Transcript: The Foundations of a Libertarian Foreign Policy

By The Savvy Street Show

July 18, 2025

Controversies in Libertarianism, Podcast 3

Date of recording: June 3, 2025, The Savvy Street Show

Host: Roger Bissell. Guests: Walter Block, Vinay Kolhatkar

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

Roger Bissell

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to The Savvy Street Show. My name is Roger Bissell, and I’m your host for this third installment of our series on controversies in libertarianism. Tonight’s topic is libertarian foreign policy. Is there even such a thing? And if there is more than one candidate, are any of them correct in their basics or, if not, can they be fixed? So again, here to explore this topic are my two guests, the eminent economist and libertarian theorist and author of the series, Defending the Undefendable, Walter Block. Welcome to the show, Walter.

Walter Block

Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure.

Roger Bissell

Pleasure for us, too, Walter, good to have you. And second, we have my friend and frequent co-host, a novelist and screenwriter, chief editor of The Savvy Street, and co-author with me of Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, Vinay Kolhatkar. Welcome to the show, Vinay.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you for having me.

Roger Bissell

Well, we’re going to just plunge right in. The first question is rather open-ended, just to kind of warm up with. Does a nation-state, such as the United States, have rights or obligations or any kind of moral principles that it needs to act according to? Walter, let’s have you begin, if you would.

Walter Block

On the one hand, I wear an anarcho-capitalist hat. And on the other hand, I wear a moderate libertarian hat; call it classical liberalism.

I guess I’m torn on this because I wear two hats. On the one hand, I wear an anarcho-capitalist hat. And on the other hand, I wear a moderate libertarian hat; call it minarchism or classical liberalism or something like that. Now, with the anarcho-capitalist hat, paradoxically, we’re not against government. We just want everyone to have one. So, from the anarcho-capitalist point of view, the optimal number of governments is about 8 billion, because there are 8 billion people here, and everyone should have one. You know, be the first on your block to have a government, and everyone should get one. And then my government should be nice to your government, Roger, and nice to your government, Vinay, and we should all follow the non-aggression principle, and we should all cooperate with each other. We don’t have to like each other, but we’ve got to keep our mitts off each other—unless we agree to put our mitts on each other, like in a voluntary boxing match or something like that. So, the foreign policy of me should be the same as the foreign policy of you guys, and that is to adhere to the non-aggression principle and uphold private property rights based on homesteading—and as Robert Nozick would then say, on anything subsequent like voluntary trade. So, if I homestead some land and you homestead a cow, and I produce corn and you produce milk, and now we trade, I now have the righteous ownership of the milk even though I didn’t produce it, because I can trace it back to homestead and voluntary trade.

Now for the tough part. Now we’re minarchists for the moment, or classical liberals, and what should the government do? Well, it’s going to collect taxes, which is a no-no, but now I’m not an anarcho-capitalist anymore. I’m schizophrenic. I’m now a limited-government libertarian. And yes, we’re going to have taxes, and the taxes are mainly for armies to protect us from foreign invaders; police to protect us from local invaders, rapists, murderers; and courts to determine, what should be the statutory rape age, or is my music too loud at three in the morning? Things like that. Or Vinay and I had a contract, and I say he broke it, he says he didn’t, so I’ll appoint you, Roger, as the court. You would decide, based on the evidence that Vinay and I give to you.

I don’t see anything in the bowels of libertarianism that says you can’t have any allies.

So, what should the foreign policy be? The foreign policy should be to protect the country. Don’t let any invaders come in and get us. Now, this leads to an issue. Should we have allies? Well, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have allies. I don’t favor an alliance with everybody from our country, let’s say that our country is the United States, but I don’t see anything in the bowels of libertarianism that says you can’t have any allies. So, I would say that if we’re the ally of Israel, and Israel is under attack, we help them; and on the other hand, if we’re under attack, we would expect Israel to help us. This leads to a whole can of worms. Who should be our allies? NATO? How about China? Better yet, Taiwan. Should the Taiwanese be our allies? That would be my opening answer to the question.

Roger Bissell

Okay. Well, Vinay, do you see it that way or do you have a different slant on it?

Vinay Kolhatkar

Governments only have rights that are delegated to them by their citizens.

Well, a little different slant. First of all, I’ve held this view, I think, for many decades, which is a view that we do have allies [naturally]. So, for instance, if the three of us are walking down Central Park, let’s say somebody attacks Walter Block. He doesn’t have a gun, he doesn’t have a knife, and Roger being a big strong guy, I’m going to encourage him to intervene. [Laughter]. I will intervene as well, especially if it’s a physical fight, and poor Walter could be beaten to death, but three against one, we might have a better chance. And it’s an implicit contract because we’re friends or colleagues, we help each other out. But the critical question was, do nation-states have rights and obligations? And I found out that my answer is identical to [Ayn] Rand’s. She explores that in an essay called “Collectivized Rights” in the book The Virtue of Selfishness. She divides the world into black and white, no gray in that hypothetical, which is typical of Rand. So, let’s say there are nations that are fundamentally secular, democratic, and respect the rule of law, have a wall between religion and the state, and, most importantly, they respect the rights of their citizens. Now, she’s a little bit uncertain where to draw the line, and she’s drawn the line where the US, the UK, in her time—the 60s, would clearly fall on the good side. And her favorite villain, Soviet Russia, would fall on the bad side, as would Cuba, because they’re completely communist, and they respected no rights, it was a kangaroo court system out there. So, in those, she says firstly, that the governments only have rights that are delegated to them by their citizens. So, the right to protect them from internal strife [requires that] we have the police, the courts. But in this situation, [the government also has] the right, clearly, and an obligation to protect the citizens from outside threats.

