Libertarian Theory of War. 3. Application of the Theory of War.
3.2.1. Group vs. Individual
A group attacking an individual is a highly desirable scenario for the attackers, and therefore a very popular one in private warfare. It remains to be determined how a libertarian should act when they are the defending individual, and how to act when they are part of an attacking group.
3.2.1.1. If you are being attacked
If the attack is sudden, you are likely already dead or incapacitated. If for some reason you have retained the ability to act, you are most likely fleeing for your life.
In such an unequal situation, it is difficult to seriously discuss restrictions that might be imposed on you by the need to observe libertarian principles. Even if, in attempting to avoid death, you cause some collateral damage to someone, you have no particular reason to hesitate: bystanders will usually place the responsibility for such accidents on the pursuers. Perhaps your responsibility can only be discussed if, while retreating, you use powerful weapons of indiscriminate effect in the presence of a large crowd of uninvolved people. Or if you decide to take a hostage who is not among the attackers. If it is possible to avoid such unsightly moves, it is, of course, better to avoid them. Again, let us not forget the state, whose representatives usually follow much stricter criteria of proportionality in self-defense. However, gathering evidence that you were the victim of the attack in this war, and that you acted with sufficient care, will be useful in any case, although compared to survival, this is a low-priority task.
Once you manage to escape immediate danger, you have several options for action. You can look for those who will stand up for you and, with their help, achieve peace with the attackers. You can also try to find allies who will help you defeat the attackers. If for some reason you are unable to find a support group, you are left either to try to disappear completely and thereby end the war by the fact of the opponent’s absence, or to proceed to scenario 3.1.2.1, that is, to prepare a surprise attack on the enemy group. Which option to prefer is a matter of tactics; it is entirely determined by the context, and from the point of view of libertarian ideology, there are no a priori preferences in this regard.
3.2.1.2. If you are the attacker
Now let us consider the scenario where your group attacks a certain individual. This is quite reasonable behavior on your part. First, you have ensured numerical superiority. Second, the very fact that a libertarian attacks not alone, but with the voluntary support of allies, already indicates that their subjective notions of justice are shared by others. However, from the perspective of state laws, you can easily be labeled as an organized crime group, and this must be kept in mind when planning the operation, if such planning took place at all (after all, you might have attacked completely spontaneously).
However, a group attacking a lone individual imposes serious obligations. You will certainly be questioned if you kill them instead of limiting yourself to incapacitating them for a later trial. You will certainly be questioned if you are so careless that bystanders are harmed during your attack. Finally, you will hardly be understood if, before the attack, you do not make the appropriate ritual threats, giving the opponent the opportunity to surrender to your mercy without a fight.
In this regard, it would be reasonable to afford the luxury of designating a group member to record the events. This will allow you to justify the legality of your actions (or serve as evidence against you if these actions are deemed unlawful). Additionally, recording the actions of group members will be useful during the after-action review. After all, spontaneous military actions to restore justice are good, but if full combat cohesion is achieved as a result, that is even better.
3.2.2. Group vs. Group
War between two groups with clearly defined membership is exactly what war was before the emergence of the nation-state. This is the type of war that tactical manuals are traditionally written about. This is the type of war implied as a moral benchmark in various interstate humanitarian conventions. The key feature of such a war, according to the conventions, is that there are clearly defined categories of combatants and non-combatants. The former participate in the war, the latter are obliged to refrain from participating, and because of this, they have the right to have the warring parties refrain from causing them harm. For wars between states, such a division has long been obsolete, but for inter-group wars, it retains its meaning.
War between group and group is a very complex undertaking, which it is pointless to view as a conflict between some aggressor and some victim. As a rule, war is led by a rather convoluted conflict in which, with sufficient desire, a casus belli can be found for each side, and if the conflict lasts long enough, investigations into who started first lose all practical meaning.
Support for one or another warring group or its individual participants by third parties can be determined by a wide variety of circumstances. And it is by no means a matter of “such-and-such court issued a verdict that such-and-such side is guilty of the war.” Rather, this support will be conditioned by the helper’s personal attitude toward the subject of the conflict, the narratives of the warring sides, specific episodes of military action, information about which they also received from interested parties… In essence, obtaining external support is simply a diplomatic success for one or another warring side. Although, of course, each such support will be interpreted by that side as confirmation that justice is on its side.
The determination to continue the war on the part of its participants and the determination to continue support on the part of external subjects is largely fueled by the spirits involved in this war.
What restrictions do libertarians involved in a group-on-group war have? First of all, they are very dependent on their libertarian spirits, the strongest of which is the spirit of freedom. This means that for a libertarian, the voluntariness of participation in the war is critical. From this position, he evaluates both his own participation and the possibility of supporting one or another warring side. Any coercion to war immediately marks the warring group for him as unpleasant types whom it is undesirable to support, and all the more reason to avoid joining such a group. Although, of course, there are options in the spirit of “guys, don’t embarrass yourselves, let the recruit go, I will go as a volunteer instead of him.”
