Classical Liberalism and

Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory

The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series seeks to publish the best work in this growing and increasingly important field of academic inquiry. Its scholarly monographs cover three types of work: (i) exploration of the intellectual impact of individual thinkers, from key disciplinary figures to neglected ones; (ii) examination of the origin, evolution, and contemporary relevance of specific schools or traditions of international thought; and (iii) analysis of the evolution of particular ideas and concepts in the field. Both classical (pre 1919) and modern (post 1919) thought are covered. Its books are written to be accessible to audiences in International Relations, International History, Political Theory, and Sociology.

Series Editor:Peter Wilson, London School of Economics and Political Science

Advisory Board:Jack Donnelly, University of DenverDavid Long, Carleton UniversityHidemi Suganami, Aberystwyth University

Also in the Series:Internationalism and Nationalism in European Political Thought by Carsten HolbraadThe International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism by Peter WilsonTocqueville, Lieber, and Bagehot: Liberalism Confronts the World by David ClintonHarold Laski: Problems of Democracy, the Sovereign State, and International Society by Peter LambThe War Over Perpetual Peace: An Exploration into the History of a Foundational International Relations Text by Eric S. EasleyLiberal Internationalism and the Decline of the State: The Thought of Richard Cobden, David Mitrany, and Kenichi Ohmae by Per HammarlundClassical and Modern Thought on International Relations: From Anarchy to Cosmopolis by Robert JacksonThe Hidden History of Realism: A Genealogy of Power Politics by Seán MolloyHugo Grotius in International Thought by Renée JefferyThe International Thought of Martin Wight by Ian HallHonor in Foreign Policy: A History and Discussion by Michael DonelanRealist Strategies of Republican Peace: Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent by Vibeke Schou TjalveClassical Liberalism and International Relations Theory: Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek by Edwin van de Haar

Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory

Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek

Edwin van de Haar

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

Copyright © Edwin van de Haar, 2009.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2009 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN®in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

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To Anita

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix

List of Abbreviations xi

1 Introduction 1

2 What Is Classical Liberalism? 17

3 David Hume and International Society 41

4 Adam Smith, War, and Commerce 57

5 Ludwig von Mises, Capitalism, and Peace 75

6 Friedrich Hayek, International Order, and Federalism 101

7 Liberalism and International Relations Theory 125

8 Conclusions and Ways Forward 151

Notes 159

Bibliography 199

Index 225

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Acknowledgments

It is with great pleasure that I thank the many people who have helped me during the research and writing of this book. Most gratitude goes to my wife Anita, for her constant, enthusiastic support and patience.

Therefore the book is dedicated to her. Until now our household has been an example of the seemingly unbridgeable divide between a theorist and a prac-titioner of international relations, but I still entertain the hope that some of the thoughts brought forward in this book will make their way into Dutch or EU foreign policy!

This work started out as my PhD thesis and it owes a lot to my supervi-sors. Professor Nico Roos and Dr. Frank van Dun were critical yet construc-tive in their comments, worked incredibly fast and both of them were always available for additional advice or assistance. Above all, they are very kind and genial men to spend time with!

Dr. Razeen Sally of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has been a strong and friendly support for all of my academic endeavors. His work on classical liberalism and international economic rela-tions provided an important source of intellectual inspiration.

Over the past years, I have been fortunate enough to enjoy the con-tinual support of the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, USA. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Nigel Ashford for his interest, enthusiasm, and criticism.

I am also obliged to the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, USA, in particular Dr. Mark Thornton for his advice and Pat Barnett, who did everything possible to make my research visit productive and stimulating.

The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been a source of financial support through the “Partners Study Fund” of the Spouses and Children Bureau. Thank you Marisa Witte, Monica Vermeulen, and Wilma de Haan!

x ● Acknowledgments

A large number of people have also helped me in numerous ways, for which I am grateful: Professors Albert Kersten, Paul Cliteur, and Andreas Kinneging at Leiden University; Professor Christopher Hill, my tutor at the LSE, now Director of the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University; Professor Nick Rengger at St. Andrews; Professor Robert Jackson at Boston University; Professor Bruce Caldwell at the University of North Carolina; Dr. Aad van Mourik, now at Maastricht Hotel Management School and Catholic University Leuven; Dr. Mark Stout, Dr. Erik Knippenberg and Professors Jaap Hage and Fred Grünfeld at Maastricht University; Elaine Hawley, Chris Nelson, my fellow Summer Graduate Research Fellows, Dr. Colin Dueck, Henrik Rasmussen, Magnus Nordenman, and other people in the IHS network; Mrs. Bettina Greaves, Professor Jeffrey Herbener, and the staff at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Janet Picken; the library staff at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Carol Leadenham and her col-leagues at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University; Farideh Koohi-Kamali and her colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan; Toby Wahl and Peter Wilson; the anonymous reviewer for the endorsement and the helpful comments; Ambassador Rosario Manalo, Director of the European Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University; Hans van den Broek, Christward Dieterman, my mother, and last but not least, our beloved son Timothy, for bringing so much joy and laughter in our lives.

Mrs. Bettina Greaves granted permission to use her unpublished inter-views with Mises’ wife and friends. Professor Jeffrey Herbener granted per-mission to use some of Mises’ correspondence that is part of the Ludwig von Mises Archive at Grove City College. Permission to quote from F.A. Hayek’s correspondence and papers was granted by the estate of F.A. Hayek. The British International Studies Association is the copyright holder of my article entitled “David Hume and International Political Theory: a Reappraisal,” published in the Review of International Studies, volume 34, number 2, April 2008, which is partially reprinted with permission in chapter 3. I thank them all.

Edwin van de HaarManila, April 2009

Abbreviations

Works of David HumeE EssaysEHU Enquiry concerning Human UnderstandingEPM Enquiry concerning the Principles of MoralsH The History of England (volume numbers in Roman numerals)L Letters of David Hume (by number)THN Treatise of Human Nature

Works of Adam SmithC CorrespondenceLJA Lectures on Jurisprudence (version A, 1762–1763)LJB Lectures on Jurisprudence (version B, 1766)TMS Theory of Moral SentimentsWN The Wealth of Nations

Works of Ludwig von MisesEF Economic Freedom and InterventionismHA Human ActionL LiberalismMMM Money, Method and the Market ProcessNSE Nation, State and EconomyOG Omnipotent GovernmentS Socialism

Works of Friedrich HayekCL The Constitution of LibertyIEO Individualism and Economic OrderLLL Law, Legislation and Liberty (volume numbers in Roman

numerals)RS The Road to SerfdomSW Socialism and War

xii ● Abbreviations

Other abbreviationsEEC European Economic CommunitiesEU European UnionGATT General Agreement on Tariffs and TradeILO International Labor OrganizationIMF International Monetary FundIPT International Political TheoryIR International RelationsLSE London School of Economics and Political ScienceMPS Mont Pelerin SocietyNATO North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationUN United NationsUS(A) United States (of America)WTO World Trade Organization

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

It is no exaggeration to claim that liberalism has been one of the most influential theories in the history of political ideas, not only in the con-text of domestic politics but also in the field of international relations.

Therefore, it is strange that international relations (IR)1 theorists generally provide a flawed, one-sided, or plainly erroneous picture of it. Liberal thinkers and their ideas are commonly misrepresented; it is common to invent all kinds of liberalisms, while parts of the liberal tradition are taken to be the whole lib-eral story. This book shows that not all liberals in international relations start from the same philosophical premises or share identical aims and solutions. Liberalism is not just about an optimistic view of human nature and a firm belief in the possibility of literally creating peace.2 This common portrayal of liberalism is incomplete and partly wrong as this book attempts to show. It argues for the drastic improvement of the use of liberalism in IR theory.

For almost three centuries, liberalism has been the political doctrine “[that] constituted the principal current of modern politics in Europe and the West.”3 It is an umbrella concept that covers many ideas,4 but following John Gray, it is possible to capture the whole as a political theory with four general characteristics:

l individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of any social collective,

l egalitarian, inasmuch as it confers on all men the same moral status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings,

l universalist, affirming the moral unity of the human species and according a secondary importance to specific historic associations and cultural forms, and

2 ● Classical Liberalism and IR Theory

l meliorist, in its affirmation of the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions and political arrangements.

All members of the liberal family share these characteristics, and this allows the grouping of such diverse thinkers as Locke, Kant, Hume, Smith, Mill, Spencer, Hayek, Rawls, and Nozick.5

Even a superficial inspection of the literature reveals that the dominant way of thinking about liberalism in IR only concerns a particular variant, social liberalism. The others are overlooked. Most importantly, there is hardly any classical liberalism in IR, even though it comprises some of the greatest liberal thinkers like Hume, Hayek, and many other influential phi-losophers and political economists. This is a rather peculiar oversight, since anyone with some exposure to their writings knows these contain many references to international affairs.

Part of the explanation must be that “international relations theorists hardly have studied the development of liberalism.”6 A lack of knowledge and understanding of classical liberalism is one of the results. It appears that academics overlook the fact that classical liberalism is a coherent political theory. If it is touched upon, it is often limited to a specific context. The most common example is in the field of international economics where Adam Smith figures prominently, but there is hardly any regard for his other ideas on international affairs. In IR there is not much acknowledg-ment of the fact that Smith had different views on international relations from those of later liberal writers including those who referred to him such as Richard Cobden. Outside international economics, “the classical liberal argument seems to stop at the national border.”7 This book aims to change this neglect, by introducing classical liberalism into IR theory, from its phil-osophical foundations upward to its ideas on international affairs. Quite a number of classical liberals have been of enormous importance in polit-ical theory, political economy, and more generally in the development of the (Western) world. This fact alone warrants an analysis of their views on international relations.

The classical liberal situation is unique, but is also an example of the strained relations between political theory and IR theory. Most scholars of international affairs hardly ever glance beyond the surface of the work of a few specific thinkers,8 while simultaneously most political theorists regard international affairs as a topic to be avoided. This is regrettable, since polit-ical theory and international relations theory are intimately related. Their aims are more or less the same: to understand and explain political phe-nomena. The integral study of both “domestic” and international aspects of political theory is needed for our understanding of politics in general.9

Introduction ● 3

Most of the old philosophers did not separate the national from the inter-national in their discussion of politics. It is mainly due to academic special-ization that these fields have developed in isolation over the past hundred years. This has resulted in a shortage of good overviews of the international thought of those old thinkers.10 By offering an overview of the ideas on international relations of four prominent classical liberals, this work helps to decrease this knowledge gap.

This book falls within the bounds of international political theory (IPT), “that aspect of the discourse of IR which addresses explicitly issues concerning norms, interpretation and the ontological foundations of the discipline.”11 IPT is concerned with moral philosophy in IR; it

seeks to comprehend the human condition and the values fundamental to it—such as order, freedom and justice—as well as the political arrange-ments and public policies necessary for their realization or augmenta-tion. International studies is on that view a broadly humanistic subject which involves the scholar in a philosophical, historical, jurisprudential or sociological approach: it is not and could never be a strictly scientific or narrowly technical subject.12

Out of necessity, this book is at the same time exploratory, analytical, and agenda-setting for future research. It attempts to offer a first but big step toward a better understanding and appreciation of classical liberalism and IR through answering the central questions—how classical liberals view international relations and how these views relate to IR theory in general and liberal IR theory in particular. The outcome of this pioneering research is important for different people. IR theorists will be surprised to learn that there is far more to liberalism than they had hitherto thought. The book challenges IR scholars (including the English School theorists), political the-orists, and historians of ideas who work with liberalism to reassess their ideas on the intellectual history of IR, the role of traditions within IR theory, and the relation between liberalism and the English School. People who think of themselves as classical liberals may be stimulated to review opinions they have taken for granted for ages.

The outline of the book is as follows: In chapter 2, classical liberalism is introduced and evidence provided to justify the characterization of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek as belonging to that tradition, while thinkers like Kant and John Stuart Mill should be excluded; the following four chapters excavate and explain the ideas on international affairs of each individual thinker and confront these ideas with several viewpoints in IR theory; in chapter 7, a synthesis of their ideas forms the basis for the introduction of a


classical liberal IR theory, which is then compared with other forms of lib-eralism in IR theory; chapter 8 contains the conclusions and suggestions for further research.

Four Classical Liberals

Before discussing the contents of the classical liberal tradition, the choice of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek as focal points of this study must be explained and elaborated. The main reason is that they were not only influential among their contemporaries, but they also rank among the most important representatives of the classical liberal tradition today. This shows in the volume of the secondary literature on them, the number of refer-ences made to their work, the number of lectures, institutes, and think tanks named after them, and the fact that their work has remained in print. Many thinkers in the (classical) liberal tradition have referred to Hume and Smith as their main sources of inspiration and from the 1920s onward, this applied to Mises and Hayek also.

Both Hume and Smith are among the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment in general13 and of classical liberalism in particular.14 This provides sufficient grounds for their inclusion here, but their inclusion is also important for another reason. Most IR theorists never get beyond a very limited number of thinkers in their discussion of the Enlightenment, most notably Kant and Rousseau. This leads them to associate this period almost exclusively with cosmopolitanism,15 or equate the Enlightenment with a Perpetual Peace Project.16 Increased knowledge of Scottish Enlightenment thought helps to counter these false impressions.17

Mises has been of crucial importance in the revival of the classical lib-eral tradition in the twentieth century, through his writings and his teach-ing, in both Austria and the United States. In Vienna, he was one of the major heirs and contributors to the Austrian School of Economics, a major strand of economic thinking within the classical liberal tradition. The Austrians defend what they call the subjectivist approach to economics, based on the value humans place on goods and activities in real life, as opposed to the neoclassical school with its mathematical approach and assumptions of rationality and maximization of utility.18 Vaughn contends that without Mises there would not have been a revival of Austrian eco-nomics at all,19 which also indicates his importance to classical liberalism. Mises taught many of the most important twentieth-century classical liberals, and so his influence was extensive in direct and indirect ways. His favorite student was Hayek, who became “the outstanding twentieth century representative of the classical liberal tradition,” with an immense

Introduction ● 5

influence on economics and politics.20 Therefore, if one wants to learn about classical liberal international relations, these four thinkers are of crucial importance.

