Composing pseudonymously in a series of short articles for Faith and Freedom in the 1950s, Murray Rothbard handled the concern of whether the United States must defend Formosa (Taiwan) from attack by mainland China. While his conclusions will surprise nobody acquainted with his work (that war is the health of the state, that people worried about the fate of Taiwan must do as they will privately, however that their lives and home are not for the government to command), a review of the articles’ contents are rewarding, nonetheless. For apart from such typically memorably Rothbardian lines as “only those who wish to mingle America really eagerly anticipate the third and possibly last World War,” we find a lot of the exact same ridiculous rationales for war with China used today excoriated with excellent wit by Rothbard.
For instance, Rothbard starts the first of these, “Along Pennsylvania Opportunity,”by rhetorically posturing the concern of how it took place that a smattering of islands eighty miles off the coast of mainland China ended up being “essential to our defense,” and as an answer he responds:
[The federal government] were required to represent the Reds as “island hopping” their way to the United States. [… For] if the Reds take Formosa, they will be one island nearer to the United States. It is an olden story: a tranquil Pacific “moat” is needed for our defense. In order to safeguard his moat, we need to secure friendly countries or bases all around it. To safeguard Japan and the Philippines, we must safeguard Formosa, to protect Formosa we should safeguard the Pescadores. To safeguard the Pescadores, we need to safeguard Quemoy, an island 3 miles off the Chinese mainland. To secure Quemoy we should equip Chiang’s soldiers for an intrusion of the mainland. Where does this procedure end? Logically, never (18 ).
Readers not familiar with the history of the region might have an interest in some additional context regarding Rothbard’s mention of equipping Chiang Kai-shek, the dictator of Taiwan and banished leader of China’s failed Republic, for an invasion of the mainland. In spite of having actually been driven from the off by force of arms, and just protected in their island fortress by virtue of the United States Navy consistently stepping in to avoid a cross-strait invasion by the PLA, it was the main policyof Taipei to retake the mainland by force. Though such plains never got away the ground– and were mainly deserted by the 1970s– it was not until the constitutional revisions of the 1990s that Taiwan officially gave up such a policy of armed reconquest in favor of focusing strictly by itself defense.
Composing in the 1950s, near the height of the first Taiwan Strait Crisis and when talk of an intrusion of the mainland by Taipei was still freely prepared and required by Chiang, Rothbard heroically pushed back versus those who corresponded isolation with appeasement. In a scene all too familiar, he grumbled that Congress’ response to increased stress over Formosa was to write what “totaled up to a blank check for war in China whenever the President shall deem it essential,” noting unfortunately that just 2 congressmen had opposed the resolution on the premises that the United States must not actively look for to “engage their kids in a war on foreign soil,” the rest merely arguing over the scope or scale of the dedication to be made.
Rothbard was naturally red-baited for his efforts, even assaulted by a fellow “libertarian” in Faith and Liberty. He safeguarded himself in a series of additional posts, “Fight for Formosa?” Parts I & II, and reviewing the experience some years later in The Betrayal of the American Righthe had this to say:
I might never ever– and still can not– discover one iota of commitment to ‘freedom’ in the worldview of those whose passion for crusading abroad makes them blind to the real opponent: the intrusion of our liberty by the State … to quit our freedom in order to “maintain” it is just catching the Orwellian dialectic that “freedom is slavery.”
Indeed.
Those who today reasonably say that the defense of an island eighty miles off the coast of mainland China and 5 thousand miles from Hawaii(let alone the mainland United States) can not perhaps be a core national interest can bask in following the footsteps of such brave and principled forebearers as Rothbard.
Americans can and should state NO!to the brand-new Cold War and refuse efforts by Washington to provoke Beijing with concerns to Taiwan, virtually its only stated “red line.”
That is, unless another catastrophe like Ukraine is the objective– which it may well be.
[Originally published at the Libertarian Institute.]