Bitcoin fixes this, study #bitcoin
Non-Interventionism and the Ethics of Military Action and Sanctions
The recent images of Venezuela’s new leadership embracing diplomats from Iran, China, and Russia have reignited debates about proxy wars, alliances with adversaries, and the role of U.S. foreign policy.
Critics of non-interventionism argue that these ties expose a pre-existing anti-American axis, one that exploits Venezuelan resources to bolster global threats, potentially turning the country into a strategic launchpad against the United States.
They contend that sanctions and pressure are necessary to disrupt this coordination, much like refusing to do business with a domestic criminal enterprise.
A distinction here is critical. A corrupt government reigning over millions of people is not the same as criminals inside of a nation with upheld and just laws.
Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Frédéric Bastiat, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and modern voices such as Ron Paul offer a historically accurate and rational view: interventionism, including military action or broad sanctions, manufactures the very dangers they claim to prevent, while violating principles of individual liberty and non-aggression.
Regardless of the story people are relentlessly sold, intervention is never altruism or for protecting the homeland.
Intervention is always to benefit the world's most powerful. It perpetuates war and those causing harm.
Through the convenient appearance of good intent, and even if some good is done, the harm to those helped always outweighs the good, and those profiting from the intervention always make it difficult to see that fact.
Resource control (oil, pipelines, food, drugs, metals, minerals), division (foreign, domestic or geopolitical), uncooperative governments, opportunity for profits from endless war and defiance of the petrodollar trigger action; naked genocide without strategic value does not.
Blowback and the Creation of Alliances
Ron Paul has long described “blowback” as the unintended consequence of aggressive foreign policy: meddling abroad breeds resentment and pushes targets into the arms of rivals.
In Venezuela’s case, ties with Russia, China, and Iran predated the heaviest sanctions, but intensified precisely because U.S. actions—freezing assets, blocking dollar-based trade, and imposing oil embargoes—left Caracas with few alternatives.
Mises, in Human Action, emphasized that human behavior follows incentives: when legitimate markets are closed, actors pivot to whatever remains open.
Sanctions do not isolate a regime; they force it to seek sponsors who ignore Western rules, accelerating alliances that might otherwise remain transactional and limited.
Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, warned of the “fatal conceit” of central planners who believe they can orchestrate global outcomes.
Washington assumes it can squeeze Venezuela without pushing it toward multipolarity, but reality defies such control. The result? A self-fulfilling prophecy where pressure strengthens the very bloc it aims to weaken.
Were These Alliances Inevitable, or Manufactured?
Interventionists claim Venezuela’s pivot was ideological and premeditated—Chávez and Maduro were always aligned with anti-American powers, using oil wealth to fund adversaries regardless of U.S. actions. Thus, non-intervention would have allowed unchecked growth of a hostile proxy on America’s doorstep.
The non-interventionist response: alliances of convenience harden into necessity only under duress.
Mises would argue that states, like individuals, respond to scarcity.
Venezuela sold oil to China and Russia early on because they offered favorable terms, not because of some grand anti-Western pact.
Heavy sanctions amplified this dependence, turning loose trade partners into lifeline providers.
Without embargoes, private markets (U.S. companies buying Venezuelan oil at competitive prices) would dilute any incentive to subsidize foreign powers.
Ron Paul echoes this: “Trade isn’t approval; it’s competition.”
Open exchange empowers domestic entrepreneurs and consumers, eroding a regime’s monopoly far more effectively than isolation.
Moreover, fears of Venezuela as a “launchpad” rely on speculation.
Its military is dilapidated, its economy crippled. Historical parallels—like Cuba during the Cold War—show that proximity alone does not equate to existential threat.
Hoppe, drawing on the non-aggression principle, would dismiss preemptive action as unjustified initiation of force.
The Moral Dilemma: Trading with “Evil” Regimes
Perhaps the sharpest objection: sanctioning a rogue state feels like refusing to fund a criminal.
If a leader like Chávez, Maduro or the current interim regime harms citizens—through hyperinflation, repression, or starvation—why legitimize them by trading?
Doesn’t commerce prop up the oppressor, akin to buying from a domestic cartel?
Bastiat’s “seen vs. unseen” illuminates the flaw here. The seen: trade flows to the regime’s coffers.
The unseen: sanctions devastate ordinary people first, entrenching the leader’s power as the sole distributor of scarce goods.
Punishing an entire nation for its government’s sins is collectivist logic, treating millions as complicit hostages.
Mises rejected this: individuals, not states, are the moral units.
Free trade bypasses central control, enriching private actors and fostering black markets of liberty (information, goods, ideas) that undermine authoritarianism.
No government, no military industrial complex has ever undermined authoritarianism, they sell good intention to perpetuate their power through war.
Hayek added that boycotts distort knowledge: planners cannot distinguish “regime funds” from civilian livelihoods without harming innocents.
Sanctions starve the population, breeding desperation that rallies support around the dictator (“Look what America does to us”).
Ron Paul: “We claim to fight for freedom, but collective punishment is the opposite.”