It must be acknowledged that they, like most other classical liberal thinkers, would not primarily consider themselves as international relations scholars. Smith, Mises, and Hayek would most probably see themselves as (political) economists and Hume probably either as a philosopher or histo-rian. In most cases, references to international affairs are widely dispersed in their writings. But there is no reason to regard these ideas as “intellec-tual sidelines.” All four thinkers addressed international relations in most of their writings throughout their career, which clearly indicates an authorial intention. They wanted their readers to know about their views on world politics and these views were also rather consistent, as is made clear in this book. There is no good reason to ignore these ideas or to doubt their value, contrary to the opinion of some scholars.21 Rather the opposite is the case: detailed research into the international political views of these classical lib-erals may reveal valuable new or overlooked viewpoints. They have been hugely influential in many fields, and therefore it is reasonable to expect that they also had direct and indirect influence on their readers’ views on inter-national relations, which is another reason for closer scrutiny.

Any selection has its arbitrary side, and so a short explanation on the think-ers excluded from the analysis is required. Perhaps omitting a nineteenth- century classical liberal thinker seems most remarkable. Yet chronology is not of the greatest importance for an analysis like this, because not all centuries are equally important for the development of a set of ideas. While the ideas of the most important nineteenth-century thinkers with classical liberal cre-dentials are touched upon in the course of the book, they have not been of the same importance as to warrant a separate chapter. In addition, there is already good secondary literature available on their domestic and international polit-ical views.22 In addition, the development of the classical liberal ideas has been more extraordinary in the late eighteenth century and early to mid-twentieth century than in the time between.

More difficult to justify is the exclusion of Milton Friedman and James Buchanan, both thinkers of great importance to classical liberalism in the twentieth century. Yet both were more influenced by Hayek than the other way around. For example, Friedman acknowledged that he owed Hayek a big debt for influencing his social and political outlook,23 while Buchanan clearly pays tribute to him as the “rock upon which classical liberalism rested, in the last half of the twentieth century.”24 Given this, the two Americans are excluded, but a detailed study of their views on international relations is an important void to be filled in the future.


This study tries to capture the views on international relations of the four most influential classical liberals today. It does not claim that these writers also had the most original ideas on international relations among all classical liberals that could have been studied. Perhaps the writings of lesser-known classical liberal scholars, for example, outside the Anglo-Saxon world, con-tain interesting ideas on international affairs. However, their work is either no longer in print or not translated and therefore less influential.

Theoretical Framework: The English School

To fully appreciate the ideas on international relations of the four classical liberals, an appropriate theoretical framework for analysis is needed. Many IR theories focus on one particular element in their attempt to understand international affairs, which limits the possibilities for analysis because the chosen framework sets the parameters for the outcome. For example, a realist approach would focus on the realist elements in the thought of the classical liberal thinkers, while neglecting or downplaying other significant parts. To avoid this, a theory with a wider scope is needed. The English School in IR theory is a particularly attractive alternative. It offers an effective device for the analysis of the international thought of political thinkers, combining in one analysis the roles played in international affairs by the individual, their communities, and the larger system.

There is no need to provide a full overview of the English School.25 The emphasis here is on the analytical possibilities of its trademark use of three intellectual traditions to come to grips with international affairs, Realism, Grotianism, and Kantianism. Although criticized by some IR theorists, “the[se] categories . . . retain their relevance as explanatory tools and norma-tive benchmarks.”26 It is surprising that there are hardly any attempts to use them exactly in this way—as analytical devices to determine the dominant outlook in the international thought of political thinkers. Yet that is exactly how they are used in this book.

The tripartite classification was introduced by Martin Wight in his lec-tures at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in the 1950s and was most prominently further developed by Hedley Bull. Strictly speaking, Wight also introduced a fourth tradition named “inverted revolu-tionism.” It includes total pacifism, a position he held between the 1930s and the end of Second World War.27 Wight never intended the traditions to be absolute and completely accurate descriptions of reality. His main purpose was to enable a fruitful dialogue on international relations.28 There is no strict or clear-cut divide between the traditions, as there are many interme-diate or partly overlapping positions in the thought of individual thinkers.

Introduction ● 7

The traditions are broad, but distinct nevertheless. In theoretical discus-sions, they should be regarded as the looser versions of paradigms in nat-ural science.29 The English School traditions are not meant to be completely mutually exclusive. As Wight was at pains to point out, “they are not like three railroad tracks running parallel into infinity.”30 The major value of the three English School traditions as frameworks of reference lies in their ability to analyze the work of an author, especially several works written during a lifetime, by distinguishing between several, sometimes conflicting, elements. It is a useful tool to further our understanding of the international outlook of a particular author. Therefore, the three traditions are here used as yardsticks that enable the interpretation of the full views on international relations of the four classical liberals. They are also used to determine the originality of their ideas and to position classical liberalism within international relations theory. Where applicable, the elements of all three traditions in the writings of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek are examined, thus making visible the “internal dialogue” on international relations in their writings.

The approach taken in this book holds that it is valid to use these tradi-tions, both in the context of the English School and generally in political theory. Following Knutsen,31 a tradition is seen as “an inherited pattern of thought or a sustained intellectual connection through time along which scholars stipulate certain concepts, themes and texts as functionally similar.” According to Greenleaf, the relations between the thinkers within a tradi-tion are based on the existence of influence and connection between them, although not one author alone exhibits every characteristic found within it. A tradition is of a certain fluidity to allow change over time, yet retains its basic features and identity as the concept of tradition implies unity in diver-sity.32 Chapter 2 tries to show that classical liberalism is a tradition in this pure sense, characterized by a large degree of similarity in thought between the thinkers. They referred to and called upon each other and recognized their mutual intellectual debt; and the later thinkers expressed their intent to build upon the work of their predecessors. In the remainder of the book, the argument is taken further by making the case that the classical liberal tradition also provides additional evidence for the existence of one of the English School traditions, in the process countering claims about its alleged “inventedness.”

Critics contend that many “old” traditions are quite recent in origin and are therefore invented, because they are based on erroneous claims about a presumed pattern of historical transmission.33 The weak point of most crit-icism is that it is limited to exercises in metatheory. Generally, the claims about the nonhistorical nature of traditions are made without much evi-dence from the history of ideas. One looks in vain for attempts to identify


any alleged lack of tradition. Even the critics who turn to the history of ideas hardly ever look beyond the thought of the “flagship” thinkers of the three traditions, Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius.34 With the exception of Bartelson,35 they focus on elements of discontinuity through time. This way it remains unknown if, how, and to what degree other writers were influenced by the ideas contained in the three traditions.

Wight and Bull were unfortunate in naming the traditions. Wight introduced them as the three R’s: rationalism, revolutionism, and realism. However, especially the use of the term rationalism has been a source of great confusion. Bull preferred to speak of Kantianism, Hobbesianism, and Grotianism, but this led to numerous publications pointing out that Hobbes was hardly the ideal realist,36 Grotius no full Grotian,37 and Kant not really a Kantian.38 These kinds of arguments should not be brushed aside; they serve as a warning not to equate the traditions with particular thinkers. Yet the distinct outlooks of the traditions remain useful tools in IR theory. The more common distinction currently used in the field is between international system, international society, and world society.39 These terms are used in this book also. But because the labels Realist, Kantian, and Grotian are now part of the canon in IR theory, it would actually be more confusing to completely avoid them. Therefore, these terms are used as well, and this usage has also some obvious “shorthand” advantages. Now that the labels have been established, the content of the traditions as they are used in this book is introduced.

Realist or International System Tradition

Realism, in different variants, has been the most important tradition in international political theory. It serves as the benchmark for most other theories and approaches.40 Its basic features are relatively straightforward and are more or less identical in English School and other IR theories. Most realist thought is inspired by the writings of Thucydides, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz, as is shown in the work of the most important twentieth-century realists Carr, Morgenthau, Niebuhr, Kennan, Kissinger, and Waltz. For Wight, realism meant “the acceptance of the disagreeable aspects in life,” such as violence, sin, suffering, and conflict. It concentrates on the actual rather than the ideal and tends to be pessimistic about human nature.41 Butterfield, the most realist early English School author, argued:

one of the reasons why it is so difficult to secure Utopia in our time, or even anything very satisfactory in the way of the League of Nations, is the fact that no man has yet invented a form of political machinery which

Introduction ● 9

the ingenuity of the devil would not find a way of exploiting for evil ends. . . . It is essential not to have faith in human nature. Such faith is a recent heresy and a very disastrous one.42

The struggle for power, defined as man’s control over the minds and actions of other men, is central in realist theory. Power may not always be the ultimate aim of all statesmen. For example, some may regard freedom of a higher order, but their immediate aim must always be power. Without it, those other goals cannot be realized.43 Realists assert that the inter-national world is an anarchic system of states without a central ruler or authority. Considerations of power, national security, and survival are the dominant drivers for the behavior of state representatives in this situa-tion often equated with a Hobbesian state of nature. Power relations and perceptions of national interest determine the course of events in interna-tional politics. War, the deliberate, controlled, and purposeful use of vio-lence to attain political objectives,44 is an important and normal feature of all politics, in particular in the international realm.

Relations among states are not fundamentally limited or determined by international rules, namely, international law as the body of rules that binds states and other agents in world politics in their relations with one another,45 or international organizations. In the realist view, these exist only because they serve some short-term advantage and are configured according to the interests of the most powerful states. Ultimately, rules do not matter much, because the powerful states can always decide not to comply, in the certain knowledge that enforcement by the weaker states is only a remote possibility. Diplomatic relations and general engagement with a set of international rules are also expressions of power. There is no lasting room for morality in world politics. The main ordering mechanism in world politics is the bal-ance of power, which comprises states attempting to counter the dominance of other states by forming coalitions. These coalitions are always fragile and temporary, because states may try to tip the scale of power to their own advantage.46 Imperial ambitions or possessions are integral to this power struggle and are regarded as regular feature in world politics and not a phe-nomenon to have serious moral objections against.

The systemic constraints of the anarchic nature of international relations mean that state leaders are faced with a security dilemma: there is always the chance that another state or alliance of states will use military action against them. The survival of the state is never secured and must be at the center of their international action. This severely limits the room for maneuver.47 In realism, the state and its survival are the dominant factors in international relations; all other phenomena are subsidiary to this.


Kantian or World Society Tradition

In the English School, the opposite of realism is the Kantian or world society tradition. Wight used the category to group all thinkers with revolutionary traits: the combination of a cosmopolitan belief in the moral unity of the society of states and the missionary zeal to accomplish it. He made a distinc-tion between “military revolutionism” and “soft revolutionism.” Prominent examples of the first variant were the French Revolutionaries and the twen-tieth-century totalitarians such as the fascists, Nazis, Marxists, and com-munists. Wight claimed military revolutionist rulers present themselves either as the true representatives of the general will, or of a God. Violence will be used if needed to create “the brotherhood of mankind.” Had Wight lived in the beginning of the twenty-first century, no doubt he would have grouped Islamic terrorists among the military revolutionists. Soft revolu-tionism has its roots in the Enlightenment, especially in Kant’s writings, complemented by persons like Carnegie, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nehru. It advances peaceful ways to reach its ideal.48

As Hall49 notes, such a large and diverse group of theorists did not have the consistency of doctrine Wight imposes on them. Yet a general pattern of thought is recognizable and it appears frequently in international political writings. For the purposes of this book, it is important to note that liber-alism is often characterized as the main or even the dominant representative of soft revolutionism. Modern English School theory mainly analyzes soft revolutionism. Despite the noted topicality of military revolutionism, this example is followed here, also because any links with classical liberalism are unlikely to exist.

In sharp contrast to realism, the world society tradition starts from an optimistic and perfectionist view of human nature. Individuals are seen as able to improve their conditions, because their reason enables them to understand that their interests are best served in a situation of human har-mony and a world without conflicts. The Kantians also believe people are able to overcome or neutralize the bad influences of the human vices and therefore have the potential to achieve this better world. The ideal is the world as a single human republic, sometimes also referred to as world state, or world federation. As Wight stated, Kantians think politics should “pre-scribe human goals, the right of moral judgment and duty of action” and must ensure that national interests converge in the name of the permanent solidarity between individuals. This entails the rejection of both the balance of power and of war, which are seen to stabilize or establish an unjust status quo, sacrificing the interests and lives of individuals all over the world and harmfully dividing humans along arbitrary borders.50 States and their ruling

Introduction ● 11

elites are seen as the main sources of international evil and should therefore be replaced by alternative structures, allowing for the permanent expres-sion of common interests. Imperialism has no place in Kantian thought. International law may be helpful, but only when it does not serve to protect state interests. The general goal is to abolish the system of states and replace it with a cosmopolitan society or a community of mankind.51

Currently, the world society tradition is closely associated with concerns for transnational justice and the expansion of international law to include a broad array of human rights that tend to go beyond the classical human rights. International governmental and nongovernmental organizations work to limit the sovereign rights of states.52 The Kantian approach is one of change and of idealism; many opponents equate it with utopianism and other alleged forms of political wishful thinking.

Grotian or International Society Tradition

The Grotian tradition is most closely associated with the English School, especially in the work of Bull and Wight.53 Sometimes theorists do not even make a distinction between English School theory and the international society tradition. Such an interpretation is too limitative, because it over-looks the other two traditions and the fact that English School theorists have also worked on other topics such as humanitarian intervention or the history of international political organization.

Situated between realism and Kantianism, the Grotian tradition combines elements of both. The central Grotian idea is that states are the prime inter-national actors without a higher directive political power and that they form a society of sovereign equals. International society is anarchic in nature and war and the balance of power are important phenomena (commonly referred to as “institutions”) to keep international order. Grotians differ from the realist position in seeing a binding force of international law and morality. They believe international politics is more than just a power struggle and leaders have more concerns than just realpolitik.54 Besides protecting their own survival, states also want to preserve international society.55 In Bull’s definition, international society is

a group of states, conscious of common interests and common values, [who] form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the workings of common institutions. If states today form a society . . . this is because, recognising certain common interests and perhaps some common


values, they regard themselves bound by certain rules in their dealing with one another, such as that they should respect one another’s claims to independence, that they should honour agreements into which they enter, and that they should be subject to certain limitations in exercising force against one another. At the same time they co-operate in the workings of institutions such as the forms of procedures of international law, the machinery of diplomacy and general international organisation, and the customs and conventions of war.56

With the Kantians, the Grotians share some of the ideas of human society, most prominently recognition of the role of values and morality in interna-tional relations. However, they oppose attempts to create a cosmopolitan state. They sometimes regard war as positive and value the balance of power, not least because it can prevent conflicts from turning violent.57

An outstanding feature of the Grotians is the emphasis on the impor-tance of international law. While the direct influence of Grotius has been disputed, not least because of the different ways Wight and Bull interpreted his ideas,58 there are numerous elements in Grotius and other natural law theorists that are relevant to the international society tradition. Grotius was one of the first to systematically describe international law, equating the Roman ius gentium, the collection of rules and customs common to the tribes and nations of the Roman Empire and the ius naturale, a set of ethical rules of Christian divine origin.59 He regarded individuals as ultimate units of all law, denying that states were the sole actors in world politics. There was a universal moral order comprising all people. Like individuals, states should be bound by norms and customs embodied in the law of nations, which is the application of natural law to international relations.60 International law is binding, following the legal and ethical norm pacta sunt servanda.61 In the eighteenth century, these laws of nations applied to issues such as the just causes of war, the conduct in war, treatment of prisoners, acquisition of sovereignty and booty through conquest, neutrality, intervention, mari-time law, and treaties.62 While the law of nations was much more restricted in volume and range than modern international law,63 there is continuity in the idea itself: the promotion of international order through rules and agreements which warrants comparison over time. Both the old and new manifestations are referred to as international law throughout this study.

