There are themes in the West that are difficult to question without running the risk of receiving sharp criticism. For the following themes, for example, there is a position considered “correct” by Western collective opinion: “Welfare State,” “climate policy,” “multicultural society,” or “covid-19 vaccination.” It is implied that the “acceptable” position to each one of these themes can and should be adopted without any prior critical analysis at the individual level.

African countries emerged as “independent” nation-states in a context of a debt-based fiat money system, the fiat dollar standard. Independent is in quotation marks because Africa’s countries’ independence is nominal. That is said with due respect and gratitude to all brave men and women who fought, bled, and died to end (direct) colonialism. Still, Africa remains under indirect colonization. One of the most crippling, and certainly the most shackling, forms of subjugation Africa is under is monetary colonialism.

In his valuable article “War and Humanitarian Intervention,” in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism (pp. 441–56), Fernando R. Tesón raises some interesting criticisms of Murray Rothbard’s views on war as part of a more general discussion of the topic, and I’d like to devote this week’s article to these. It has to be said, though, that a number of these criticisms are based on misreadings of Rothbard, which isn’t to say Tesón would like the true Rothbardian position better than the one to which he pays attention.