To a lesser but still significant extent, a libertarian pays attention to the collateral damage to uninvolved parties that the warring group permits. More precisely, to the efforts it makes to prevent such damage, or at least to minimize it, or at least to compensate for it.
Next in importance are pragmatic factors: what goals the group declares and how it attempts to achieve them. Rationality in this matter, of course, influences the libertarian’s assessment in a positive direction.
Finally, the most morally insignificant factor for a libertarian is which side in the inter-group conflict the states, in whose jurisdiction the inter-group military actions are taking place, are on. In this case, states are merely the surrounding environment. This environment is very aggressive. Its influence can be very great. The conditions of this environment can be used in military actions. One must adapt to it to avoid unnecessary damage, which may also jeopardize the success of the war. But changing one’s position in a conflict because of the state’s position is, of course, a faux pas for a libertarian.
3.2.3. Group vs. State
How does a state differ from a group in the context of war? First of all, by the impersonal nature of the state. In it, not people, but positions fight. Where a person has personal motivation, a civil servant has official duty. After leaving a position that implies participation in war, a civil servant usually just stops fighting and sincerely does not understand what claims there could be against them.
How does a state’s war with a group of persons differ from a war between states? The state denies the group subjecthood and, accordingly, does not officially treat what is happening as a war. It is simply terrorism, if referring to the actions of the group, and an anti-terrorist operation, if referring to the actions of the state. The possibility of a peace treaty is not implied.
So, you are fighting the state as part of a group. Generally speaking, at this moment you are strictly following your moral duty as a libertarian, fighting the state for your freedom. Even if you limit your goals to seizing control over certain resources usurped by the state, or if you are simply driven by hatred for the current political regime, at the level of basic concepts everything boils down to a struggle for freedom and to the fact that the state as such has no right to exist.
As stated earlier, other libertarians may quite reasonably criticize you for the untimeliness of the attack, for poor preparation, or for an imprecise manner of conducting combat operations, but not for the very fact of armed struggle against an institutional aggressor.
Let us not consider the exotic scenario of “a private military company committing external aggression against a state bordering its base.” It is far more likely that your group consists primarily of subjects of this state. This means that some part of the state’s inhabitants are not your enemies. That is, you need to be able to clearly identify who exactly will be your targets, and who will be allies, potential allies, or simply non-combatants, among whose crowd you can conveniently blend in to avoid an enemy attack. In other words, you need to identify a group of your enemies within the state, and thereafter you will have a normal war of group vs. group. The smaller the group you identify, the less blood will be shed to defeat it.
Since positions act instead of people in the state, the criterion for identifying the enemy group will, of course, be the posts held by people. The level of responsibility corresponding to a given position is convenient for determining the priority of strikes. If a position does not imply direct participation in military actions, for example, in the case of rank-and-file employees of propaganda and education agencies, then your strikes should be demotivating, but non-lethal if possible.
Voluntary resignation from a position can be interpreted as surrendering into captivity under a word of honor not to further participate in the war. If the word of honor is kept, this is a strong reason to stop pursuit. Activity within the framework of official duties often makes sense to interpret as an honest war, granting the right to an absence of pursuit after resignation. Excessive official zeal should be interpreted as an aggravating factor, meaning that even leaving the position will not guarantee an absence of retribution, and additional cooperation will be required from the one who surrendered. The earlier the resignation from the position occurred, the milder the sanctions should be assumed. All these criteria should be announced widely enough to create incentives for the hostile group both to reduce its numbers and to diminish its morale.
The fact that you fight for freedom, while a peaceful ordinary citizen does not fight, does not make them your enemy or even someone morally deficient. Values are individual, and the ordinary citizen has their own reasons. Perhaps tomorrow they themselves will stand under the banner of war, but not yours, but will choose their own group because its spirits will present them with a stronger moral demand.
An ideologically driven group has a huge advantage over the group of state functionaries it has identified as the enemy—higher cohesion. The group is united by ideological and spiritual closeness, while state propaganda appeals to all-state spirits. It is useless to inspire a bureaucrat with calls for national unity, since the group opposing them is part of that same nation. In essence, bureaucrats and military personnel are united only by the spirits of stability and order. That is why in a war against them it is important to undermine this spiritual unity of theirs. For this, in your propaganda, you need to demonstrate with facts in hand that this entire state gang are thieves and bloodsuckers who ruthlessly bite each other and care only about their own pockets.
It is important here, of course, to immediately curtail the spirits of etatism, suppressing ideas that one should simply put good officials in place of bad ones and everything will be fine. One will have to follow the difficult path of abolishing positions of power as such, first in rhetoric, and later, if the war goes well, in practice. It should be remembered that power is usually used as a crutch that replaces voluntary coordination; therefore, power must be phased out while simultaneously implementing tools for such coordination.
How to implement the tools of a stateless society is not the subject of this section; however, the third part of my book “Ancap” is devoted to this.