War Is the Greatest Enemy of Freedom

By Thorsten Polleit

In this article I want to share some thoughts that are seldom voiced in today’s heated debates—yet they carry profound weight when it comes to preserving peace.

The joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes against Iran have sharply divided public opinion. There is no question that Tehran is ruled by an unjust regime. Nor is there any doubt that those threatened, persecuted, or harmed by it have every right to defend themselves.

However, I maintain this: A defensive war waged by a state that inevitably harms innocent civilians must be rejected. The same principle, of course, applies even more strongly to offensive wars launched by states.

In that, this reasoning aligns closely with a landmark 2006 ruling by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. The judges declared that shooting down a hijacked passenger plane—even one steered by suicide attackers toward a building full of innocents—is unconstitutional. It violates human dignity (Article 1 of the German Basic Law) and the right to life (Article 2).

As a libertarian, one can, and must, wholeheartedly endorse this judgment; and it underpins the libertarian core argument against war: No individual—and therefore no state—may initiate force against the life or legitimately acquired property of an innocent person. When a state wages war, it flagrantly breaches this principle. It bombs and kills civilians, inflicts “collateral damage,” compels people into military service (conscription being, at root, a form of slavery), and funds the machinery of death through taxes—extorted money—or inflationary currency, thereby inflicting massive harm on the innocent.

Those who champion war pave the way for an all-powerful state. This manifests in higher taxes, mandatory conscription, censorship, propaganda, ballooning government debt, inflation, unchecked bureaucracy, and the emergence of a “deep state.” Even apparent “victories” only strengthen the state further, allowing it to expand at the expense of the liberty of peaceful, innocent consumers and producers.

War inflicts devastating moral and cultural damage. It corrupts society by normalizing mass killing, stoking hatred of “the enemy” through propaganda, suppressing free thought, and eroding human dignity and culture itself. Economically, the toll is enormous: Resources are diverted from productive uses into instruments of destruction. Any supposed “war boom” is an illusion—akin to a plague that enriches only undertakers.

The notion that the state can be harnessed to wage a “just war” and deliver good outcomes is pure wishful thinking. Consider the U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, which typically left the affected nations in far worse condition than before. Or recall the Allied area bombings of German cities in World War II, which killed an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 civilians.

Too often overlooked is this fundamental truth: The modern state, as we know it, is inherently aggressive: it is fundamentally an apparatus of coercion and violence—not only toward its own population internally, but also externally once it accumulates sufficient power.

Far from being a bulwark against war, modern states are its primary cause—especially because those wielding state power can externalize the costs of their decisions onto others. To advocate further arming such states with weapons funded by money extorted from innocents is, from this viewpoint, the height of irrationality.

So what is the true solution—the path to genuine peace? Society must organize strictly around self-defense—and nothing more. Self-defense must never evolve into empire-building, “collective security” arrangements, or entangling alliances, as these inevitably breed conflict and war. Instead, adopt radical non-interventionism: Strictly refrain from meddling in other states’ affairs.

Defense must be funded solely through voluntary contributions—not through coercive taxes, public debt, or inflationary money creation. Participation in defense must remain entirely voluntary—perhaps through a citizen militia, supplemented if needed by contracted private firms specialised in defense.

Small states, in particular, should pursue strict neutrality to avoid being drawn into conflicts—as, say, Switzerland and Liechtenstein have long demonstrated. Indeed, the world would benefit from breaking large states into smaller ones. Small states cannot afford autarky; they must remain open and friendly to attract trade, foreign capital, and talent.

Small polities have little incentive to provoke conflicts, face lower risks of attack, and—if attacked—can mount resistance (or choose not to) based on the voluntary decisions of their militia. (By the way: This was precisely how the American colonists defeated the British in the Revolutionary War.)

In Iran’s case, a genuine self-defense doctrine—after exhausting all diplomatic options—could have justified precisely targeted strikes: Destroying facilities for weapons of mass destruction and neutralizing individuals provably responsible for threats and terrorism. What remains utterly illegitimate, however, are state-launched rocket attacks on civilian neighborhoods, the extension of offensive or defensive wars to innocents and their property, or—worst of all—the threat or use of weapons of mass destruction.

Conflicts among people will, sadly, always exist. But wars—planned, large-scale, organized violence that engulfs entire societies—arise from the very existence of states. As economist Ludwig von Mises incisively observed in 1919: “Whoever wants peace among nations must strive to limit the state and its influence to the utmost.” Those who heed Mises’s wisdom will also reject the ideologies that have repeatedly summoned wars throughout history, destroying individual liberty and freedom.