How should libertarians react to the U.S. victory in the Red Sea?

My heretical analysis

Photo by William Rudolph on Unsplash

WARNING: I'm a libertarian. Some of what I write below may offend the Left, the Right, or both. But as Walt Whitman asked, "Who are you who only wants to be told what you've heard before?"

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In this article:

• Should libertarians applaud or boo U.S. victory in the Red Sea?

• Libertarian views about self-defense and others-defense

• The foreign intervention conundrum - easy cases, equivocal cases, and hard cases

• Is there a parallel between foreign intervention and how libertarians deal with the Social Security issue?

• How to proceed now and in similar situations

Terms to know:

• A libertarian is someone who generally favors the Zero Aggression Principle: Don't aggress against others, personally or politically.

• A voluntaryist libertarian wants to get as close to zero aggression as humanly possible. Voluntaryists, as the name suggests, believe all human interactions should be voluntary. They favor non-tax-funded, non-monopolistic, non-state institutions of governance, such as juries and subscription police. I am a voluntaryist.

• A limited-state libertarian is someone who makes exceptions to the zero aggression principle to permit taxation for a limited set of functions: mostly police, courts, and national defense. Ron Paul is an example of a limited-state libertarian.

Now, to answer the question I ask in my title...

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The Houthis say they will no longer attack Red Sea shipping. They made this pledge in response to U.S. military retaliation. How should libertarians react to this?

Should we condemn it because it was achieved using tax funding, or because it projected U.S. power beyond our borders? Or should we applaud because it ended acts of aggression against innocent people?

I advise applause! My argument follows...

Libertarian views about self-defense and others-defense

Few libertarians advocate pacifism. Most support self-defense and the defense of others. If someone shoots at us, we can shoot back. When a lunatic sprays bullets at a crowd, we can defend the victims. Many libertarians urge people to carry guns for exactly that purpose.

Libertarians also support collective defense. We talk about neighborhoods hiring security patrols. Limited-state libertarians even permit taxation to fund local cops and a national military.. But libertarians have less clear views about defending foreigners.

The foreign intervention conundrum

Most libertarians oppose sending the military outside the U.S.. We have powerful reasons.

Voluntaryists oppose coercive taxation and all projects so-funded. We think taxation is both immoral and impractical. The history of harmful U.S. foreign interventions demonstrates this impracticality. I've written an entire website about it (WarTruth.org).

Limited-state libertarians mostly agree with voluntaryists about this. The United States has done foreign intervention so badly, so often, with such catastrophic results, that we should reject such projects out of hand.

I mostly agree, but not completely. Alas, there are easy and hard cases when it comes to foreign intervention.

Easy Cases

The U.S. war against Mexico to conquer the Western territories was evil and unnecessary. U.S. politicians could simply have foreclosed delinquent loans to Mexico and seized the Western territories as compensation. That probably would have side-stepped war entirely.

The U.S. war to subjugate the Philippines as a colony was likewise evil.

It was also evil to overthrow the Iranian democracy in 1953 and install a dictator in its place.

Other cases are less clearly immoral, but still make no sense...

It made no sense to defend the South Vietnamese dictatorship against a North Vietnamese dictatorship, especially given how many South Vietnamese preferred the North.

It made no sense to wage war against the dictator Saddam Hussein to defend the dictators in Kuwait.

It made even less sense to attack Hussein again in the second Gulf War, when he hadn't invaded anyone. Actually, this example probably is immoral.

But some examples of foreign intervention are less clearly wrong...

Equivocal cases

Korea

South Korea was hardly a paragon of democratic virtue when we defended it against North Korea, but few would argue that it would have been better to let the communists take the entire peninsula.

I have made a strong case that U.S. politicians created North Korea in the first place, by inviting Stalin to occupy the area after Japan surrendered. While that shows how bad the U.S. has been at tax-funded foreign intervention, it also created something of an obligation to protect the South from further harm. It's good we succeeded at that, even if it was tax-funded.

WW2

Nazi aggression presents a similar problem. I have argued that bad U.S. policies fostered the rise of Adolf Hitler. I have also argued that voluntary funding could have achieved a better result than our tax-funded intervention did. But neither thing means it would have been better for freedom and morality to let Hitler win, or to have Stalin conquer all of Europe after defeating Hitler.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is another problematic case. A long string of bad U.S. policies may have created the blowback that produced the 9-11 attacks, but that doesn't mean there was no justification for destroying the Afghan regime that sheltered al-Qaeda.

