No Coercion

I heard a guest on a news program this morning discussing Obama’s trip to Saudi Arabia and his hopes for a better Middle East. He said that Obama needs the help and support of many of the region’s autocratic leaders that oppress their own people and so will be unable to lecture them about changing their internal policies and institutions. He described this as the “conundrum” facing American foreign policy.

Now, the libertarian approach to the Middle East would be to follow George Washington’s advice and try to maintain friendly relationships with all the states in the region and ending any “entangling alliances” like the one with Israel. It’s not our place to be lecturing other countries about freedom and democracy, especially when our vaunted democratic process is currently doing so much to destroy our freedom. The best thing to do is to set a good example and try to keep trade and travel as open as possible so that the citizens of those other countries can see the benefits of a relatively freer and more open society first hand and be motivated to go back home to fight for their own freedom.

Isn’t it interesting how using the libertarian approach eliminates the supposed “conundrum” and would even allow us to get rid of probably hundreds of State Department employees currently being employed in the complex machinations of our interventionist foreign policy?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!