But what if the threat isn’t imminent to the United States itself, taking the US as an example? And this is a statement I completely agree with. Then the government has the right to intervene, but not an obligation. That’s a statement that is absolutely right in one sense. If you’re going by the beach and you see somebody drowning, [and] it’s a complete stranger, not your own son or daughter or somebody that you love, then you do have the right to jump in the water and save him or her; but you may not be so confident of your swimming, you might drift away and you might drown yourself and such things have happened, and so you don’t have the obligation. You’ve got to make a split[-second] decision, a quick decision; but in foreign policy, we don’t have to make that quick a decision.

Governments like Iran’s, that abrogate the rights of their own citizens, have no right to exist, and any country has the right (but not the obligation) to help topple that kind of government.

Essentially, these kinds of governments, like the government of Iran, that abrogate the rights of their own citizens, have no right to exist, and we, or the US or any country, according to Rand, and I agree, has the right to help topple that kind of government, especially if the end result is going to be a better one.

Even Murray Rothbard, about as anti-war [an intellectual] as you can get, said that the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971 was a just war.

Even Murray Rothbard, about as anti-war [an intellectual] as you can get, said that the Indo-Pakistan War in 1971 was a just war, because you had East Pakistan on the east of the Indian subcontinent and on the west, you had Pakistan. It was a funny kind of unified country [the old Pakistan] with a large area in the middle that belonged to India. Apparently, Pakistan was raping, pillaging, and looting out in East Pakistan, and there were refugees coming in hordes crossing over the Indian border. To cut a long story short, the Indian army went into what is now Bangladesh. They repelled the Pakistani army, freed the people, and then they just came back, and they [people there] had a new election and called it a new state: Bangladesh. That was, even according to Rothbard, a just cause. Now, I don’t know how many Indian soldiers died in that, and somebody might argue, wait a minute, you’re still using taxpayers’ money to intervene, and even if one soldier died, what right did you have to put him into an external conflict? But there was a danger in the future to the Indian subcontinent from Pakistan winning against East Pakistan. So, I rest my case there. The principle is there. The particulars get very complicated.

Roger Bissell

They sure do. I like your example of our pal Walter [being] out there in Central Park, and he’s being set upon by some violent person. Now, let’s expand it a little bit to a situation where the guy has not attacked Walter yet, but we’re strolling along, the two of us, and we know Walter is not far away. Maybe he’s over at the food wagon getting a hot dog or something, and we hear this guy over in the bushes, and he says, “I’m going to get that blasted Walter Block,” and he’s loading up his pistol. Now, by the NAP [non-aggression principle] and the right to self-defense and the right to help your friend by defending them—this gets into preemptive stuff, right? —if there’s no policeman nearby, and our phones don’t have any charge in the batteries, then it’s up to us. Do we have the right to apprehend, subdue, disarm this guy, to initiate force against him? Or, in fact, is he initiating force already, even though he hasn’t laid a hand on Walter yet? He’s planning, and he’s loading up his gun. Maybe he’s mentally deranged, and he’s not really going to do anything, he’s just hallucinating. But what kind of chance do you take in a situation like that? Do you go after the crazy person? Vinay, go ahead and comment.

Vinay Kolhatkar

If the threat is absolutely imminent, we do have the right to intervene.

If the threat is absolutely imminent, we do have the right to intervene. I’ll give you a couple of other examples. Even in a libertarian society, you would probably take away the firearms from a person who is a paranoid schizophrenic, has a history of violence, has been in and out of jail, has been warned plenty of times but can’t help himself, and has already shot at a few people. He’s not in jail because fortunately his aim was pretty bad, and he ended up injuring people in the leg or the arm, hasn’t killed anyone simply because he’s not as good a shot, but he keeps doing this, and even a libertarian society would take away his firearms. And in cases otherwise, even this person may have made many threats to Walter, he has mailed him [threats], has shouted from his soapbox that “I don’t like Walter’s existence, he should be eradicated from the earth.” And suppose in this case, Roger and I are policemen, so it makes it a little bit easier than us unarmed taking on an armed, deranged person. We are policemen, we sight him, and he is right behind Walter, about to draw his gun. Yes, we have every right at least to use the taser guns on him to disarm him and disable him. And if nothing succeeds, and he lunges at Walter with a knife, and there’s only five feet between them, at that stage we have the right to shoot [the assailant] in the chest or the head area.

Roger Bissell

So, you’re going to wait till you see the whites of his eyes or something? You wouldn’t preempt him if he’s just off in the bushes loading his gun and muttering ominously?

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