Following the joint natural law basis there is a strong relation between the just war tradition and the Grotian tradition.64 War is deemed inevitable, but only certain wars are justified. A just war is fought for a just cause, such as the enforcement of the rights of self-defense, the recovery of property, or the infliction of justified punishment. Other wars are unjust and should not

Introduction ● 13

be waged, not even for reasons of state.65 Grotians also point out the impor-tant role of diplomacy, which is regarded as the prime means of commu-nication and negotiation between representatives of states.66 Even modern international society is at its core still a diplomatic system and diplomacy is its foundational activity.67

There is some divergence of opinion among Grotians about the extent to which international society is characterized by solidarity between people. Roughly there is a divide between pluralists who lean more toward realism and solidarists leaning toward the Kantians.68 The first group regards the world as an international society of states with its own rules and laws, but these rules do not have the same binding force as in domestic society. This means that violence and power remain important in international relations. Aiming for a world without these features is not possible and potentially dangerously destabilizing. The solidarists disagree and distinguish possibilities for a more peaceful world with closer ties between people. They assert that the interests of the whole society outweigh those of the constituent states. More extensive common goals for humanity can be, and in their view, should be formu-lated.69 Pluralists think world politics is determined by a large number of states, which are seen as groupings of different communities with their own culture and ways to cooperate. The differences between those groups and states are large, making it unlikely that they will ever agree on more than a limited number of issues at the international level. Moral questions are certainly excluded. International relations are primarily concerned with the establishment of framework that allows those communities to coexist with a minimum of external interference. Pluralists do not believe in international redistributive justice or in most nonclassical human rights. Solidarists con-tend that it is possible for different communities to reach agreement on sub-stantial ethical issues, to work to limit and possibly abandon warfare, and especially to accomplish international justice between different people. They cite the extensive international agreements on human rights or on economic issues as examples.70 Where relevant, the distinction between pluralism and solidarism will be part of the analyses of the thought of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek.

To close this section, attention is drawn to some of the underdeveloped areas within the English School, where this book hopes to offer some contri-butions, especially the often noted neglect of international economic issues and the lack of study of the process of European integration in English School texts.71 Also relevant is Rengger’s72 assertion that the link between political theory and the English School is natural yet underdeveloped. Hurrell argues that the English School has altogether neglected the history of thought.73 There is also a call for the English School to start understanding liberal


ideology as a major source of norms, rules, and institutions.74 This book attempts to address all of these voids.

Two Methodological Remarks

Finally, two clarifying methodological remarks must be made, about con-text and theory building.

On the question of context versus historical continuity,75 this study takes a middle position. It is based on the idea that there is not just one right interpretation of a text, or a context. Any claim that historical compari-sons are impossible or fruitless ultimately also rests on a judgment based on a comparison.76 Still it is acknowledged that contextualist arguments are important for IR theory, if only to recognize the possibility of historical dis-continuity.77 But the analysis in this book is mainly informed by a belief in historical continuity and the existence of a universal debate within political philosophy. It is possible to compare the key concepts in this study over time, because a large degree of similarity between them can safely be assumed. For example, it is obvious that the wars of the twentieth century differ from those in the eighteenth century, at least in scope, weapons used, numbers of people involved, impact on society, and so forth. Yet generally, a war was and is a major event that causes death and destruction, has high costs, and in many cases, can lead to the downfall of the leader or a state. From the perspective of state leaders, the importance of the decision to wage war remains compa-rable, even though the normative valuation may differ from person to person and may depend on particular circumstances. Many questions of interna-tional affairs return, often unchanged, yet subject to new circumstances.78 Clearly some issues, such as development aid, international governmental, organization, and European integration are time-bound and the discussion of these phenomena are limited to the twentieth-century theorists.

In chapter 7, an outline of a classical liberal theory of international rela-tions is presented. International relations theory is defined in this book as “the analytical and normative theorization of interstate relations, transnational relations and the international system itself.”79 Theory in international relations is multifaceted and methodologically and epistemologically plu-ralist. There is not one right or true way to theorize about international rela-tions, and there is also no readily available and certainly no widely accepted method for developing an IR theory out of a political theory analysis.

Concerning the procedure of distilling a coherent theoretical outlook from the work of authors for whom producing a comprehensive theory of international relations was not part of their intentions, the following must be said. In the chapters analyzing the ideas on international relations of

Introduction ● 15

the four classical liberals, the three English School traditions introduced above are used as means of interpretation. Through consistent comparison, the ideas of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek are put in an English School perspective and are also compared with the views of other IR scholars. The ideas they have in common are determined and an attempt is made to orga-nize them into a theoretical framework that is capable of addressing funda-mental and topical questions in IR theory. It is also made clear whether their views on international relations are consistent with their views on domestic politics.

Obviously it cannot be expected that all four thinkers have views, let alone the same views, on every issue that comes up in the discussion of international affairs. For the purpose of the book, it is sometimes inevitable to apply selec-tion criteria to decide which view to include in the theory. One such criterion is the degree of acceptance of a view among the majority of the thinkers. If three of the four thinkers think alike on an issue, their view will be taken as the best candidate for representing the classical liberal viewpoint. This is also in line with the definition of a tradition discussed above. In case of a “draw,” or a philosophical inconsistency in the application of classical liberalism by two thinkers, the classical liberal implications of the idea will be discussed in more detail. The aim of the book is not to “invent” a classical liberal theory, but to present already available information hitherto left largely untouched, or analyzed in noncomprehensive ways.

Given the current absence of classical liberalism in IR, the theory pre-sented in chapter 7 will be referred to as “the” classical liberal IR theory. This is not meant as a claim to exclusiveness or eternal validity. Future research, for example, on the thought of other classical liberals or individual elements of the theory may lead to calls for changes.

CHAPTER 2

What Is Classical Liberalism?

Nowadays, the term liberalism can mean one thing or its opposite; therefore it is necessary to take time to introduce “classical liber-alism.” It may perhaps appear odd to start a book on IR theory

with a description of “domestic” classical liberalism. However, this is both logical and necessary. Classical liberalism is a “bottom-up” theory, which regards international relations as an outgrowth of politics in the domestic or national political arena. Only by looking at the classical liberal idea “ behind the border,” are we able to move closer to comprehending its meaning “ beyond the border.”1

There is substantial literature on the history of the liberal tradition. Put very briefly, traces of liberal ideas can be found from the earliest beginnings of the Western history of ideas, from the ancient thinkers, in particular the Stoics onward. It has roots in Judeo-Christianity, not least through the emphasis on an individual’s relation with God, ideas associated with the nat-ural law tradition, and the influence of the Spanish Scholastics. Liberalism’s first expressions as a full-fledged political doctrine are located in early modern times, for example, in the writings of the English Levellers and John Locke. As Craig Smith2 points out, it is with the work of Mandeville that the idea of spontaneous order, one of the central elements of classical liber-alism, came to the fore. Liberalism was further developed by thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment, the French économistes and Physiocrats and the American Founding Fathers. In the nineteenth century several philosophers added new insights: the English utilitarians; the economist Ricardo and the Manchester School activists; the French political economists Say, Constant, and Bastiat; and philosopher statesman Alexis de Tocqueville. Roughly from the 1850s, two new variants of liberalism emerged: a social liberal variant,


which had roots in German variants of liberalism but reached an early high point through the work of John Stuart Mill and libertarianism under influ-ence of thinkers such as De Molinari and Sumner.3

In most of the Anglo-Saxon world, the growing influence of social liberalism meant the decline of classical liberalism, while the libertarian influence was mostly restricted to nonmainstream U.S. politics. Yet in Vienna, economists such as Menger, Von Böhm Bawerk, Wieser, and later Von Mises and Hayek worked toward a classical liberal revival, at first in continental Europe, later in the United States. In post–Second World War Germany, academics like Röpke, Rüstow, Eucken, Böhm, Erhard, and Müller-Armack, known as Ordo-liberals after their Ordo Manifesto and the subsequent Ordo annual volume of essays, had substantial influ-ence on postwar German policies.4 Today, the economists of the Virginia and Chicago Schools are perhaps the most influential classical liberals, while Austrians and others make their mark through think tanks and can also be found in academia. Many of them meet in the international classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society (MPS). Social liberalism is by far the most dominant liberal variant, both in the United States and Europe, not least because of the enormous influence of the work of John Rawls. Libertarianism has always remained the least influential of the three vari-ants, yet the influence of Ayn Rand, its biggest star, on American public opinion should not be underestimated.

The shift in the second half of nineteenth century changed the meaning and connotations of the term liberalism dramatically, as core liberal ideas were reinterpreted.5 This was also a result of a shift in the societal role of liberalism. After enforcing major changes in an environment of repressive social structures, it had developed itself into the status quo.6 From that period, there is confusion over the content of the term liberalism, which led to the subsequent introduction of several adjectives in relation to the term liberalism. The introduction and proliferation of all these kinds of liberal-isms seem boundless, not least in IR theory as is explored in chapter 7.

Therefore some light must be shed on the most important classifications of the liberal tradition found in the literature.7 A very common distinction is between political liberalism and economic liberalism. This categorization is false, because liberals find it impossible to separate these two dimensions of human action. Many political decisions have economic effects, both directly influencing the individual. The individual’s political freedoms cannot be restricted without interference in his or her economic freedom and indi-vidual economic freedom is indispensable for achieving political freedom.8 Related to this, De Jasay9 introduces a problematic dichotomy between loose and strict liberalism. His loose variant covers what other writers call social

What Is Classical Liberalism? ● 19

liberalism, but he labels it classical liberalism. The strict variant comprises what others call classical liberalism and libertarianism. This distinction is too confusing in practical use.

Neoliberalism is mostly used to group thinkers who argue in favor of capitalism and a minimal state. The term neoliberalism appears to be the favorite swearword of people resenting capitalism and globalization. There is not much analytical precision associated with it.10 Most writers who are grouped in the neoliberal category base their thought on old liberal ideas, and so it does not make much sense to call them neoliberals. In fact, the label “paleo liberals” would be more accurate.

This leads to the question about the use of the adjective “conservative” in relation to liberalism. Hayek famously argued that he did not consider himself a conservative, but it is possible to trace conservative elements in his thought11 and that of other classical liberals. Conservatives and classical lib-erals are certainly closer in their thinking than conservatives and other liber-als. The similarities are, for example, found in their views on human nature, their antiratio nalism and the appreciation of tradition, evolving customs, and the free market. There are also important differences. Conservatism is not individualistic; it tends to favor groups and the nation. It is also less concerned with individual natural rights and is not as positive about societal change and technological innovation.12 Therefore, it is preferable to use the term classical liberalism instead of conservative liberalism.

The most precise way to distinguish between the different liberalisms is to note the difference between social liberals, classical liberals, and libertar-ians. This division is based on a scale of the permitted level of state influ-ence in the life of the individual and differences between views of human nature. This categorization is more precise, although it does not provide 100 percent clarity, as it remains hard to determine precise and lasting borders between related ideas in political theory. In this book the term social liber-alism is reserved for the modern variant of liberalism. Compared to classi-cal liberalism it calls for a greater role of the state in the life of individuals.13 Libertarianism covers the diverse set of thinkers who defend individual rights in a strict sense. Some of them favor a minimal state and others, like Rothbard and Hoppe, are anarcho-capitalists who want to abolish the state altogether. Classical liberalism covers the middle ground in this scheme.

Classical Liberal Philosophy

Classical liberalism may be characterized by six core elements, all of which are mentioned consistently in the literature, although not always exhaus-tively by every author: individualism, freedom, natural law, spontaneous


order, rule of law, and limited state.14 These elements are briefly introduced and discussed in relation to the writings of Hume, Smith, Mises,15 and Hayek, which is meant to provide evidence of their classical liberal creden-tials. The main differences between classical liberalism, social liberalism, and libertarianism are the result of different interpretations of these core elements. Only the differences with social liberalism are elaborated, because this is the most prominent variant of liberalism in IR theory. Despite some interesting viewpoints, libertarianism hardly plays a role in this field, and so it is not analyzed in the remainder of this book.

Individual and Human Nature

A central classical liberal idea is that the individual is of ultimate value. This is not meant to deny that man is a social species, who functions in groups and largely depends on other people for his survival; nor are individuals seen as atoms that egoistically make their way through life without consider-ation for others. The idea comprises the moral, social, and political convic-tion that the individual is the ultimate unit in political considerations, not groups, society, the nation, or a particular ruler.

Classical liberals do not idealize man or human nature. They have a realistic view of man’s abilities and powers; he or she is seen as governed by interplay of passion and reason. Man’s intellectual capabilities are not omnipotent; he often makes mistakes or fails to make proper expectations about the future. Contrary to claims of social liberals, socialists, or neoclas-sical economists, individual behavior is not always directed at the maximi-zation of utility in a rational way. Humans simply lack the ability to acquire or process enough knowledge for this.16 This is an important difference between classical and social liberals; the latter are more optimistic about the rational capacities of man. They trust the abilities of the human mind, in particular when it comes to inventing solutions for societal problems or handling complex social schemes. Classical liberals do not reject the notion of rationality but stress the limitations of the human mind, especially when it comes to its capacity for planning beyond the very short term and out-side a circle of immediate relations. Of course, reason raises men above the animals and it is an important tool for making the best of life,17 but expecta-tions about reason’s capacities in societal planning and construction should be kept to a minimum.

Contrary to social liberals, classical liberals recognize that man adapts relatively easily to changing circumstances. If one goal is out of reach, energies will be shifted toward another aim. Man is weak in the sense that he is ultimately more guided by his passions than his reason, but


he is strong when it comes to mental strength and f lexibility.18 Classical liberals reject the idea that man has to follow a certain path in life, or that an individual needs to reach a stage of self-fulfillment to be happy, as for example John Stuart Mill argued. They feel the individual deployment of creativity ensures many ways to a good life. Their recommendations are based on the analysis of man as they perceive how he is, not how he should become.

