR theory. So before we leave, we should at least give the readers an idea of, OK, he lists what he thinks is proper theory. So it's a bullet point. And OK, he actually and I guess we don't really have time to discuss this issue. But balance of power politics is important and can be a useful tool that doesn't require direct government intervention and can be a tool of diplomacy. OK, balance of power politics important for liberal classical liberal IR theory. All right. Good. War is sometimes inevitable. OK, I think that's a reasonable assumption. And oh, here's a point he makes, which we could discuss while we have discussed in the past, that in the classical liberal theory, war has to be conducted according to just war principles. And as we noted in our episode on just war theory, even if you're World War Two, just because the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor doesn't mean you now get to kill unlimited numbers of Japanese women and children. That's just not a classical liberal simply can't say, well, they started it. So now we get to kill, we get to exterminate every Japanese person. Totally incompatible with classical liberal IR, as defined by Van Hart and I happen to agree. Military intervention is hardly ever justified. And the chances of long term success are slim anyway. So, yeah, think long and hard about this next war that you think is going to be glorious when you tell us that the Iraqis will welcome us as liberators. Turns out that was wrong. I think most classical would would make that point. Oh, he does say. Justified military operations include protecting the sea lanes against piracy. So I don't know which I were true. But if they're your sea lanes. Ah, good point, right? Red Sea is not our sea lane. So this this would be an important. Yeah, obviously that the sea lane between Cuba and Florida, I would be a lot more open to a claim that, yeah, we got to get the navy down there. There's pirates. Yes. Pirates of the Caribbean, that that need to be dealt with versus the Red Sea. Yeah, I mean, come on. All right, next point. Diplomacy remains a useful tool in day to day international. Yes, way too little diplomacy going on in the United States. What does the State Department even do except push Americans around? Seems to be most of what the State Department's promote leftist social values abroad. There you go. Yeah, not necessarily a big priority for classical liberal IR. Should it include trade promotion? He says that's debatable. Let's see the protections of citizens and border protection are core tasks. I would think you would find most classical liberals agree with that. Again, the closer you get on the spectrum to Rothbard, probably less and less, you're going to get agreement on that. But clearly, Mises seems to think that's an issue. So these I mean, one of the strengths of the book is he points out what's what's hotly debated among classical liberals and libertarians. And what do we all agree on? These are there are some issues that everyone already pretty much. Yes. And I do think that's also to his credit, because sometimes people just brush over like open borders. That's just the libertarian position. You know, that irks me greatly when people just brush over what is obviously something we've been arguing about for which leads me to either round. And so they must either live in like a total bubble or they're lying by saying that everyone agrees on this issue. And I don't they don't even say they agree. They just say, this is the correct position and you're not a libertarian if you don't agree with me. Yes, that's the they drum you out of the movement, if you don't agree on that particular issue. But yeah, Van Aar isn't like that at all. Heck, Ralph Raco wasn't like that at all. He always recognized there was lots of debate on a lot of these issues. Now, he had an opinion as to what he thought was correct, but admitted there were many other opinions that a reasonable person could come to. You can be reasonable and be wrong. Yeah. And so that's that's an important thing to know. He does know stuff here about these international organizations, right? WTO, maybe that's acceptable as a trade promotion thing. He says that a lot of classic liberals would say no, that the WTO, it's it's basically just an instrument of a global regime. Suboptimally at best. Yes, exactly. And bilateral trade treaties are, you know, they're fine. Maybe not NAFTA style trade treaties that are like 10,000 pages long. But something we say, hey, we got free trade between these countries. There's not a big problem with that. Let's see. Classical liberals are skeptical of government to government development aid. This is a point he makes more than once, right? Especially, I suppose you could say aid, are we talking military aid? Are we talking humanitarian aid? I think he includes both here, all types of aid and just, yeah, your government to tax you and then ship that money off to a foreign country. Classical liberals probably have a problem with that. Yeah, a great, great documentary on this is the Acton Institute's poverty ink. You know, it's like we flood Haiti with free rice because of the