“Justin was a loyal friend and brave man who bore his suffering with dignity and was indispensable to the cause of keeping our country out of these damnable wars,” Pat Buchanan wrote in 2019 at the news of Justin Raimondo’s passing. Raimondo was a veteran of the old paleoconservative-paleolibertarian John Randolph Club—the brain trust behind the Buchanan ’92 and ’96 campaigns. He also helped to found the Libertarian Party’s Radical Caucus and was a co-founder of David Frum’s least favorite website, Antiwar.com.
Raimondo authored two books—a biography of Murray Rothbard and his most well-known work: Reclaiming the American Right. Featuring a foreword by Buchanan, Raimondo takes to task the neoconservatives and fusionists for shelving what he viewed as a genuine anti-globalist, non-interventionist Right. Raimondo worked and wrote alongside titans like Rothbard, Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, Bill Kauffman, Sam Francis, arguing for a return to non-interventionist libertarian realism. While one can debate the merits of his argument, one must contend with the man who came to embody anti-war sentiment in the MAGA Right.
Raimondo spent much of his time polemicizing on the latest intervention abroad, but, in 2011, he wrote two articles “Why Governments Make War” and “Looking at the Big Picture” wherein he articulates his theory of libertarian realism. He juxtaposes his theory with traditional realism, that emphasizes the supposed interests of broad states, liberalism, which promises perpetual peace in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, and Marxism, which sees all conflicts as products of the capitalist class structure.
Libertarian realism looks to domestic political pressures and influences to inform it on the reason why a state’s foreign policy looks the way it does. If Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan characterized his public choice theory as “politics without romance,” then Raimondo’s realism is international relations without romance.
Raimondo’s theory is a subjectivist one, not that he denies reality or an ability to observe reality, but in that he denies objective “outside forces” causing the movement of states. States are made up of individuals, personnel, politicians, and lobbying groups. He employs methodological individualism, in the style of the Austrian and public choice economists to understand the actions of foreign policy.
In this, Raimondo pushes back against the traditional realist notion of national interest. States do not carry cohesive singular interests. Individuals have interests and those individuals lie behind the choices made in international relations. States do not have a compelling force that forces them to position themselves to balance against other powers as they grow, nor are there compelling forces that will bring about perpetual peace as the liberals claim.
Rather, what compels foreign policy is the desire of politicians and bureaucrats to maintain power. All politicians are motivated in some way by their desire to stay in power. This is why logrolling and pork barrel legislation dominate legislative politics as opposed to short single-issue legislation. A politician who wishes to be reelected stands to gain by including spending in his districts with larger bills that are more likely to be passed with the help of his colleagues.
Similarly, in the realm of foreign policy—politicians and bureaucrats are motivated to maintain power. Foreign policy is an area not understood or highly prioritized by the public and thus is an area susceptible to the interests of interest groups and bureaucrats. The costs of a generally disinterested public—one who generally wants their sons and fathers to return home abroad and to stop playing world police—punishing foreign policy deviance by politicians is high.
An organized interest group, such as an ethnic lobby, a military contractor, or an internal bureaucracy, is significantly more advantaged to influence foreign policy towards their interests. Those interests may be financial, but they may be moral or ideological as the neoconservatives of the late 1970s and 1980s demonstrated. Their crusade was one steeped in their Trotskyite or Wilsonian past and their desire for a crusade against the Soviet Union. Their ability to position themselves in power and think tanks of influence allowed them to steer the United States into war with Iraq, twice.
These interests lie at the root of foreign policy amongst state: interested actors push states towards war primarily motivated by staying in power. Why did Nancy Pelosi—then Speaker of the House—make a risky and controversial trip to Taiwan in 2022? In part, to appeal to a large Taiwanese population in her district even if it carried risks of escalation with China. Similarly, much of American policy towards Cuba was motivated primarily by Cuban exiles in the state of Florida which until recently was a battleground electoral state.
American policy toward Venezuela is not truly motivated by a desire to crack down on fentanyl, which primarily comes to the United States through Mexico, or cocaine, which primarily is en route from Columbia. Rather we can look to the motivation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has a long history of opposition to Maduro. Further, one can look to Cuban exiles who cite the subsidizing of the Cuban government by Maduro and Chavez as propping up the authoritarian regime.
When policymakers argue that a conflict is in the interest of the American people, a libertarian realist must ask: Whose interest? Does the average American stand to gain through a new refugee crisis making its way towards the Southern border? Will the average Venezuelan benefit any more from a cartel state rather than a military communist one? A refugee crisis with further militarized cartels in their midst is likely to make the life of everyday Americans worse off. No one wonders if this new crusade against cartels will soon spawn terror attacks with our borders.
In a world without Arthur Schlesinger’s imperial presidency, these questions would be debated and considered. But rather, we are left to analyze the question of who stands to gain from each intervention we see before us. It is not a game of “name that conspiracy” where one assigns a name to some ambiguous conspiratorial power. Rather it is, as Raimondo writes, “necessary to cite specifics, i.e. evidence establishing causal connections between specific individuals, certain policy outcomes, and benefits accrued.”
Raimondo saw the role of a libertarian realist as being about identifying the “who’s who” of foreign policy: Who stands to gain and how do the people stand to lose.
America in the 1920s and 30s was skeptical of the claims of Franklin Roosevelt regarding the necessity of intervention in part because of the identification of who had benefited from the first Great War: the weapons manufacturers like Du Pont, J.P. Morgan & Co., and the British government. Many families never saw their loved ones come home, they saw their currencies debased, their economies conscripted, and to no gain to themselves. It is no wonder they would fill the ranks of the America First Committee.
A rigorous investigation into who stands to benefit from war and intervention must be launched. Raimondo’s theory is one to be contended with and cannot be dismissed easily. His theory presents a causal-realist analysis of international relations, one that does not just apply to the United States. It is a generalist theory that helps us to understand international affairs throughout the world. Every state is steered by its politicians who above all desire power. It is up to us to use this set of tools, this lens, to critically analyze foreign policy as presented to us and see if it really will benefit the average American.