This view of human nature is the foundation of the thought of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek. The exploration of the characteristics of human nature, often within a wider societal context, was the central theme of Hume’s work, not least his main philosophical work, A Treatise on Human Nature.19 His general philosophy was informed by what he perceived as the empirical evidence gained through the description and analysis of the way individuals actually behave.20 The individual was Hume’s main object of study; he tried to find a “new science of human nature,” which would be the basis of explaining all other societal phenomena,21 including the existing political arrangements.22

Hume contended that, in general, the passions or emotions have more influence on human will than reason, and they are therefore the most important explanatory factors of human behavior. Reason “is and ought to be the slave of the passions.”23 He thought humans were not able to dis-cover ideas or matters of fact by pure reason alone. The individual mind is full of perceptions, divided into impressions and ideas. Impressions are experiences, such as colors and sounds. Ideas are derived from these impres-sions; they are instruments for actions like remembering, imagining, or thinking. Through the process of imagination, ideas may be combined into more complex ideas that did not have to be experienced first. As the belief in those complex ideas lacks a sound basis in one or more impressions, there is no certainty about the beliefs. Consequently, reason is not exclu-sively capable of delivering truths in the realm of morality, the judgments about right and wrong; neither are divine commands. Hume asserted that moral judgment is grounded in taste and passion and that morality and the laws expressing moral notions to enable a social life originate exclusively in human conduct.24

In Hume’s classical liberal, realistic view, human nature is frail. It is not possible to keep all men on the path of justice, because some men are simply prone to unlawful behavior. A larger group is often “seduced from the more important, but more distant interest, by the allurement of the pre-sent, though very often very frivolous temptations. This great weakness is incurable in men.”25 Of course, people are sensible of the need for justice and order in society and Hume was not blind to the social condition of mankind.


Humans are mutually dependent.26 Despite individual differences, there is also great uniformity in human nature. He contended:

It is universally acknowledged that there is great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions; the same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit; these passions, in various degrees and distributed through society have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are the source of all the actions and enterprises which have ever been observed among mankind.27

Smith followed Hume and he also focused on the role of human nature in his philosophy. He thought that humans are limited in their actions by facts and a constant pull of both altruistic and egoistic pressures. Human behavior is far more guided by “negative virtues” that are concerned with the prevention of injury to oneself or others, than “positive virtues” like benevolence, or dealing with the promotion of good. In contrast to the first, the latter goals are too elusive to serve as universal guide to a good or just life.28 Contrary to modern opinion that associates him with egoism, for Smith sociability was of central importance in human relations.29 Humans were not atomistic and their nature was inherently social.30 To restrain the selfish sentiments and to indulge in benevolent actions pointed to the perfection of human na-ture, as it brought harmony of sentiments and passions among mankind.31 In a moral sense people learned from observing the conduct of others. This would lead them to form opinions about right and wrong behavior, which could be applied to them also.32 Following the Stoics, Smith thought that every man had a duty to look after himself. The individual was in a much better position to judge his personal situation, because others could not feel his pleasures or pains with equal intensity.33 Therefore, to regard one’s pri-vate happiness and interest was often a very laudable principle of action.34 Smith asserted that individual action was the foundation of society35 and in his ideal system of natural liberty, the individual would flourish.

Mises also started his economic and political analysis with the individual. Like his predecessors Menger and Von Böhm-Bawerk, he emphasized that only individuals act, not groups or collectives.36 Through upbringing and contacts with other people humans start to cooperate and behave socially.37 Man is liable to error; in fact, “if to err were the characteristic feature of mental disability, then everybody should be called mentally disabled.”38 Mises thought that man was able to use reason to act in his rightly understood


interests.39 While human reason was fallible and people often made mis-takes in selecting and applying means to reach their ends, reason enabled individuals to control their urges and emotions. Like Hume, Mises held that in certain cases, the emotions could be too strong to oppose, but he felt gen-erally this still remained a choice: “man is not a puppet of his appetites.”40 Compared to the two Scots, he had more trust in the rational capacities of man, but still acknowledged its limitations, for example, in the inability to plan and construct society. Like Hume and Smith, he was a staunch indi-vidualist in his thinking.41

That also applies to Hayek. The individual and the safeguarding of individual liberty was the central tenet of his work.42 He also recognized that the individual had only imperfect knowledge and was not some imag-inary rational economic man. Humans were prone to be lazy, improvident, and wasteful, although not necessarily selfish. Hayek thought all human action was based on people’s opinions, subjective perceptions, and beliefs. A key Hayekian insight is that knowledge is dispersed among many people; no individual is omnipotent. Actions of people have intended and unintended consequences, but all contribute to social reality.43 In his 1945 lecture Individualism: True and False, Hayek called his ideal true individualism. It stood in the tradition of Hume and Smith and was the principled defense of the idea that social phenomena could only be understood through the understanding of individual action. He embraced Ferguson’s notion that society is the result of “human action but of human design” and the notion that “the spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend.” Man was only partly guided by reason; individual reason was very limited and imperfect. Individual errors were only corrected in the course of a social pro-cess that aims at making the best of a very imperfect material.44

As is explored throughout this book, the difference in liberal views on human nature is of great significance, not least in the explanation of the differences between classical liberalism and the existing forms of liberalism in IR theory.

Freedom

In all liberal variants, freedom is seen as the most important condition for individuals to deal with the challenges in life and for societies to prosper. The main difference between classical and social liberalism concerns the desired degree of state involvement in the life of the individual.

Taking Berlin’s classification of positive and negative freedom, classical liberals define individual liberty negatively. Freedom is defined as an area


of noninterference, where the individual is free to do as he or she sees fit, as long as the rights of other people are not violated.45 Social liberals invoke the positive conception of freedom; they contend that freedom must mean more than paying due respect to a personal domain. Individuals should be enabled to make progress in life. Obstacles for individual choice and devel-opment must be removed and the required resources should be provided by financial redistribution and regulation by the state. Classical liberals’ main concern is protection from intrusion by others, including the state, while social liberals demand far more state action.46 Social liberals add conditions or qualifications to the concept of freedom, like equality, justice, and happi-ness. Classical liberals feel that this forced equality fails to provide sufficient room for individual and societal development.47

For classical liberals, the social liberal ideal of self-realization carries the danger of breaking up the individual into two images of the self: the lower self and the ideal self. The ideal is something to strive for, and is often related to a social whole, such as a nation, a tribe, or a race. This is a justifi-cation for some members of the group to coerce others. History shows many examples of rulers who think they are only coercing for the sake of others, to enable them to reach the higher self. Berlin noted that this is monstrous; it impersonates people by equating what X would choose if he were some-thing he is not, at least not yet. This danger is at the heart of all theories of self-realization and historically it has been the greatest danger of the notion of positive freedom.48 Classical liberals are not completely immune to this danger, because they acknowledge that personal liberty may be infringed upon by the state for a limited number of goals. But their demand for the greatest possible freedom severely limits the danger of state expansion.

That the best states are free states is a maxim that can be considered one of the major political themes in Hume’s work. Freedom should comprise a whole set of personal liberties. Liberty was the “perfection of civil society” and Hume supported such classical liberal positions as personal security under the law, the freedoms of private property and contract, religious belief, and intellectual inquiry and expression. Political liberty was best preserved by a limited, nonarbitrary, and representative government under a balanced constitution.49 Hume praised the reign of Elizabeth I for the de facto situ-ation of freedom of religion;50 he regarded freedom of the press as another great privilege and rejected domestic slavery as dreadful and not be dupli-cated elsewhere.51

At the center of Smith’s thought was the conviction that man has sev-eral natural rights to liberty. The most sacred laws of justice were those that protect life and person, property and possession. The personal rights of an individual52 should protect him from physical injury and give him freedom


to, for example, trade or freely engage in a marriage.53 People who refrain from doing injustice to others are entitled to the same treatment themselves.54 These rules were constitutive for Smith’s ideal, the system of natural liberty.55 In it, “every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into those of any other man, or order of men.”56

For Mises there was “no alternative to totalitarian slavery than liberty. No other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work.” Against the current of the time, he embraced the notion of laissez-faire and emphasized that this was not just an economic concept, but “the total complex of the philosophy of freedom.”57 For him, freedom was one of the foundations of liberalism.58

The same applied to Hayek. An individual is free when he or she is not coerced, with freedom being defined as “independent of the arbitrary will of another.” Complete freedom was not possible; living together always depends on compliance with a minimum set of general rules. Ideas to minimize coer-cion and to maximize the individual’s negative liberty through safeguarding of a large private sphere were at the center of his writings,59 thus confirming the strong relation between freedom and classical liberalism.

Natural Law and Natural Rights

The philosophical foundation of the classical liberal claim for individual freedom is based on the concepts of natural law and natural rights, not on utilitarian or consequentialist groundings. Rights theorists defend liberty from a moral foundation, while consequentialists mainly defend liberty from an empirical and utilitarian angle. They construct a theory of a free society with reference to the positive outcomes for individuals of free markets and limited government.60 Classical liberalism has always been a natural rights doctrine, but in the nineteenth century through the embrace of the liberal program by the utilitarians (see below) it also became associated with con-sequentialism. Yet a focus on the consequences of action cannot provide a solid base for classical liberalism, because certain principles, like the funda-mental freedoms, are beyond Benthamian happiness calculations,61 or other valuations of certain outcomes of social processes.

The idea of natural law has often been refuted on the basis of its pre-sumed religious or metaphysical origins, which would be insufficient for people who are agnostic.62 There are many different theories of natural law, and many of them are associated with religions. It is not the purpose of this section to give a complete overview, but to emphasize that classical lib-erals focus on a specific, modest, and nonreligious natural law doctrine.63


They contend that natural rights are of crucial importance for any society. Human beings are social by nature and for them to be able to act jointly cer-tain conditions need to be preserved.64

Natural law should not be understood in the modern notion of a rationally constructed command, directive, or rule (like the Latin lex). The word “natural” must be taken in its literal meaning, as a rule validated by custom or practice (ius) that ought to be respected. This is not grounded in metaphysics or theology, but it is the order of natural persons, of liv-ing human beings, people as they are born. This is in contrast to artificial orders like those of Rousseau. He aimed at turning all humans into citizens living according to the rules of the state. This would in a literal way “dehu-manize” men, by making them an attribute of artificial law introduced by a small number of people in power.65 The natural rights are life, liberty, and property. They cannot be “rights to.” There is no hierarchy between natural people and no hierarchy between one person’s natural rights and those of another. No person has a right to another.66

In the modern world there is a tendency to make a right out of every need. Rights are everywhere and everything is a right;67 this is a development that fills classical liberals with horror. For example, in the French Declaration of Rights of Men and Citizen (1789), the state was just seen as a means to protect the natural rights of man. After that, influenced by utilitarianism, natural rights were no longer limits on state action, but rights to government intervention. In social liberalism human rights took the place of natural rights, calling for all kinds of political action.68

Hume was something of a “hidden” natural law thinker. While his views were very close to the rights-based tradition, he attempted to avoid being perceived as a natural rights theorist. In his days, the natural rights tradition was strongly associated with the religious influence on politics.69 It would have been strange indeed for “Hume the Infidel,” as he was known among his contemporaries, to embrace a position closely associated with the political aspiration of religious leaders. Like Smith (see below) Hume used the concept of utility to explain societal phenomena and thus inspired the utilitarians, most notably Bentham and John Stuart Mill,70 but his moral philosophy was not utilitarian in the same way. He did not relate moral appreciation and the greatest happiness principle.71 The later utilitarians also used the principle for the recommendation of specific pol-icies, but Hume did not accept the principle of utility as a basis for nor-mative political outcomes;72 nor would he advocate it as a precise practical formula.

Instead he referred to the laws of nature, which did not have metaphys-ical or divine origins, but were human inventions, the results of the human


understanding of human nature marked by self-consciousness and self- interest. For Hume, the source of the laws of nature was the principle that ascribes property to occupation and accession of a piece of land. “Upon the first formation of society, property always follows the present possession.”73 There were at least three fundamental laws of nature: the stability of posses-sion, its transference by consent, and the performance of promises. Keeping promises was especially important for sustaining a stable society. The nat-ural laws were antecedent to the establishment of government,74 and thus their validity was unrelated to the formation of states.

Smith’s system of natural liberty was also a concept that directly origi-nated from natural law and was meant to protect the natural rights. Smith was not a utilitarian in the Benthamite sense;75 he did not turn to utilitar-ianism when explaining the origin of moral rules, or when judging indi-vidual action in everyday life.76 He did give consideration to utility when evaluating social, political, and moral systems and phenomena,77 but, like Hume, only to explain the continued existence of these institutions. Smith’s natural law thought was indebted to the continental natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf, and others.78

Like Hume Mises regarded natural law and natural rights almost solely in terms of theology and therefore distanced himself from such terms as natural rights, which, he thought, were illusory because it was not pos-sible to define them sufficiently.79 His use of the term laws of nature was restricted to the physical and biological limits set upon humans.80 However, his rejection of all natural law has puzzled many commentators, because, except for the labels, he embraced most of its notions. His justification of the free society had all the natural law characteristics. Rockwell and Tucker81 rightly notice that Mises used natural law type constructs despite his explicit rejection of natural law. Most importantly, Mises believed in the inalien-ability of individual rights to life and property. He only failed to give them a full philosophical grounding. Gonce82 went as far as to claim that Mises’ system was based on individualistic secular natural law philosophy, influ-enced by Grotius and Pufendorf among others, although this was strongly rejected by Rothbard.83 Mises seemed strangely unaware of a secular natural law tradition, but his reasoning was very close to that of Hume and Smith. According to Yeager,84 Mises’ position must be explained from his rejection of the “ exaggerated, foundationalist, almost mythical status” that some writ-ers gave to natural rights.

Mises embraced the Ricardian notion of “social utility,” which is the idea that social cooperation is beneficial to all groups and individuals, as are the institutions that develop to enable human interaction, like democratic government, private property, freedom, and equality under the law.85 Later


in his career he outright rejected Bentham’s application of utilitarianism in politics, especially the “greatest happiness-principle,” which in his view con-fused “liberty and despotism.”86

Hayek clearly fits into the nonreligious natural law tradition. He denied that positive law, or legislation, could ever be a source of real law87 and rejected notions of religious transcendence in his ethics.88 He shared Hume’s ideas of the natural laws of nature, rejected Benthamian utilitarianism, and strongly argued in favor of general laws, like the right to property.89 Hayek asserted that freedom can only be guaranteed under the rule of law and found his inspiration for this in the thought of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, Locke, and the Scots.90 Like Hume, Smith, and Mises, he explained certain traditions and institutions on the basis of their apparent social utility, but went no further in his appreciation of this type of thought.

