Why national defense is essential
- It is unlikely we will ever succeed at eliminating all substantial threats worldwide. Therefore, we must be well prepared to deal with them.
- Nothing about working for peace is inconsistent with having a strong national defense capability.
- Without defending the geographic area in which we live from aggressors who seek to destroy or occupy it, working on calibrating all laws to be in harmony with the Legal Principle would be a waste of time.
- Effective national defense is not optional. It is an unfortunate necessity and reality of life. Advocating for peace does not require one to be a pacifist.
Ways of organizing national defense
- Defending a nation is a concept akin to self-defense on a national scale.
Mutual agreements
- Just as local police departments now have mutual agreements with other departments in different locations for cooperation, there is no reason to believe they could not also contract protection services on a much larger scale. Nothing about this approach necessarily violates the 3L Philosophy.
- Mutual agreements between countries to protect each other are a matter of foreign relations.
Funding national defense
- There are several ways to secure funding for defense without taxation.
- In a free society, we should imagine a world where most multinational corporations have a financial interest in maintaining peaceful trade and act accordingly.
Incentivizing peace through trade
- People in business who freely trade with others across different countries also have a substantial economic interest in maintaining peace.
- Peace through expanded free trade with as many countries as possible is undoubtedly an effective strategy we should enthusiastically pursue.
- We can mitigate substantial threats to our national security by increasing free trade and advocating for the 3L Philosophy, but that does not mean we can eliminate them.
The purpose of a military
- National defense is primarily concerned with protecting a group of people who reside in a specific geographic area.
- It is not about protecting others who live in different geographic regions. While defending people in different geographic locations can be done consistently with the 3L Philosophy and is a worthwhile moral goal, this is a topic of foreign policy, not of national defense. We should not confuse the two different projects.
More on defending free societies is explored in the Transition section.