Targeted measures: freezing personal assets of leaders and Interpol pursuits avoid this moral pitfall, focusing force on aggressors without collateral plunder.
Humanitarian Intervention: Saving Populations or Masking Ulterior Motives?
A frequent justification for U.S. actions against Venezuela including sanctions, recognition of and action against opposition figures including other adversarial nations, and threats of further pressure is framed as humanitarian: the regime has inflicted mass suffering through economic collapse, shortages, and repression, driving millions to flee.
Intervention, proponents argue, is necessary to “save” or “liberate” the population from tyranny, much like removing a brutal dictator to end widespread harm.
Such claims are selective and often pretextual.
States never act from pure altruism; interventions align with strategic interests of the most powerful: resources, geopolitics, or monetary/industrial dominance while genuine atrocities without those stakes are ignored.
Consider the patterns: In Rwanda (1994), nearly a million were slaughtered in genocide while the world, including the U.S., stood by: no oil, no pipelines, no threat to dollar hegemony.
Yemen’s crisis, with U.S.-backed blockades contributing to famine and millions at risk of starvation, draws minimal calls for direct intervention.
China’s treatment of Uyghurs prompts sanctions and rhetoric but no military action.
Yet when a country like Venezuela defies petrodollar norms and sits on vast oil reserves, “human rights” suddenly demand urgent response.
Mises observed that governments intervene when it serves power elites, not abstract morality. Humanitarian rhetoric masks self-interest.
Hayek warned that invoking the “greater good” to justify force abroad sets a precedent for its use at home: once coercion is accepted for “saving” foreigners, it erodes liberty everywhere.
Ron Paul extends this: true compassion doesn’t come from bombs or blockades that worsen suffering; it comes from voluntary aid.
Even in extreme cases: genocide or mass starvation, these thinkers reject broad intervention.
Military action or comprehensive sanctions do not liberate; they perpetuate the global war machine, escalate chaos, kill innocents, and create power vacuums (as in Libya or Iraq).
Some might point to Hong Kong, Singapore or Viet-Nam. These countries grew from free markets and voluntary exchange, not imposition or force.
Alternatives exist: private charities delivering aid without strings, open borders for refugees, information flows to empower dissent, or targeted support for victims to resist internally: all non-coercive and precise.
In Venezuela, sanctions framed as “pressure for democracy” have primarily harmed civilians, deepening the crisis they claim to alleviate.
The regime endures, enriched by black markets and rival backers, while ordinary Venezuelans suffer most.
Non-intervention refuses the false choice of “do nothing or invade”, it chooses freedom: let people trade, migrate, and rebuild without external coercion manufacturing more misery.
War isn’t a tool. It’s a magnet. It pulls in contractors, mercenaries, arms dealers who never bleed, they just bill.
The only justified fight is the one the victims themselves start.
When the people rise, that’s not chaos. That’s correction.
We don’t help them by dropping hell from the sky, the military industrial complex has never profited from peace.
We help by getting the hell out of the way. Not perpetuating an eye for an eye, which is hell on earth.
You wanna help? Send food. Send bitcoin. Send truth.
If food can’t get there, that’s a sign you’re already in someone else’s battlefield.
Now you’re not delivering aid, you’re starting a convoy war.
And the second you roll in with guns “just to protect bread,” you’re not humanitarian.
You’re an occupying force with sandwiches.
People will shoot the convoy.
They’ll blame the food. Then they’ll blame the donors.
And next, aid becomes a flashpoint instead of a lifeline.
The rule is simple: if you can’t send rice without a rifle escort, don’t send anything.
Let the regime answer for empty tables. Pressure builds fastest when the stomach growls and no one to blame but the guy on TV.
“No, do not let kids starve." Is compelling, it's gut wrenching.
But the moment someone shows up armed, you’re no longer the savior.
You’re just another gang, a foreign army, it is war.
People stop trusting when the bullets start flying.
Helping with force? That just buys the corrupt another week of justification, adds to divisive propaganda which fuels war and garners support.
Let the people choose the revolution. Not rent it from Raytheon.
“we’re just giving them tools” or “one sniper shot and it’s over.” sounds noble.
But who decides who’s the “good guys”? The same CIA that armed bin Laden?
The weapons of mass destruction lies to justify 1 million Iraqi civilian deaths?
Or the toll on our own people and soldiers fighting endless unethical wars based on false pretense?
All costs of living always rising. Massive tax rates and soaring debt.
We have crumbling infrastructure, all markets are walled: terrible food, unaffordable real estate, terrible healthcare—everything. No competition possible.
We get endless inflation as they print money without end.
The world's strongest military at war endlessly, for what, for who?
And what happens the second those guns turn on us, or on each other?
We, through righteous good intention, become (are) the seed sowers for the world’s arms dealers.
Every "revolution" not carried and chosen by the people becomes sponsored by Lockheed and any other interest that stands to profit, often massively, and they are incentivized to do what it must to profit indefinitely.
The minute you pick a side with bullets, you own the fallout.
And the fallout is never “one shot", it’s refugee camps, civil war, drug lords with M-16s, and us paying the tab, while industries and the most powerful continue to prosper.