Spontaneous Order

The belief in spontaneous order is one of the most outstanding features of classical liberalism. Social liberals are less enthusiastic, relying on state interference to a far greater degree. Spontaneous orders are the regularities in human affairs that are not the product of explicit design, but of spontaneous development beyond the control of any individual. Until the seventeenth century this order was called “natural,” as it was not consciously planned or thought out. Spontaneous order is not God-given or a phenomenon subject to strict rules. Instead, it is the result of competition between different pos-sible ways of handling affairs. It is the outcome of trial and error, an evolu-tion of social practices. From a modern social theory approach, the theory of spontaneous order represents a middle category, standing between pure natural phenomena and deliberate human interventions.91 The best-known example of spontaneous order is the free market, but other important exam-ples are customs or conventions. These can be defined as “informally con-cluded tacit contracts, loosely binding a large number of people,” which help humans to make living together easier. Examples are queuing, driving on a certain side of the road, but also more complex conventions like language or the use of money. Some are self-enforced; others need enforcement once they have emerged spontaneously.92 Conventions carry the wisdom and experience of ages, but continue to adapt to new circumstances. More than positive law or any other product of human reason, morals, tradition, and conventions are seen as the necessary conditions for lasting progress.93 Societal institutions that ensure the development and the maintenance of shared morals, for example, the family, church, civil organizations, schools and universities, and the market are therefore praised by classical liberals.


For classical liberals order is possible and preferable with minimal support or intervention from a power-wielding authority.

Of the four classical liberals studied here, Hayek and Smith are most strongly related to the idea of spontaneous order. Both were influenced by Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, and his maxim “private vices, public benefits.” The Dutchman was one of the first thinkers to regard order as the unintended result of the nonrationalistic, nonplanned behavior of indi-viduals, who use their fragmented knowledge to make the most of their lives.94 Hayek wrote a great deal on the idea of spontaneous order and was especially keen to stress its application beyond the market.95 Smith distin-guished “the inherently human propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another” which lead to a division of labor that is both spon-taneous and advantageous to society.96 Of course Smith’s famous example was the “invisible hand,” by which he meant the unintended consequences of the motivation and action of bakers, brewers, and butchers. By tending to their self-interest, they unintentionally brought about a situation in which essential products and services became available to other people. There was also a moral lesson in this. Smith warned that people should not make them-selves dependent on the goodwill and humanity of others. Indeed, “nobody but a beggar would choose to depend upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.”97 Economic freedom was an end in itself because it enabled indi-viduals a certain degree of independence.98

Hume’s ideas on spontaneous order were most obvious in his treatment of economic issues. Unlike Smith, he never presented a fully elaborated economic system, but Hume was a major influence in the transition from the mercantilist to classical economic doctrines.99 He was an “apostle for capitalism” and emphasized the relationship between liberty, economic growth,100 and progress in, for example, the arts. Yet his adherence to spon-taneous order was more comprehensive. He frequently referred to the pos-itive unintended consequences of human action, which led to stable social institutions and practices.101

Mises did not write as much on spontaneous order as such, but he is on record stating that “liberal social theory does not explain formation and progress of social ties and institutions as consciously aimed human efforts toward the formation of societies ... It views societal organizations as ‘the unconsidered result of specific individual efforts of members of society.’ ”102 The economic foundation of classical liberalism was essential for Mises, for it made him “one of the most passionate, consistent and intransigent defend-ers of capitalism.”103 The idea of spontaneous order was a logical comple-ment to his ideas about the positive effects of the division of labor and his criticism of all forms of governmental planning.104 Capitalism, based on the


private ownership of means of production, is the Misesian system of social cooperation105 that obviously depends on the idea of spontaneous order. Like the other three thinkers, Mises emphasized the positive social effects of cap-italism: “it does not mean let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means let each individual choose how he wants to cooperate in the social division of labor, let consumers determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. Planning means: let the government alone choose and enforce its rulings by the apparatus of coercion and compulsion.”106

Rule of Law

In the classical liberal view, liberty and the protection of the individual domain partly depend on protection through laws secured by the state. This protection of the negative freedoms is needed since “men are not angels,” as Madison had famously put it. Not all order can be provided in a sponta-neous way. The protection of the right to life and property is the prime task of the state. Legal rules should be limited in number and the ones that exist must be binding for everyone in the same circumstances. Classical liberals therefore assert that most of the existing positive laws are nonclassical liberal dictates of pure reason that cause as much damage to society as rationalist meddling does in other fields. For them it is another sign that the state needs to be bound by rules to protect individuals against the abuse of state power.107

Governmental power must be curbed to enable law to protect individual liberty. One way of doing this is through the development of constitutions, which are meant to limit the room for governmental maneuver and to ensure that governments remain accountable to the population. In the classical lib-eral eye, separating the legislative, judiciary, and executive powers of gov-ernment and arranging their respective power relations in a system of checks and balances are the best defense against the abuse of arbitrary power.108 However, as libertarians are the first to point out that this is a weak point in classical liberal thought, history shows that the number of state tasks only increases in places where such constitutions are in place, not least due to social liberal demands.

As indicated, Hume thought that government had its origin in interests and necessity. Every society saw a struggle between authority and liberty; neither could prevail in absolute sense over the other. To administer jus-tice, infringements on negative individual freedoms were needed in order to maintain liberty. In a good society, justice and the protection of property rights (by government) went hand in hand.109 Governments and rulers were also bound by the natural laws; they could not be in total control of society.


Good governments were those of laws, not of men, if only because leaders of state were also imperfect humans.110

Smith also underlined the crucial importance of the maintenance of a legal system to maintain a society, because individual members would do injustice to others that must be avenged.111 He thought that the origins of legal institutions and the content of many laws were the result of spon-taneous order.112 This meant they developed slowly, through adaptations to changing circumstances. But in a modern society active state admin-istration was needed to maintain the legal system. Smith hoped that the accumulation of wisdom through the ages would lead to a legal system that represented the wisdom and judgment of his theoretical device “the impar-tial spectator.”113 Smith’s opinion on positive law was not very favorable. It could serve as a record of the sentiments of mankind in a particular time and place, but should never be regarded as an accurate image of the rules of natural justice.114

Mises also took this position: the state had the task to protect the lives, health, freedom, and property of it subject against violent of fraudulent aggression. The state should execute these tasks through laws. He agreed with Hume that the state itself is ultimately founded on the opinion of the majority of the ruled and favored democracy as the peaceful way to change rulers.115 Hayek was the most prolific writer on legal issues, of the four clas-sical liberals studied here. The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation and Liberty are for a large part works in legal philosophy, defending in detail the classical liberal positions set out in this section.

The State

The relation between the individual and the state is of crucial importance to classical liberalism. For quick clarification, in this book government will be seen as “the process of making rules, controlling, guiding or regulating” and the state then is “a set of governmental institutions of relatively recent historical origin.”116

Particularly interesting for IR scholars are the differences between state and nation. Two men are of the same nation if they share the same cul-ture, where culture means a system of ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and communicating; and if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. Nations are the artifacts of men’s convictions, loyalties, and solidarities.117 Three criteria may be added: the attachment to a clearly demarcated territory, possession of a common past, and a claim to the right of self-rule. State and nation do not often coincide, which some-times leads to nationalism, the political movement to create a state for a


nation. Vice versa, a nation-state is here seen as a state whose members lack a common past, for example, because of the drawing of new borders after a war and where its leaders actively aim to create a nation and develop a sense of community.118

Hume and Smith wrote at a time when the process of state formation was in full swing. They were not familiar with the modern state as defined above and generally used the terms nations and countries, which shall be understood in the cultural and territorial way defined above. In contrast, Mises and Hayek were very much aware of the development of the modern state and of the rise of nationalism from the nineteenth century onward. They clearly recognized the existence of public and private spheres within a state, with the public sphere related to the activities of the state institutions. In this book references to the private sphere are made with the term society, which means to comprise all contacts between natural persons, and their nonstate organizations, such as churches, nongovernmental organizations, and clubs. The terms nation and country are used in their cultural and terri-torial meaning, and the term state is used for the political entity.

“All the great classical liberals acknowledge that the liberal state may have a range of service functions, going beyond the rights-protection and the upholding of justice. For this reason they are not advocates of the min-imum state, but rather of limited government.”119 Beyond the defense of individual property rights through the provision of external defense and internal security (police, legal system), a limited number of public goods must be provided, for example, limited forms of welfare and education. It is hard to draw an exact line between public tasks and the private domain, and there is division among classical liberals themselves. In general, classical liberals reject the collectivist notion that the output of a social system can be distributed according to principles different from those that explain its production, while social liberals favor state intervention both on arguments of justice and freedom. They tend to turn societal problems into political problems, opening the door for large-scale state involvement in the life of individuals.120

For Hume the prime objective of the state was to constrain men into observation of the laws of nature. Obedience to the civil magistrate was a prerequisite for the preservation of societal order and concord. This was distinct from the “regular” obligation to keep promises, which served to beget mutual trust and confidence among people. However, when the state ceased to be advantageous, people were no longer bound to submit to it.121 The sole foundation of the individual duty of allegiance to govern-ment lay in the advantage of the provision of peace and order by the state. Government was an institution needed in all but the smallest, uncultivated


societies. Otherwise people would be unable to live in peace and concord, lacking the execution of justice, in particular the observance of promises.122 Relevant in this sense was that economic growth stimulated the develop-ment of a middle class, which constituted the best and firmest basis of public liberty. The middle classes would not submit to slavery, nor would they wish to enslave others. All they desired of government were laws that secured their property and other freedoms. A society was best governed when least freedom was sacrificed. The key indicator for a well-governed society therefore was its degree of freedom for the people. Liberty was nec-essary for the perfection of human society. Switzerland and Holland set positive examples in this regard.123

Smith saw three duties for a sovereign: The first was to take care of the protection of society from violence and invasion of other independent states; second, protecting, as far as possible, every member of society from the injustice or oppression of every other member by protecting his property rights; third, constructing and maintaining certain public works and public institutions. This last category consisted not only of the protection of mer-chants who dealt with barbarous nations, but also the provision of basic education.124 Government’s role was not to create equality among people, but to ensure the equal provision of the conditions that were needed to reach independence.125 Smith did not analyze political systems in much detail, nor did he argue for a particular type of regime.126 In public affairs, he mainly distinguished between two kinds of rulers, the good “man of public spirit” and the bad “man of system.” The man of public spirit was benevolent, showed humanity, and respected the established powers, as well as the rights and privileges of individuals and groups, which together formed the constit-uent parts of society. The man of public spirit tried to persuade with words, and would never “use more violence against his country than he would against his parents.” His policies accommodated the established public cus-toms and practices. The man of system was his dangerous adversary, who had a striking resemblance to the later Marxists, socialists, and other col-lectivists. He was full of himself and he advocated alternative models of society and promised beautiful futures, yet only after going through societal reform. His shining alternatives tended to intoxicate his followers, and fed into their fanaticism to overthrow the status quo. The man of system seemed to imagine he could arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces on a chessboard. Smith rejected this. He asserted that in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece had a principle of motion of its own, which was different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.127 Smith added that nothing tends so much to corrupt, enervate, and debase the mind


as dependency, and nothing gives such noble and generous notions of pro-bity as freedom and independency.128

Mises and Hayek completely followed the two Scots in this respect. For Mises, society was needed to secure individual freedom. Absolute indi-vidual independence was illusory because the individual always needed to contribute to the well-being of other people, and in his turn depended on them.129 Without the state, society was not possible. “Classical liberals are not so foolish as to aim at [the state’s, EvdH] abolition.”130 It was a good institution, as long as it was restricted to a limited number of tasks.131 Mises saw government as the negation of freedom, because it used its power to make people obey, whether they like it or not. Still,

government is not . . . a necessary evil, it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. Government is the most beneficial human institution, because human nature forbids humans to establish a civi-lization or peace without the government apparatus of violent action. Freedom can only be found in the sphere in which government does not interfere.132

To aim for perfect government was the foolish and erroneous idea of the social engineer, who overlooked the fact that government and state cannot be perfect, as they owed their existence to the imperfection of man. The state’s tasks should be strictly limited to the protection and preservation of life, liberty, and property, with a key role for the rule of law. But Mises added that the state should also secure the health of the individual.133

Hayek distinguished three rules for governments to respect: it does not claim a service monopoly, nor prevents new methods of rendering services through the market (for example, in social security); the means raised by taxation must conform to uniform principles and taxation is not used as an instrument for the redistribution of income; the wants satisfied by the state are collective wants of the community as whole and not merely collective wants of particular groups.134 These rules were important expressions of the classical liberal view toward state action, even when no “golden rule” had been discovered to limit state action. His relatively extended list of allow-able state tasks, such as the provision of a minimal form of social security, education, and urban planning,135 left considerable room for government involvement in the life of individuals. Indeed, Hayek is rather inconclusive about how to distinguish between justified piecemeal social engineering and outright rational constructivism.136 While he was sometimes criticized for that by stricter classical liberals and libertarians alike, it is clear that he


favored only a limited state and never supported the extended social liberal demands for state action.

Classical Liberalism as a Tradition

Given the intellectual consistency of the four thinkers presented above, classical liberalism is indeed a tradition. This also shows in the references of the four thinkers to each others’ writings. Hume and Smith were close friends and their mutual influence is well recorded in their letters and works. Mises consistently positioned himself in the same tradition as Hume and Smith, although he also mentioned Ricardo, Bentham, and the Manchester School as sources of his liberalism. He stated that British political economy was most brilliantly expounded by Hume and Smith, and then perfected by Ricardo. It was “the most exquisite outcome of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.”137 Smith’s books were the “consum-mation, summarization and perfection” of the work of previous scholars, which laid the keystone, of “a marvelous system of ideas” called capi-talism.138 Hume and Smith were also praised as the greatest intellectual founders of sociology,139 or the science of human action, which Mises later renamed “praxeology.” Perhaps characteristically, his adherence was not unconditional. Mises warned that a study of Smith was not enough to get an understanding of the richness of classical liberalism, as it had further developed since the times of the Scots. Nevertheless he warmly recom-mended Hume and Smith to anyone who wanted to become acquainted with the “liberal mind.”140

Hayek also explicitly referred to the classical liberal tradition as his intellectual guiding light. He wished to restate its “old truths” in the battle against the twin ideas of socialism and totalitarianism. There was no need for a new theory of liberalism, because the principles of the ear-lier version were as valid as ever before.141 He acknowledged the influ-ence of Bernard Mandeville, yet most roots of his ideas were found in the Scottish Enlightenment.142 The influence of Hume was profound and he also admired Smith.143 The influence of both Scots on Hayek also showed in plain numbers: in his philosophical books, Smith and Hume were the authors most often referred to.144

Following the definition of classical liberalism of a tradition introduced in chapter 1, it will be true to say that classical liberalism is a clear example of an intellectual tradition. The later authors (Mises and Hayek) fully acknowl-edged the influence of their intellectual predecessors (Hume and Smith) and openly and consistently stated the wish to further develop their own ideas along the older line of thought.


