Peace is the priority
- We should continuously pursue policies reasonably calculated to achieve peace with all nations as our top priority.
Judging the individual administrators, not the county
- Foreign policy can be viewed through two lenses:
- ‘Individual country’ approach: treating countries as unchanging individual entities acting over long periods, even many generations.
- ‘Individual administration’ approach: analyzes only the actions of the individuals controlling the mechanisms of government in a particular country, independent of the actions of other individuals who managed those governmental mechanisms years or generations ago.
- The 3L Philosophy holds people accountable for what they do and not for what others did, often generations earlier. Therefore, the “Individual Administration” approach is most appropriate. We should judge the people who control the mechanisms of government and the people who knowingly assist them as responsible for what they do while in power.
Forgive and forget the past, or continue an endless cycle of aggressing
- This distinction is important because virtually all countries have aggressed at some point at the direction of their government officials. Using the ‘individual country’ approach, one could argue that all countries are aggressors. As a result, any military action taken against any country could be argued as defensive and justified based on its past aggressions and assumed current substantial threat. People could attempt to use this approach to justify endless military actions in response to earlier aggressions. Unfortunately, the history of humanity includes countless aggressions of all types. Everyone is associated with a group or country that some person or group aggressed against on some occasion. We must stop the cycle of aggressing and the holding of longstanding grudges.
- We should acknowledge that perfect justice is not an option while we smartly move toward peace as quickly as possible. Given that we could never justly sort out all aggressions throughout history, it makes sense to forgive and forget past aggressions of all countries and focus on ending all present aggressions and avoiding future ones.
Mutual agreements for international defence
- It may make sense for countries to enter into a mutual international agreement with as many other countries as possible to maintain the present borders of all nations and jointly defend them. We could expect that when enough countries agree to such an arrangement, we could sufficiently deter others from invading another’s borders.
Individuals may defend people in other nations, not governments
- People can defend others if they choose. That said, using one country’s military solely to protect people in another country is not national defense. National defense should be the sole purpose for any government or country to maintain an official military force. Governments should not pursue moral goals.
- Each individual is free to personally travel to foreign countries to defend others from aggressors, send money or weapons, and employ others to do what they are permitted to do. As with all people’s actions, we should hold people accountable if they are mistaken about the facts or do anything to aggress against others.
- The benefit of having private citizens act to assist others in foreign countries in repelling aggressors is that they do not represent anyone but themselves.
- If private citizens are unwilling to invest their time or resources to help others in a foreign country, the cause may not be sufficiently worthy.
Or that defense of others can be outsourced to professionals
- Private citizens may hire professionals, including professional military organizations, to assist victims of aggressors in foreign countries.
- We could expect a private for-profit military organization to arise in the market. Enough motivated people could employ the private military to defeat most small, ruthless dictators worldwide. Indeed, the mere threat of action from a private military could deter such dictators from acting in the first place.
- Using private, for-profit corporations providing military services, we can assist victims of aggressors worldwide while government militaries remain neutral. At the same time, the market of concerned citizens will determine whether military intervention in a foreign country is a worthy cause measured by whether they are willing to spend their own money on it. We should expect private citizens voluntarily spending their resources on foreign intervention to be more cautious than politicians spending other peoples’ money, often for expected political gain or to enrich corporate donors that prosper from military interventions.
- Countries with free economies result in higher living standards and increased disposable income.
- We should have reasonable confidence that the free private citizens of the world who cooperate will muster more significant private military muscle to defend against aggressors than those who seek to aggress could muster.
- Imagine having the opportunity to voluntarily combine resources with other concerned people worldwide to allow market forces to deploy a trained military to defend and possibly liberate victims worldwide.
- Individual countries may outsource their military defense to the market-tested, most efficient providers of military services. Imagine a foreign policy driven not by political decisions but by market forces based on what individuals worldwide voluntarily decide to fund with their own money.