“Swift removal” and "precision strikes" sounds surgical. But bombs don’t come with surgical gloves, they drop on apartments, schools, hospitals.
And every civilian death? One more recruit for whoever’s left standing.
Bastiat: what you see is the tyrant toppled. What you don’t see is the vacuum, the new strongman.
Addressing Leader Corruption and Adversarial Strengthening: Why Intervention Fails
A common rebuttal persists: even if sanctions harm civilians, they are justified because leaders like Chávez and Maduro have hijacked national oil wealth, turning state resources into personal fortunes while funneling profits to adversarial powers (Russia, China, Iran) that could arm against or wage war on the U.S.
Allowing unchecked trade, critics argue, directly funds corruption and global threats, perpetuating evil indefinitely.
Intervention, though imperfect, offers a “realistic” path to disrupt this cycle and force change.
This view underestimates how intervention sustains the very problems it targets.
Mises, in his analysis of incentives, would note that nationalized industries inherently breed corruption: when a regime monopolizes resources, leaders inevitably siphon profits.
Including the U.S., power always corrupted. Incumbents and those closest to power always benefit, not a free market. And the general public is sold a narrative to justify, obscure and distort that reality.
Sanctions do not break monopoly of any group or government, they reinforce it by restricting legal trade, driving oil sales into opaque black markets where discounts benefit smugglers and rivals, not the people.
The regime pockets more relative power (controlling scarce imports) while blaming shortages on “imperialist aggression,” delaying internal accountability.
Ron Paul highlights the blowback: by framing the U.S. as the aggressor, interventions gift dictators a unifying enemy, strengthening their grip and justifying alliances with anti-Western powers.
Without sanctions, open markets would compete directly: private firms buying oil at fair prices, paying local workers, and eroding the state’s stranglehold.
Corruption thrives in closed systems; free exchange exposes and dilutes it.
Hayek’s knowledge problem applies here too: no foreign planner can surgically separate “regime profits” from national economy without collateral damage.
Attempts to “force privatization” through pressure or regime change is historically always used to install compliant puppets, not genuine markets, repeating the cycle of centralized control under new management through a dishonest image of change sold to the public.
The “idealism” charge ignores history’s lesson: regimes like Venezuela’s persist not despite intervention, but in part because of it.
External pressure provides endless excuses for failure (“It’s the blockade’s fault”), postponing the day when citizens attribute suffering solely to domestic tyranny.
Lift interventions, and the regime drowns in its incompetence, no foreign villain to rally against.
Internal revolt or reform becomes inevitable, as seen in quieter collapses (Soviet Union) versus intervention-fueled chaos (Iraq, Libya).
Non-intervention is not passive tolerance of evil—it’s strategic refusal to subsidize it.
True realism recognizes that propping threats through blowback or funding them via black-market premiums weakens America more than any hypothetical war chest.
Strength lies in solvent markets, secure borders, and leading by liberty’s example, not endless entanglement that manufactures enemies while eroding freedom at home.
The Principled Alternative: Non-Intervention as Strength
Another question arises: how do you give consequence to a drug dealer in Detroit, but then buy oil from a drug lord dictator in Caracas?
The answer Mises gives: You don’t. Because a nation isn’t a criminal.
It’s a contract between millions of people who didn’t all sign up for Chavez’s Marxism.
So when you sanction, you’re not cutting off the cartel boss, you’re cutting off the mechanic, the nurse, the kid who just wants rice, shielding the corrupt leaders from the full accountability they deserve.
You’re punishing the hostages to hurt the kidnapper.
Bastiat: “Society is exchange. You cut exchange, you create violence.”
And Hayek: “You can’t boycott a whole people without making them hate you more than the one you’re trying to punish.”
It’s not pacifism. It’s precision.
If Chavez is a criminal, treat him like a warlord. Freeze his personal accounts.
Let Interpol hunt him. But don’t bomb the village to kill the bandit.
Non-interventionism is not isolationism or moral indifference. It is the extension of the non-aggression principle to foreign policy: no initiation of force, including economic warfare against civilians.
Trade, diplomacy, and example, not bombs or blockades, are the tools for promoting peace, wellness and liberty.
In Venezuela’s story, sanctions did not weaken the regime; they fortified its narrative of victimhood and deepened ties with U.S. rivals.
Sanctions directly harm the people, they exacerbate desperation and entrench the criminals.
The intent is to harm/weaken the dictator but it always harms the people, and the dictators don't care, they become more ruthless, more entrenched with other unethical powers foreign and domestic while such agreements and examples only fuel growing conviction against those imposing the sanctions.
Ending intervention dissolves the glue: without a common enemy, opportunistic alliances fray. Markets reward productivity, not plunder.
As Bastiat noted, society thrives on voluntary exchange. When states monopolize it, chaos follows.
True defense of American interests and human dignity is in leading by example: free markets at home, open hands to those abroad. Not empire’s iron fist.
Peace through freedom is not just the ethical choice, it is the only choice compatible with liberty, reason, and reality.
View quoted note →