Fringe Classical Liberals

Now that the most important classical liberal ideas are outlined, it is also possible to draw some boundaries. Some political philosophers are regularly seen as classical liberals, but it is argued here that they should be excluded from this tradition. Great philosophers such as Hobbes, Bentham, Kant, and both the Mills may be counted as members of the larger liberal family, but the following, necessarily brief discussions make clear they are “fringe classical liberals” at best. Only a limited number of their thoughts relate to classical liberalism.

Hobbes

Classical liberalism is individualist and it is therefore no surprise to see Thomas Hobbes sometimes classified as an early liberal.145 In contrast to the collectivist tradition prevalent in his days, Hobbes advocated that it was wrong to base political doctrines on a virtuous conception of man or to reach for human perfection. It was better to start from the true roots of human nature, the passions.146

So far so good from a classical liberal perspective. It was not that Hobbes cared much about individuals or their rights. But in his state people lived together out of necessity, in fear of falling back to the sorry and dangerous state of nature.147 In that previous state characterized by a struggle for life, the individual had the right to do everything such as rape, murder, and robbing to secure his self-preservation. Individuals also had a right to those things over which they were able to exert power, including other people. Hobbes’ individual rights therefore lacked a relation with justice or the nat-ural rights.148

Hobbes assumed individuals decided to live together in a state in order to avoid the war of all against all.149 He saw no special value in formally binding governments by the rule of law. The sovereign had an unqualified right to reign as he pleased. Hobbes was foremost a philosopher of sovereign power. Governments could but never had to bind themselves by granting rights to citizens. The first option could be beneficial, for example, in eco-nomics where the generation of wealth would ensure a tax base needed for expenditure on order and defense.150 In his ideal society, citizens obeyed the ruler without beliefs or passions of their own. To Hobbes a free man was someone who acted in obedience to the law. The force of the law was such that man voluntarily changed his will, and so obeyed freely.151 The state was created by the people themselves, and so whatever awful action it performed, no wrong was involved. The people authorized it and could not speak ill of it, revolt against it, or accuse it of injustice. From an initial position of


liberty the people found themselves in a situation of complete subjection. Their rights were never safe. The sovereign could intrude upon them at will by making new laws, changing existing ones, or by taking action without the law.152 It is clear that Hobbes was not a classical liberal, despite his views on human nature and his recognition of the importance of the individual in political theory.

Kant

Like Hume and Smith, Kant was one of the most famous Enlightenment thinkers. He advocated “the rise to maturity of the individual,” through individual freedom to publicly use reason in all matters and circumstances.153 History was driven by the emergence of human reason, which in Kant’s view was the great enlightening power that one day would ensure the emergence of a “world society of enlightened self-interest, harmony and peace.”154 His contributions were most particular in philosophy and epistemology,155 but his ideas on international relations are also of enduring importance, as shall be discussed in chapter 7.

Perhaps even clearer than is the case with Hobbes, Kant is an important thinker in the broader liberal tradition. He asserted there was an inherent dignity in individual human beings, and human freedom was at the core of his thought. Humans are affected by reason, although not determined by it.156 Kant was a strong proponent of the idea of the Rechtsstaat, the state gov-erned according to the rule of law. He claimed that justice must be secured through a coherent, universal political order, which therefore must be a legal order. Political action and legislation need to be based on universally valid, public laws. His work centered on the importance of freedom, which, like classical liberals, he defined in the negative form. Kant was no utilitarian either; he condemned the idea that politics should make people happy. His sovereign was not above the law, as with Hobbes, but had to obey his own rules. Nevertheless, his sovereign was placed above the people, who were not allowed to revolt.157

Putting the sovereign in an inviolable position must be considered as gen-erally nonliberal. In practical matters Kant was often conservative and au-thoritarian. His thought was “too much tinged by absolutism to be included without reservation . . . in the same school as Von Humboldt, Mill, Spencer, Green and Hobhouse.”158 Kant denounced natural law and postulated pure reason as the main ground for human action and as an independent source of human morals. Epistemologically he opposed Hume’s empiricism and the contention that reason is and ought to be a slave of the passions.159 Kinneging groups Kant in the social liberal camp, because of his belief that


the rational capacities of man can overcome the tradition and the senses.160 An individual can only be free if he is led by his reason. While Kant re-lated private property to freedom, he also thought that it was a state task to determine individual property rights through positive law. This differed fundamentally from the Lockean view that the state is external to the con-cept of property and only needs to secure the natural rights to property.161 Classical liberals are fully in agreement with Locke in this respect, and if the other fundamental differences are added, there is sufficient ground to exclude Kant from the classical liberal tradition.

Utilitarians

The classical liberal credentials of the utilitarians, such as Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, are hardly more assuring. Here the focus is on Bentham, the most important utilitarian. There is no doubt he supported many clas-sical liberal ideas, for example, in field of economics and in legal issues.162 However, a closer look at the foundations of his utilitarian theory reveals that Bentham’s ideal society would not be the result of spontaneous action, but of design and planning.163 Bentham famously advocated that it is pos-sible to calculate the outcome of (political) action in terms of happiness and then compare policies. He took a legal-technical approach toward rules and policies. In the process he excluded moral considerations, counting only the practical consequences.164 The classical liberal Scots used the principle of utility to explain the spontaneous emergence of social institutions or to judge social systems. In contrast, Bentham regarded utility and rationality as guiding principles in politics, making them instruments for interven-tionism and social engineering. Inherited experience or tradition was dis-trusted; instead he relied on the proliferation of encyclopedic information to be used to improve society.165 While influential in the history of philos-ophy, the rationalist, dirigiste Bentham and the dogmatic Mill never gained ground among their contemporaries.166

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was and remains one of the most influential writers in the liberal tradition. He modified utilitarianism by adding a qualitative element: some pleasures, mainly of spiritual and mental kind were superior to bodily pleasures. He had some classical liberal credentials, for example, through his uncompromising defense of individual liberty and religious tolerance.167

Mill’s defense of liberty was firmly grounded in the utilitarianism of his father and Bentham. The young Mill did not value negative freedom in


itself; freedom was only useful if it enabled individuals to rise above them-selves, to attain their true individuality.168 Mill believed social freedom was a precondition for a more civilized and better governed society, because the pursuit of higher pleasures positively influenced the character of the people. The government’s role was to produce the maximum of pleasure for its citizens, and educate them to this purpose. The individual was of more value than the state, but only after receiving the proper education, when he had become “his better self.” Society should provide the conditions for each individual to fully explore and actively use his or her talents. This required an active state role.169 Government was free to act whenever a need was detected. Mill was not so sure that people knew what was best for them. In particular the poorer class would need a helping hand.170

It is sometimes maintained that there are actually two Mills, the Mill of On Liberty and the Mill of his other work. The first Mill was the great thinker of social liberalism; the second one followed in the tradition of, among others, Burke, the Founding Fathers, and Tocqueville.171 This can be doubted though, because Mill defended social liberal positions in other writings as well. For example, he made a distinction between production and distribution in his Principles of Political Economy, with the aim of defending access for individuals to all that society produces. Individuals needed to be forced to become part of society; therefore Mill was “liberationist, not a lib-eral or a libertarian.”172

Mill also opposed other positions that classical liberals embrace. He had a deep distrust of convention, habit, and public opinion, because these obstructed the development of rational education and thinking. On Liberty was not meant to enable individuality, but to protect the elevated against the mediocrity of opinion of the rest of the society.173

It is not surprising that many writers consider the writings of Mill as the starting point for the classical liberal decline. Mises was especially clear on this point. In his view Mill was the opposite of a classical liberal; he saw in him the originator of the socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism. “All the arguments that could be advanced in favor of socialism are elaborated by Mill with loving care. In comparison with Mill, all other socialist writers—even Marx, Engels and Lassalle—are scarcely of any importance.”174 Contrary to the claims by Ebenstein, Hayek was generally negative about Mill.175 Despite his publication of a part of Mill’s correspondence,176 Hayek also considered Mill’s work as the start of the downfall of true classical liberalism, because of Mill’s emphasis on social justice, redistribution, and his concessions to nationalism and socialism.177 In short, Mill was one of the first thinkers who made it necessary to use the adjective “classical” in relation to liberal thought.


To conclude, it is surely impossible to do more than just scrape the surface of classical liberal thought and related ideas in the limited length of a single chapter. Nevertheless, it is hoped the broad outline of classical liberalism is clear, while the most important differences are highlighted between the classical liberals, social liberalism, and the core ideas of the most prominent fringe classical liberals. The classical liberal credentials of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek are beyond serious dispute and the analysis confirms the existence of a classical liberal tradition in political philosophy.

Gertrude Himmelfarb178 warned that the greatest danger in the history of ideas is to “over-intellectualize,” or to systematize and organize the ideas of a thinker beyond his or her intention. She offered a wise solution: let the thought speak for itself. This is what is tried in the chapters that follow on the ideas on international relations of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek. Besides shedding new light on the ideas of these thinkers, these chapters also aim to discover whether there is a classical liberal tradition in international political theory.

CHAPTER 3

David Hume and International Society

Nowadays David Hume (1711–1776) is most famous for his phil-osophical work, but his contemporaries were far more interested in his political views. This difference is one of the reasons why

his ideas on international political issues are often overlooked or misinter-preted. Although he never wrote a book on international relations, Hume regularly referred to this topic in most of his works, with the exception of his writings on religion. His political writings comprise his Essays and The History of England and they must be seen as reactions to current debates and reflections on topical issues as well as attempts to empirically prove his phil-osophical views.1

IR scholars have never paid much attention to Hume’s ideas on inter-national relations as a whole. This is curious, since he held several official international positions and participated actively in international intellec-tual groups and debates.2 Hume practiced international relations in var-ious capacities. His earliest diplomatic and military experiences were as an assistant to General St. Clair, when he dealt with intelligence regarding the proposed military conquest of Canada in 1746. After a change of orders, this expedition actually turned into a mission in Western France. Two years later, he joined the general on a secret mission to Vienna and Turin.3 In the mid-1760s, Hume worked at the British Embassy at Paris, first as a per-sonal secretary to the ambassador, later as secretary to the embassy and chargé d’affaires. He also served as an undersecretary of state, Northern Department, from February 1767 to January 1768. Most of his writings were published before he gained his main diplomatic experience in Paris,


and so it is hard to judge how these practical experiences fed into his the-oretical thought.4 Nevertheless, it is clear that Hume had a great interest in international politics. He was influential among many of his British contemporaries, those in France5 and to a lesser extent in America. He cor-responded with many influential people of several other countries.

The neglect of Hume’s political thought means that his ideas are often misinterpreted by modern IR theorists. This chapter aims to shed light on Hume’s ideas on international relations and offers an alternative view on Hume’s right place in IR theory. His thoughts provide an important cor-nerstone for the overall argument of this book that classical liberalism is a distinct approach to international affairs that differs substantially from the regular portrayals of liberalism in IR theory.

The Nation as Starting Point

In full compliance with his view on human nature, Hume’s international politics commenced with individuals cooperating in a group or society. He saw humans as sociable and in need of each other for survival, and so they form groups. Hume referred to the most important political groups as societies, but also nations, countries, or states; he was not very strict in his terminology. Societies were kept together on the basis of sympathy, or the affinity between its members. Hume noted that nations raise feelings or passions in all people. He put the most emphasis on the positive emo-tions the nation may stimulate, “the passion of national pride.” National pride was caused by direct and indirect positive experiences.6 For example, the beauty of the landscape was a direct source, while indirect experiences come through the pleasures of the senses, such as the goodness of a nation’s produce, or the pleasure humans get from the qualities of the people they are related to.7 Other indirect sources were the nation’s economic well-being,8 or the prevailing intellectual climate, which positively influence the development of the science of man and human nature,9 a core concern for Hume and other Enlightenment thinkers. An individual may experi-ence negative passions related to the nation, such as the feeling of humility, when a war is lost.10

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Hume observed that there are few men to whom “their country [is] in any period of time entirely indifferent.”11 Once he wrote “[I will] joyfully spill a drop of ink or blood, in the cause of my country.”12 Feelings for the nation, like other passions, are strong motivational forces for the conduct of people. Hume even went as far as to state that it was impossible for anybody to develop a real passion for a foreign country, however

Hume and International Society ● 43

nice it may be, since there was a lack of immediate cause of these passions.13 Or as he put it when he discussed the origin of natural virtues and vices,

[w]e sympathise more with persons contiguous to us than with persons remote from us; with our acquaintances, than with strangers; with our countrymen than with foreigners. But notwithstanding this variation in our sympathy, we give the same approbation to the same moral qualities in China as in England.14

Hume did not take this national passion to its extremes, as a liberal nationalist like J.S. Mill would in the nineteenth century. National feelings were impor-tant motivational forces for individuals, but he was no forerunner of modern nationalism,15 “your country engages you only so far it has a connexion with yourself.”16 Nations remain “nothing but collections of individuals.”17

Hume’s analysis of the differences between nations fits well into the lively and esteemed contemporary debate on national characters. The major issues were the attempts to reconcile a belief in universal human nature with dif-ferences in national characters, and the explanation of those differences. Most participants in the debate did not get beyond generalizations and speculations, but like, for example, Montesquieu, Hume had a different approach to the issue.18 He saw national characters as a help to provisionally predict someone’s behavior, until more detailed knowledge would become available,19 and as the links between generations in a society, resulting from a set of fundamental moral and political convictions.20 Hume began his essay Of National Characters with the warning that only “the vulgar are apt to carry all national characters to extremes.” An individual had several char-acters, of which the national character was one. Hume stated that national characters originate from the interactions among the people in a society and were mainly of a moral nature, not the result of physical circumstances. They developed through close ties, communication, the same language, and (geographical) borders.21 Different national characters were historical facts that, among others, entailed that different nations needed different govern-ments. Hume thought that there could not be just one state or one gov-ernment ruling the whole world.22 In general, if there was a misalignment between nations and states, Hume favored a multinational state.23

The differences between nations had real consequences in daily life, but should not lead to a state’s international isolation. Hume’s basic outlook was internationalist; he valued international contacts between individuals and groups. This applied not only to his personal life, but also to his ideas. For example, when he described the earliest contacts between the English and


the Danes, he pointed at the great advantages of interaction with foreigners, especially for islanders. It enlarged their views and cured them of the illiberal prejudices and rustic manners to which they were subjected.24 Individuals faced a world comprised of nations and had strong feelings for their own country, but there was no point in hiding behind the national border.

