Many try to measure foreign policy by its stated humanitarian aims, seeing the variables of intervention as the best means for securing the livelihoods of particular subaltern populations. However such a view makes a massive assumption, that being the capability of states/militaries to aggregate the levels of on-the-ground social and cultural knowledge. This knowledge problem (generally identified with economic knowledge by Hayek) is not simply overcome by abstract reasoning that is related to things such as human rights or democracy. It can only be overcome by either a huge institutional and demographic shift amongst the effected populations (genocide, displacement, imposed borders, etc.) or by the integration of local populaces into mutualistic mechanisms of governance. Continue reading →

Modern foreign policy discourses, particularly those found in the US, revolve around what I call a form of schizophrenia, whereby decisions are made reactively in relation to perceived and existing circumstances. Long term decision making and the cultivation of diplomatic relations are shunned in favour of a militaristic stance which favours aggressive posturing and a belief in strength via dominance.

Recent accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party show some of the stupidity of the left when it comes to legitimately criticising Israel and its policies. Rather than showing that Israel, which has widespread support from the United States and evangelical Christians, and has been condemned and criticised by ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups and those who live in Israel respectively, is a militaristic state that, more than simply supporting its own ethnocentrism, actively expands beyond established borders and has regularly flouted both international law in Gaza and offers of peace by Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Israeli governments have rejected the right to return of Palestinian refugees, refuse to recognise the realities of the Nakba, and continue to steal land from families who have lived in Palestine for decades and centuries. Continue reading →

The short answer is no. Western intervention cannot work, as the fundamental knowledge of the geopolitical situation is completely lacking among the military and political elites of America, Britain, France and other countries. And these talks of a grand, international coalition are a fantasy. Russia don’t really want ground troops there, as they’ve got Assad’s and Iran’s troops. India and China have no real interest. And the Middle Eastern countries outside of Iran are too scared to become involved. Continue reading →

This was written back in 2012 during the Tuareg rebellion. I believe some of the predictions have been vindicated. The French intervention hasn’t quelled Islamist sentiments but simply radicalised them further and allowed them to move into other areas of North Africa. The MNLA’s and Tuareg peoples have also been repressed, with their wishes of autonomy being outright ignored. This is the effect of Western imperialism, allowing tensions to fester until violence is seen as the only path: Continue reading →

While List did believe in free trade as an end in it itself, he saw the means to that differently than many of the contemporary classical-liberal accounts of free trade and its development, such as those of Ricardo or Smith. Continue reading →

The rise of the modern American empire would have been no surprise to Enoch Powell. Indeed even in the 40s and 50s he saw the effects of America’s imperial, expansionist foreign policy and believed that Britain should have no part in such folly. Continue reading →

The idea of the global trade system being unequal is in my opinion the wrong view to take. The global system of trade is based upon liberalised free trade where nations and businesses can exchange goods without the issues of tariffs, quotas or heavy regulation. However the issue is that certain blocs of nations or individual nations have set up quotas which favour certain nations or regions against others, thus skewing a true free trade system and creating economic inequality. Continue reading →

With the advent of ISIS, a powerful Islamist group that has taken swathes of Iraq in a matter of months, there has been a huge call to again intervene so as stop ISIS creating a new caliphate and massacring the local non-Muslim populace[1][2]. However, these calls fundamentally ignore the history of what our involvement in Iraq has already caused. By intervening again, we will simply provide more propaganda for ISIS, thus creating more anti-American sentiment among the Sunni populace that resides in ISIS territory. Continue reading →