We can argue against the occupation and attempted nation-building that followed, but it's a lot harder to oppose the invasion itself. Indeed, a strong argument can be made that the invasion should have been more fierce. Instead of holding back resources for the unjustified war with Iraq, we probably should have gone in hard with everything we had, completed the job fast, and then left a giant billboard in Kabul that said: Do it again and we'll be back!

Current hard cases

Most Americans agree, libertarians and non-libertarians alike, that we shouldn't send U.S. troops to Ukraine or Israel. Is it equally clear we shouldn't provide financial support to help those countries defend themselves, even if that assistance is tax-funded?

Would it be a net gain for human freedom and morality to let a large dictatorship, like Putin's Russia, conquer a small democracy, like Ukraine?

Is it a net gain for freedom and morality to let a large oil-rich theocracy like Iran constantly fund attacks against civilians in a small liberal democracy like Israel?

Are we libertarians really so fussy that we would rather see such aggressions continue than use tax-funded assets to defend against them, especially if we can do so without using U.S. troops?

My general voluntaryist opposition to tax-funded foreign intervention does not disappear in these situations, but it does loosen its grip.

I will continue to argue for taxation to end.

I will continue to assert that all human projects, including defensive wars, should be voluntarily funded.

I still believe, all things being equal, that voluntary funding is moral while taxation is immoral.

I remain persuaded that voluntary funding is more practical than taxation, because it incentivizes good performance.

I am still inspired to think that volunteer funding can accomplish great things, but...

None of the above requires me to summarily reject all tax-funded acts of others-defense in the short term.

I have my own ideas about how voluntary funding could have defended Ukraine better than what we're doing now, but that doesn't mean tax-funded support for Ukraine is the worst thing in the world, or that doing nothing instead is the more moral position. The same is true for Iran's war against Israel and international trade. I would rather defend against those things without tax-funding, but I would rather do it with tax-funding than not at all.

It will be good for the world and human liberty if Ukraine and Israel survive, and good for the world if the Houthis can no longer attack shipping.

I can also see few bigger gains for peace, freedom, and morality, than that Putin and the Iranian theocracy should both fall. That doesn't mean it's prudent to use U.S. forces to achieve those goals directly, but it would be wonderful if U.S. financial support for Ukraine and Israel achieved those goals indirectly.

The Social Security parallel

Foreign intervention isn't the only issue where libertarians face moral quandaries about long-term versus short-term goals. Social Security is a classic case.

Most libertarians know that current Social Security benefits are paid by taxes on current workers. There is no saved pool of money that current retirees draw from. This is deeply immoral. Politicians imposed these obligations on current workers before they were born. They never had a chance to object or consent. Social Security represents a colossal theft, transferring vast sums from the mostly young and poor to the old and mostly affluent. This is clearly immoral. And yet...

Very few libertarians claim Social Security should be abolished overnight. Instead, most of us argue for gradual changes to reduce and/or remove the immorality over time. We do this because the harm caused by defunding those in need is greater than the harm caused by the taxation. Libertarians oppose fraud for a similar reason. It isn't an actual act of aggression, but it has the same impact as aggression. Likewise, removing Social Security benefits from a poor senior isn't an act of initiated force, but it has the same impact.

Thomas Sowell said it well: "There are no perfect solutions, there are only trade-offs." Most libertarians accept that the best trade-offs for Social Security involve slow reform in a more moral direction. I think we libertarians should take the same approach with foreign intervention. We should oppose it most of the time, but favor it some of the time. More specifically, we should almost always reject the direct use of U.S. troops and/or covert skullduggery, but sometimes accept tax-funded aid to victims of foreign aggression, as in the case of Ukraine and Israel.

I think we are now prepared to answer the initial question.

How should libertarians respond to the Houthis' defeat in the Red Sea?

Voluntaryist libertarians should applaud the result while continuing to argue that tax-funded endeavours are immoral and impractical on a net basis. We should uphold a vision where someday the wealthy shipping industry pays to keep its own shipping lanes open, instead of imposing those costs on the American taxpayer.

Limited state libertarians should also applaud the result while continuing to describe the past harms tax-funded foreign interventions have done to liberty, security, and prosperity.

No libertarian should maintain that the defeat of the Houthis is a bad thing because it was achieved using poor means. Rather, we should stress that the Houthi surrender is a good thing accomplished using sub-optimal methods.

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Copyright © Perry Willis 2025

Perry Willis is the co-founder of Downsize DC and the Zero Aggression Project. He co-created, with Jim Babka, the Read the Bills Act, the One Subject at a Time Act, and the Write the Laws Act, all of which have been introduced in Congress. He is a past Executive Director of the national Libertarian Party and was the campaign manager for Harry Browne for President in 2000.