As it becomes clear in the chapters that follow, this natural relation between the individual and his or her country, based in human emotion, is crucial for the classical liberal ideas about international relations. Classical liberals see a fundamental link between the main object of liberal concern, the individual, and the state. These two are complimentary in international relations. Contrary to the ideas of many modern writers on liberalism and IR, there is no natural adversarial relation between them.

Hume and International Relations

Hume’s views on international relations were attempts to reconcile the forces of vice and virtue, or the tension between international cooperation and aggression. States were collections of individuals with a natural tendency to quarrel and fight. Therefore, human selfishness and ambition would remain perpetual sources of war and discord.25 The public good in foreign politics often depended on accidents, chances, and the “caprices of a few persons.”26 As it becomes clear, Hume often took intermediary positions when judging international politics. This was suitable for a man who considered himself a moderate, and who regarded moderation as an extremely important value in the political world.27 He had no inclination to support a revolutionary over-haul of the world, and he never even endorsed the dissolution of the English-Scottish Union of 1707, even though he considered it a failure.28 He worked to reform and refine the philosophical and political ideas of his public, but never thought human nature could be changed, and therefore rejected all (political) schemes that relied on such a change: “all plans of government, which suppose great transformation in the manners of mankind are plainly imaginary.”29

International society

Ever the empiricist, Hume saw sovereign states as the central actors in international politics, which in his view directly followed from the existence of different political societies.30 He valued the principle of national sovereignty. A ruler was free to mind his own affairs without another sovereign having a right to interfere, even when he did not approve of particular conduct.31 Sovereignty was sometimes limited; for example, Hume followed his contemporaries in the claim that the sea could not become the property of any nation, because


it was impossible to take possession of it.32 International order could be estab-lished in a world of states, but it all depended on their mutual cooperation.33

Neighboring countries had the duty to maintain good relations, “suit-able to the nature of that commerce, which they carry on with each other.”34 Like individuals, states were in need of mutual assistance;35 they did not just interact in a world of anarchy. Hume saw the world, at least the European part, as an international society of nations, characterized by cooperation, international rules, and diplomatic ties, among others. International politics was not just a struggle for power with war as the ultimate arbiter. Relations between countries were regulated, not least by the laws of nations. The most important rules were immunity or “the sacredness of the persons” of ambassadors, the principle of the declaration of war, the prohibition of the use of poisoned arms, and the obligation to treat prisoners of war humanely.36

In the society of nations, order was at least partly rule-based. The laws of nations were additions to the laws of nature in domestic politics. The latter were “the three fundamental rules of justice: the stability of posses-sion, its transference by consent, and the performance of promises.” These were duties of princes and subjects alike. The basic interests of men did not change in the international realm: without respect for property rights, war would be the norm. If property was not transferred in agreement, no commerce existed and if promises were not kept, no alliances or leagues would be formed. Therefore, the laws of nature had the same advantages in national and international relations. This is clear evidence of the classical liberal bottom-up approach to international relations, and of the use of iden-tical principles in all realms of politics.

Yet Hume was not blind to the differences between national and interna-tional politics. In international relations, the natural obligation to do justice could not be as strong as among individuals in a domestic situation. The intercourse between kingdoms was in itself less advantageous than among individuals within national society. Without the latter, people were not able to subsist, whereas it was possible to live without being engaged in interna-tional affairs. In international politics, the moral obligations for rulers were less stringent: “there is a system of morals calculated for princes, much more free than which ought to govern private persons.” This did not mean that princes could ignore treaties, or that public duties and obligations had less force. Hume did not have Machiavellian ideas in this respect. “The morality of the princes has the same extent, yet it has not the same force as that of pri-vate persons, and may lawfully be transgressed from a more trivial motive.” There were no fixed rules for such cases: “the practice of the world goes far-ther in teaching us the degrees of our duty, than the most subtle philosophy,


which was ever yet invented.” Natural and civil justice arose from human conventions and depended on the interest people saw in preserving peace and order. The smaller the interest, the more easily a transgression of justice in international relations would be accepted.37 Therefore,

all politicians will allow and most philosophers, that reasons of state may in particular emergencies dispense with the rules of justice, and invali-date any treaty or alliance, where the strict observance of it would be prej-udicial, in a considerable degree, to either of the contracted parties.38

It has to be noted that this quote also shows that the rules of justice could only be disregarded unilaterally in emergency situations. Hume did not propagate a realist disregard or denial of international justice as such. His emphasis was on the importance of international law, although he recognized the looser norms compared to domestic law. Hume saw a difference between the need to keep promises in the domestic situation, which were of pivotal importance to human cooperation and thus the survival of society and the need to keep to the terms of a treaty. Treaties lacked the same fundamental value. A state was able to survive without reliance on other states through treaties. The nature of the two relationships was different.39 International law had less force than national law, but it should normally be respected.

It seems likely that Hume’s appraisal of international (natural) law and the society of nations developed from his early youth. At Edinburgh University, in his early teens, he was exposed to the works of Grotius,40 and also read Pufendorf and other natural law writers. He clearly drew on their thoughts in developing his own political theory.41 Later in life, in conversations with the ministers of Louis XV, Hume appealed to “aux droits des gens et à ceux de l’humanité,”42 which also shows his appreciation of the natural law tradi-tion. Property rights and rules of international law and justice were among the most important issues the natural law writers discussed. They attempted to develop universal rules of arbitration for conflicting interests in domestic and international relations. Hume also believed in a universal human nature and in universal moral norms in support of international society.43 The pres-ervation of international society ultimately depended on the recognition of the value of the law of nations.44

International Balance of Power

Hume’s best-known essay on international relations is On the Balance of Power in which he discussed the Ancient Greek origins of the balance of power mechanism. Despite some differences with the situation in eighteenth-century Europe, he believed the basic idea behind the balance


to be identical. The central aim was to prevent domination by one big power, so that it could not execute its (belligerent) plans without opposition. Prevailing powers could be sure to meet a countervailing coalition that was often composed of their former friends and allies.45

In his view, the balance of power system was not something magical, but it was based on common sense and obvious reasoning, such as the British efforts to maintain a power balance with France. In line with his view on human nature, Hume was not blind to the negative side effects of balance politics. Sometimes wars, like those with France, which followed from the balancing act, started out justly and even with necessity. However, they were pushed too far, mainly owing to obstinacy and passion. For example, the peace of Ryswick was concluded in 1697, but it was offered as early as 1692. This delay was mostly due to imprudent British behavior.46

Hume generally praised the status quo enhancing effects of the balance of power system for both states and their citizens, whose freedom had the most to gain from a stable international order. The balance of power was a secret in politics that added to a better management of foreign affairs.47 Despite the fact that the system was sometimes fragile and could lead to a chain reaction of violence, the balance of power also prevented violent revolutions and conquests of particular states48 and it “helped” countries to respect their and other nation’s borders.49 When the balance of power functioned well, it also prevented powerful empires from abusing their posi-tions.50 Therefore, if leaders solely focused on domestic affairs, it would lead to the neglect of balancing new and established powers,51 which Hume took as a serious mistake of statesmen.

Although the mechanism itself was much debated by Hume and his contemporaries, it is an exaggeration to claim that the eighteenth century was an example of balance of power practice.52 Even so, it is plainly mis-taken to hold that Hume was “among the philosophers that opposed the policy of political-military alliances commonly known as the balance of power.”53 Equally wrong are those scholars who consider Hume’s defense of the balance of power as an attempt to promote British national interest and its rule of the world.54 It is far more likely that Hume supported the balance of power not just to justify the Whig foreign policy of his days, but also because he believed it was “guarding the general liberties of Europe,”55 which was a major concern throughout his work.

War

Hume was uneasy about war, although he recognized it as a main fea-ture of international relations. He hoped to limit war, but never expected


warfare to disappear. In contrast to, for example, Machiavelli, he never fully endorsed warfare as an instrument of conquest or power politics.56 He simply accepted the inevitability of war, not least to keep the balance of power.57 War could even be justified, for example, against a nation that threatened the freedom of other states.58 Hume saw the government as the steering body of the state59 and in times of international conflict, society’s survival would depend on a government strong enough to force all capable individuals to join in the state’s defense.60

Like the international jurists and in line with his natural law credentials, Hume thought wars needed to be just.61 However, a degree of justice was not the only Humean criterion for acceptance of war. Commenting on the pos-sible war of the British against Spain and France over the Falkland Islands in early 1771, Hume also looked at the reasonableness and the sensibility of war and he endorsed the virtue of prudence. He warned that wars com-mence between two nations, but soon drag in their neighbors; therefore, prudent leaders did not lightly risk a war.62 Any war for frivolous causes was wrong.63 Nations in war often were led by unjust principles, where any enemy action however bloody and pernicious had been countered in a sim-ilar way. He thought “the rage and violence of public war . . . is a suspension of justice among the warring parties.”64 Wars also disturbed free commerce and created lazy laborers, because they were coerced to produce, instead of relying on their own creativity and the demand of the market. Obviously, wars were expensive, leading to increased national debts of the warring par-ties; this is a development Hume strongly opposed.65 He asserted that a sov-ereign who raised an army imposed a tax on all people, thus in the process decreasing the happiness of his subjects.66 Compared to the international lawyers, Hume put far more emphasis on these other negative effects of war, because they had great negative effects on the preservation of individual freedom.

In line with his ideas on nations and national character, Hume thought that war may sometimes be a part of the national psyche. If men were regu-larly obliged to expose themselves to the greatest dangers in order to defend their country, all ordinary men became soldiers. Whether this was experi-enced as a heavy tax or a light burden depended on the nation concerned. It would be the latter for people addicted to arms, fighting for honor and re-venge, and for those who were generally not acquainted with gain, industry, and pleasure.67 Too strong a patriotic public spirit would lead to continuous war, which explains why he never fully endorsed the individual’s feelings for the nation.

According to Danford, Hume believed that the rise of civilization, which depended on the degree of freedom and the protection of property, would


eventually decrease the desire for war.68 This does not comply with Hume’s view of human nature or with his historical work. He cherished the rise of civilization, but never associated it with less warfare.

Empire

Although Hume died before the American colonies declared independence, he did express his views on questions of empire and imperialism. During most of his life, Hume seemed morally neutral about the European con-quests. He underlined the enormous importance of the colonies to the world and to Europe in particular. Unlike a number of his contemporaries, he did not think that the increased availability of precious metal was such an advantage. The conquest of the West Indies created a surge in the available amount of gold and silver in England, but this only resulted in inflation. Far more positive effects were the advancements of knowledge, the arts and the industries,69 the increased levels of commerce, and some social benefits, like the fact that men of inferior rank got the chance to raise a fortune that would otherwise have been untenable. Generally in England, not only the elite, but also the common people gained from the empire—not least because when the upper class got wealthier they had less reason to repress the lower classes,70 he argued a bit too optimistically.

Later in life, he became more critical toward colonialism, especially the related conquests, confiscation of land, and other infringements of indi-vidual liberty. Exchange on an equal basis and independence became his preferred situation. This showed most clearly in his views on the position of the American colonies.71 Early on in the debate, Hume already con-sidered their independence inevitable and desirable.72 In 1775, he called himself “an American in my principles,” and wanted the British to leave the Americans to govern or misgovern themselves as they thought proper. There was no use in attempting to rule a place so far away, let alone trying to force the American colonists to obey the rules of the English king.73 The independence of the American colonies should not cause any fear. Great economic or “geopolitical” losses could not be expected, apart from some negative influences on navigation and general commerce.74 The only serious detriment was a possible decline in reputation and authority of the English government, but this was inevitable because a war against the Americans could not be won anyway.75 According to Pocock, Hume also had domestic political considerations. He was convinced that the empire was a burden, not least financially. Hume linked the expansion of debt needed to keep the empire with political factions and fanaticism in religious affairs. Therefore, continuation of the North American empire


endangered the survival of the nation,76 which was an evil of even greater importance to Hume.

Despite his open support for American independence, Hume did not develop into a major thinker for the American cause. His Tory reputation met resistance among the Whiggish Americans, although he did exert some influence on American politicians of different persuasions. Franklin visited him several times and corresponded with him from the 1750s onward. Hume influenced Paine’s ideas on the origin of government. Hamilton called him a solid and ingenious writer and referred to his work in the last Federalist Paper. In Federalist Paper number ten, Madison was also clearly influenced by Hume, particularly the essay The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, where he maintained that a stable republic may cover a large geographical area.77

International Trade

In his attempt to understand and improve contemporary society, Hume wrote extensively on economic issues. After all, he lived on the eve of the indus-trial revolution and already saw great technological innovations, increased foreign trade, influx of capital, different ways to organize production, new accounting standards, and so on. Hume judged these developments from his philosophical perspective on human nature and his historical view on social change. Arguments for free trade were at the center of his economic thought, because he highly regarded trade as a major positive factor for both economic growth and social development.78

Free trade was an important element in Hume’s overall ideas on interna-tional relations.79 In general, he saw commerce, the greatness of a state, and the happiness of its inhabitants as positively related. Overall well-being and prosperity in society also empowered the public against the elite,80 which was also advantageous. Trade and commerce could be sources of opulence, grandeur, and military achievement, as long as they were accompanied by free government and general liberty, as evidenced by the British and the Dutch. Increases in imports and exports also led to more activity in other sectors of the economy; imported delicacies and luxuries were no threat to welfare; they were beneficial to the individual citizen.81 On this point, Hume was probably influenced by the French Physiocrat Turgot.82

Hume strongly rejected the mercantilists, their jealousy of the com-mercial success of other nations and the related concern about a positive balance of trade. Trade was a positive sum process, as he attempted to show with rudimentary reference to modern topics in economic science such as regional development and trade, the competitiveness of nations, the infant industry argument, and the issue of comparative advantage.83


Concerns about imbalances of international trade were due to jealousy and the groundless fear of gold and silver leaving the country.84 The increase of wealth and commerce in one nation normally promoted the wealth and commerce of all its neighbors. It was almost impossible for one state to f lourish on the basis of trade and industry, if it was surrounded by states that “are buried in ignorance, sloth and barbarism.”85 Hume was one of the first eighteenth-century theorists to almost fully break away from mercantilist thought. This was underpinned by his ability to connect sev-eral elements of the economic system, such as trade, money, interest, and taxes. Compared to his friend Adam Smith, he did not fully elaborate his economic insights, which make them all the more remarkable to some observers.86

In Hume’s view, foreign trade and international political power were directly related. A richer commercial society was also likely to be a greater military power,87 while the manufacturing sector was a reservoir of labor that supported the military efforts.88 “Law, order, police, discipline: these can never be carried to any degree of perfection before human reason has refined itself by exercise and by an application of the more vulgar arts, at least of commerce and manufacture.”89

Hume did not foresee perpetual peace in a world dominated by com-merce. No matter how beneficial commerce was and despite its occasional peace-promoting effects, human nature would not be changed by trade. Peace in the commercial age still depended on wise policies and the applica-tion of prudence in order to overcome pride and jealousy, the eternal sources of conflict and war. Trade made nations richer, which stimulated the devel-opment of military technology.90 Hence, in stark contrast to, for example, the Manchester School liberals of the nineteenth century, Hume did not predict, nor expect, a movement toward peace from free trade.91 Trade had its defects and the increased prosperity that resulted from it also enabled rul-ers to push forward bellicose plans. This is another fundamental difference with the views nowadays held about liberalism in IR.