agricultural lobby. And, you know, all the great free food, but sort of destroyed the self-sustaining agriculture in Haiti. And now no one has a job, so they joined a gang. Are you are you telling me that vaccine companies have no interest in flooding the market with free government purchased vaccines? But that seems wild. Let's see. OK, the UN, especially the Security Council, should be reformed to take account of the power relations of the modern world. Yeah, that's a that's a whole topic unto itself, right? The the current structure of the Security Council, I'm surprised it hasn't caused like more conflicts than it has. It's so inactive at this point. But he does, you know, the UN, I don't know, one could argue that under current situations or under certain situations, it might be all right. His talk about the UN reminded me of a line from Eugen Weber, a historian, saying he's like, a lot of people criticize the UN because they say it's just a talking box. And he says, well, talking is better than fighting. If if that is what the UN actually does, if it does encourage countries to engage each other with diplomacy rather than resort to war more quickly, then that would be fine. But he notes that the UN not just fine, but actually good because it would at least push war off further into the future, which in itself is a good thing. But he's he notes how all of these daughter organizations of the UN that promote all these UN agendas, it's all closely tied to like the world economic forum and all that garbage, that they should just be abolished or trimmed to their core so that they're just doing very little. And yeah, of course, I would agree that I think most classical liberals slash libertarians would agree with that as well. And then finally, regional cooperation is desirable as long as it complies with the general classical liberal guidelines of limited state interference in the life of individuals. Yeah, I'm not necessarily opposed to all sorts of international cooperation. I know some people are hardliners against like international defense leagues, if you will. I don't actually have a problem with NATO that doesn't include the United States. If when NATO would say incorporate of a bunch of small to medium sized countries that border each other and have a clear geopolitical milieu that they have to share, then yeah, international defense organization could make sense. That's why the United States was founded is that, oh, all these colonies have a common international relations interest, so we'll put them together in this defense league, which unfortunately turned into the modern US. But I don't see a big problem with that. It can be actually something to help stability and cooperation and peace. But I think as he notes and as Mises and Hayek noted, he points that out. It depends very much on, OK, how does this organization actually do things? Does it does it impose a bunch of regulations on the domestic populations of the countries as attacks them heavily? What's the question there? So that's an issue. So that's his list there of what he says are the general classical liberal components. And I would say liberal libertarians generally agree with that back to my earlier point. They just tend to take more of an abolitionist view, but not necessarily on all of that stuff. I think there's a lot of similarities there. And I just don't think there's quite that distinction to the point that Vandahar thinks so. But my overall reading on the book, good book, you should read it. It's good to be reminded of a lot of these distinctions, a lot of these schools because he goes in a lot of details. We don't talk about some of the labels and sub schools within international relations and what they're saying. And if you, if it's been a while since you read an IR book, this is a good place to bring you up to date, I think a lot on who are the important authors now, what are some of the the current different fissures among different people who think different things. And it won't take you long to read it all. You could read it one day if you wanted to, but take you a weekend to read. Not a big deal. So I do recommend the book. I think it's something that should have been written and it's good that someone did, even though I think that ultimately, if you're, of course, a Rothbardian type like me, you'll come away disagreeing with a lot of it, but it's certainly informative. So thumbs up from me on this book. Yes, I agree. Thumbs up. It's definitely helpful intro sort of text. It's short. Also, it's free online as a PDF from the Institute of Economic Affairs, who is also kind enough to send us some copies to read. So also the print copy is like ten bucks. So it's not not going to break the bank. So, yeah, I'd say it's a good read that takes Libertarian thinkers seriously, which is not too common outside of Libertarian. So highly recommend. All right. Well, this is our longest episode of all time. But if you've made it this far, thanks for sticking it out to the end. And thank you in general for listening to War Economy in State. Thanks, Zach. And we'll be back next month with a new episode. So we'll see you next time.