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Rights, War, and Treaties

By Gordon Francis Corbett

    We all love our freedom;  but to keep it, we must understand it.  The branch of philosophy that explains freedom is called, "ethics."  The section of ethics that covers how we should treat our fellows is called, "the natural law."

    The natural law rests upon the concept of rights.  Ayn Rand noted that a right "is a moral principle that defines and sanctions a man's freedom of action in a social context."  Every person has the same rights.  Rights let us do anything except hurt another's rights;  they let us stop someone's action only if it would hurt another's rights.

    Consequently, Sheldon Richman explains, every person is surrounded by "a zone of sovereignty."  We can defend that zone with fists, feet, or even firearms;  and, usually, those means suffice.  Nevertheless, sometimes, defending our rights requires help.

    To obtain it, we hire public guardians.  We sanction their use of force against our fellows and ourselves, but at a risk.  If they fail in protecting our rights, we suffer.  If they abandon protecting our rights, we suffer.  William Cullen Bryant said, "...nor yet, O Freedom!  close thy lids in slumber, for thine enemy never sleeps..."

    To set our guardians' tasks, and to ensure that they do no more, our Founding Fathers drew, from their knowledge of history and of that part of the natural law called "politics," the wisdom they put into our Constitution.  They gave our guardians limited specific powers, whose legitimacy would flow from the rights we would pay them to protect.

     The Founding Fathers gave the government no power to defend foreign nations, except for an implicit sanction when Congress has declared war and the foreign countries and we are fighting the same enemy.

    We can see why.  Foreign nations, by definition, are foreign.  Their citizens do not believe in our institutions.  They do not vote here.  They do not pay taxes here.  They are not part of America, and therefore, barring a declaration of war, we can give our guardians no legitimate power to defend them.

    This is why we should fight no nation unless it has attacked the United States, or our citizens abroad, or we know that it intends to do so.

    Nevertheless, some argue that we make our rights more secure by joining "mutual-defense" pacts.  Allegedly, their members keep the peace by promising to attack any nation that assails any member.  So, our joining enables our public guardians to ask our fellow members for help in protecting our rights.

    Actually, because they enlarge wars, alliances endanger citizens' rights.

    Consider World War I.  On 28 June 1914, a Serbian assassin murdered an Austro-Hungarian archduke and his wife.  Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia;  Austria-Hungary's ally, Germany, declared war on Serbia's ally, Russia, and two days later, declared war on Russia's ally, France;  and, when Germany maintained that it would cross neutral Belgium to attack France, Belgium's ally, Britain, declared war on Germany.  After years of selling Britain war goods behind a façade of false neutrality, we entered the war formally in April of 1917 and helped to defeat Germany.

    World War I killed millions of innocents.

    Afterwards, European diplomats re-drew Europe's map.  During the coming years, they formed more alliances.  One was Britain's and France's promise to defend Poland, which set the stage for World War II.

    In August of 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union made one more promise.  They agreed that seventeen days after Hitler attacked Poland, Stalin would invade it;  then, the two dictators would divide their prize.  Most promises were mostly kept.  Hitler attacked;  Stalin invaded;  Poland disappeared under German and Russian boots.  Britain and France declared war on Germany, but not on the Soviet Union.

    Hitler sliced through France in 1940, but the English Channel, British cryptanalysis, and the Royal Air Force saved Britain.  Early in 1941, to help Britain fight, we began sending them Lend-Lease aid in British convoys escorted by American naval vessels.  In June of 1941, Hitler attacked Stalin.  After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we entered the war formally.  Hitler declared war on us, and we joined Britain and the Soviet Union in smashing Italy, Germany, and Japan.

    World War II killed more millions of innocents.

    Anti-interventionists question our secret sales of war goods to Britain before we entered World War I, because we were at peace.  They question our eventual entry, too, because no nation had attacked us or declared war on us.  Regarding World War II, they question the morality of our giving Britain aid, and, especially, of having our Navy escort the British convoys carrying it, while we were still at peace.

    According to the Veterans' Administration, these two World Wars cost us 521,915 men.

    President George Washington knew that alliances could endanger our rights.  That is why, in his Farewell Address, he recommended allying only rarely and briefly to attain specific goals.

    Only derivation from our rights can legitimate any  treaty.  Mutual-defense agreements commit members at peace to defend members at war;  when we are at peace, our citizens' rights sanction our guardians' defending only us;  so, no American membership in any such pact can be legitimate.

    Some remonstrate that these pacts protect the powerless against the powerful.  They forget that, in joining them, our powerful betrayed our powerless.

    Consequently, we should denounce all "mutual-defense" pacts, warning that after their specified withdrawal-periods, our allies will have to defend themselves.  If a treaty names no period, we should create one.  Then, we should return to President Washington's policy of non-intervention.

    "Europe," with or without the quotation-marks, would need little or no time.  Israel ditto.  Latin America would suffer no threat from overseas if we were to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.  If we have promised to defend any African country, we should not do so after the specified period.

    As for Asia Major, we could compensate the Republic of China for ending our pledge to defend it against the Chinese Reds by giving it nuclear missiles.

    How would returning to non-intervention affect our disputes with Iraq and Iran?  The answer depends on what these nations have done, and plan to do, to us.

    Some say that our not attacking these regimes would constitute appeasement.  They are wrong.  We could appease these governments only by yielding to any threats, or by ignoring any attacks, from either nation.  So far, our public guardians have ascribed to them no threats or attacks.

    The Iraqi and Iranian governments are abhorrent, but their owning chemical, biological, or radiological weapons should make us declare war on them only if they explode them, or plan to explode them, in our country.

    Having said that, whoever ordered the attacks on the World Trade Center, on Flight 800, or on Flight 587, has earned death.  To deter further violations of our rights, our public guardians must deliver it.  The President must identify the sponsor;  Congress must declare war on that nation;  and our Armed Forces must attain absolute victory.

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