To sum up, Hume’s opinion of international relations was characterized by moderation and a clear preference for the via media. His overall concern was directed toward international order, because that would be beneficial for individual freedom, property, and justice. His principles of political morality, his vision of liberty in particular, applied equally to international and do-mestic politics.92 He combined an internationalist outlook with a firm na-tional base. It is this balance between nationhood and cosmopolitanism that distinguished him and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers from mercan-tilists and nationalists,93 and from many of their English contemporaries.94 Hume did not endorse ruthless international power politics, or a revolutionary


overhaul of the contemporary world system in favor of the community of mankind. Consistent with his general philosophy and empiricism, he took the world as it was, and limited himself to recommending small steps for improvements, for example, by advocating the expansion of free trade. The Humean world was an international society of independent nations, regu-lated by basic international laws that supplement the laws of nature. These sets of laws combined were not sufficient for maintaining international order; the balance of power was also important to accomplish that. The occurrence of war was regrettable but inevitable, and sometimes even required to keep the balance. Hume did not advocate war for conquest, for that was outside his framework for just and prudent warfare. Some moral requirements were rele-vant in international relations;95 they would help to maintain order. Increased international contacts between individuals were encouraged in the strong conviction that these would improve the quality of their lives and of society in general. The relationship between Hume’s politics and his philosophy was shown in his concern for individual freedom and prosperity. International affairs were conducted by fallible individual humans, and therefore his views on human nature also applied to political activity beyond the border. Given his realistic apprehension of the human capacity, he did not think the world was destined for perpetual struggle, but chances on improvement in the in-ternational realm were limited.

IR Theory and Hume

What can one make of Hume’s views on international relations in an IR theory context?

Many international relations academics only discuss Hume in relation to his idea on the balance of power.96 The large majority leave it at that, which does not do justice to Hume’s full views on international affairs. As a conse-quence of this unbalanced appreciation, Hume is generally seen as a realist, for example, by Boucher97 and albeit hesitantly, by Walzer.98 Even Wight, despite his broad knowledge of the history of ideas, explicitly counted Hume among the realists,99 based on the essay on the balance of power and on his distinction between justice in the national and the international sphere.

Whelan’s analysis of Hume as a realist is the most extended argument available and it therefore requires a more detailed discussion. His general thesis is that the thought of Hume and Machiavelli had so much in com-mon that Hume should be counted among the political realists. Whelan means this in a broad political theory sense, but here only the application to international relations is considered. Interestingly enough, when he arrives at this point in his analysis, Whelan cannot but underline the differences


between Hume and Machiavelli. For example, the latter endorsed conquest and the expansion of national territory, whereas the former mostly distanced himself from such practices. Hume belonged to the eighteenth-century law of nations and Enlightenment writers who demanded a lawful claim, or a just basis for conquest to be morally acceptable, even though Hume did not always denounce unjust wars in his History. Contrary to Machiavelli, Hume did not relate the greatness of a nation to its military victories or its con-quests, but rather to its commercial success. As shown above, he generally opposed wars that went beyond the need to keep the balance of power.100

Hume and other liberals were not pacifists, as Whelan rightly notices. There were enough justifications in Humean theory for the use of coer-cive measures by the state, both in domestic and international politics. However, compared to thinkers like Machiavelli, Hume had a different ethical standard when it came to issues such as the necessity of political violence, violations of moral and legal principles, betrayal, and breach of promises. Certainly, Hume was not “a forerunner of Morgenthau’s modern international realism.”101 Whether this does justice to Morgenthau’s posi-tion is another matter, which shall be left aside here. Whelan finds himself in need to draw an analytical distinction between “soft” and “hard” forms of realism. Hume is mostly associated with the former, which he also labels realist liberalism and Machiavelli with the latter.102

From an English School perspective, it is clear that Whelan’s hard realism has most in common with the Hobbesian or realist tradition, while the soft realism relates to the Grotian tradition. Whelan appears to be unfamiliar with English School theory and does not consider other clas-sifications than the well-known idealist-realist dichotomy. Perhaps this is due to the wider range of his hypothesis, but for the purpose of the current analysis, it suffices to note that he makes it very clear that, despite some common ideas, Hume’s thoughts on international relations sharply differ from Machiavelli’s. Contrary to Whelan, most IR theorists are not distin-guished Hume scholars. One can therefore imagine why they are open to the idea of Hume as a realist. After all, he held that international rules of equity and justice ultimately depend upon utility; he approved of the balance of power system and did not categorically refute warfare. He also regarded the nation as the central actor in international politics and international justice was not an absolute value to him.

Still Hume was not a realist, as Whelan rightly noticed. From an English School perspective, it is particularly noteworthy that he advocated the need for just wars and firmly believed in the existence of an international society of nations. He was not blind to its anarchical traits, but never supported ruthless power politics. Indeed, his main appraisal for the balance of power


mechanism was based on the insight that the order it fostered enabled rul-ers and nations to pay more attention to liberty, prosperity, and benign and modest social change through free trade. In this respect, it is telling that he asserted that “Hobbes’s politics are fitted only to promote tyranny and his ethics to encourage licentiousness.” Hume was skeptical about the useful-ness of what he called “the philosophical fiction of the state of nature.”103

Hume was no Kantian either, as is sometimes argued.104 In his view, human nature made it impossible for people to live in peace for a very long time. While plans for perpetual peace and the role of international institu-tions were articulated in his days, Hume did not anticipate any other inter-national order than the society of states. His appreciation of the strength of feelings for the nation and the corresponding differences in national charac-ters made him see the state as the prime international actor. Hume asserted that “there is nothing more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent [emphasis added] states, connected together by commerce and policy.”105 In addition, he generally distrusted utopian or revolutionary ideas of an abstract rational nature. The idea of world peace was too remote from the “real world.”106 While Hume may have been a cosmopolitan in his intellectual and personal life, he was no cosmopolitan in the Kantian sense.

Hume was also considerably influenced by Grotius and, to a lesser extent, by Pufendorf. He had no unrealistic expectations of the peaceful effects of trade and was far too skeptical in his philosophy and too moderate in his politics to contemplate revolutionary ideas. He held that international rela-tions also were a matter of moral requirements. War was a necessary evil, an exception to the rule of peace, but sometimes also the prerequisite for attain-ing international justice.107 International society was a true society, with the balance of power a useful and justified ordering mechanism. Hume should clearly be seen as a pluralist Grotian.108

Of the current international theorists, Rengger is one of the very few who is aware of this Humean position. In a chapter written by him in International Relations in International Thought, he points to Hume’s appre-ciation of the bonds between the nations of Europe, stating that Hume “is a thinker closer to the ‘international society tradition’ than he is to realism as conventionally understood.”109 Rengger did not elaborate on this observa-tion, but this chapter confirms his impression.

Of the first generation of English School theorists, Bull had probably most in common with Hume. Although he was no classical liberal and did not elaborate in great detail on Hume’s ideas on international relations, he held a favorable opinion of his work. It is no exaggeration to claim that Bull worked in the Humean tradition, especially when it came to the foundations


of international relations. In The Anarchical Society he identified three goals of society that were similar to Hume’s laws of nature: the stability of posses-sion, the right to life, and the need to keep promises. He referred to the Scot in passing and Bull agreed with Hume’s account of the balance of power in the Ancient world.110 Like him, Bull valued natural law and saw the state as the main international actor.111 Moreover, while he did his best not to openly support order as a normative value, Bull wrote about political order in a way that can be traced back directly to Hume and the Stoics, amongst others. Like them, he contended that international political order was needed to make coexistence in society possible.112

The analysis in this chapter underlines the importance of the classi-cal liberal view on human nature, especially concerning the fundamental issue of war and peace. Hume and the other classical liberals are immune to the fundamental critique by prominent classical realists like Niebuhr and Morgenthau. The first attacked liberalism for its inability to distin-guish between man in private life and in groups. Individual man could be moral in the sense that he was able to consider the interests of others when looking at issues and on occasion even preferred those to his own. The idea of sympathy played a role in the individual mind, to an extent encour-aged through upbringing and teaching. But in social groups or societies it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to give much room for these kind of considerations. Collective egoism breaks individual altruism, not least because there is in all individuals a natural impulse to value societal cohesion. Niebuhr argued that liberals and other moralists were wrong to attempt to check these natural impulses through the development of ratio-nality and religiously inspired goodwill, which would enable the establish-ment of social harmony between all human societies and collectives. Their attempts at rational control of natural impulses, and the overlooking of the importance of power, are doomed to fail. Reason is to some extent the ser-vant of interest in a social situation and social conflict is inevitable.113

Morgenthau in Scientific Man versus Power Politics also strongly rejected the liberal, optimistic belief that human reason would be able to control and master any problem it encountered. He thought these ideas went against the forces of human nature, which determined that people were less civil, always imperfect, and the human kind never omnipotent. The idea that scientific rationalism could solve (international) conflicts was wrong and dogmatic. He completely rejected the liberal idea that in politics, it was possible to rise above messy conflicts and power struggles, for example, through moralism, rationalism, or pacifism. History taught it was futile and erroneous to expect such a change in the fundamental power-driven character of politics. There was no progress toward the good in politics. Stable situations usually give way


to conflict and the prevailing of evil.114 In Politics among Nations he added that civilization could never get rid of power struggles and replace them with cooperation, harmony of interests, or permanent peace. In domestic society personal power struggles could be and were civilized in many coun-tries, through social, political, and professional competition. This was much harder to achieve in international politics. The international struggle for power remained universal in time and space, even though this is frequently denied by scholars and politicians alike. Prime examples were liberals like Wilson and his nineteenth-century predecessors, who erroneously thought that power politics and war would become obsolete and that international harmony and permanent peace would prevail if democracy and constitu-tional government would win over absolutism and autocracy.115

While these realist criticisms may constitute a fatal blow for many forms of liberalism in IR (to be discussed in chapter 7), they are largely congruous with the classical liberal view on human nature on this point, as is con-firmed in the chapters that follow. The importance of human nature for the outcomes in world politics must be seen as a defining characteristic of the classical liberal ideas on international relations.

CHAPTER 4

Adam Smith, War, and Commerce

In contrast to David Hume, Adam Smith (1723–1790) has always been associated with international relations, particularly through his pleas for free trade. However, among his contemporaries he was best known

for his moral theory, at least most of his life. Smith was an academic and writer for most of his life, although he became a commissioner of customs in his last years. He had limited personal international experience, except for a long trip to France and Geneva as a tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch. Yet his views and interests were by no means provincial. Like his good friend Hume, Smith had more to say about international politics than is commonly understood. He frequently discussed the situation in Europe and the (American) colonies and displayed knowledge of Asia. His views on issues such as national defense, war, and empire are sometimes discussed by Smith scholars, but hardly by IR academics. With the notable excep-tion of an article by Andrew Walter, there are no comprehensive analyses of Smith’s ideas on international affairs. This is curious, given the some-times lengthy remarks on international issues that can be found in all his works, with the exception of Essays on Philosophical Subjects and Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.

In IR there are a number of erroneous interpretations of Smith, because of partial taking into account of his ideas, or failures to appreciate the link between his philosophical position and his thoughts on international affairs. Therefore, after the presentation of his ideas on international politics, this chapter proposes an alternative interpretation of Smith’s overall position in IR theory.


Adam Smith and IR

Adam Smith’s ideas on international relations offered a fairly rounded pic-ture, ranging from his thoughts on the individual attachment to the nation to the different aspects of the behavior of states in their mutual relations.

Nation

Smith, like other Enlightenment thinkers, attempted to comprehend human nature. Moral philosophy had a central task, which was, to explain fore-most certain behavioral patterns that were seen as moral. He was looking for the reasons behind those practices, which in his view arose from the human mind and human interaction. In Smith’s view, it was a balancing act between virtue and the avoidance of evil or injustice. The precise content of the moral features differed between societies. Moral rules grew spontane-ously, as people judge themselves and others by the standards of propriety reigning in their society. Smith thought about this in terms of his construct of the imaginative “impartial spectator,” which represented the highest standards to judge the suitability and proportionality of human motives and behavior in particular circumstances. The moral rules indicated what injuries individuals could be subjected to, or what rights they had. Smith believed in universal basic natural rights, his “system of natural liberty,” which needed protection by law and enforcement by government.1

He saw a world made up of different nations, all with varying laws and customs following local variations of propriety. Like Hume, Smith regarded nations as objects of human passion; the honor of the nation was part of the honor of its citizens. Therefore, national history was a source of some-times negative, but more often positive emotions.2 Smith distinguished two principles for the love for the nation. The first was the respect and reverence for the current form of government or constitution and the second the ear-nest desire to establish the safety, happiness, and general welfare of fellow citizens. In peaceful times, these principles would easily coexist, he asserted, perhaps a little too optimistically. Yet in times of discontent, only wise patri-ots were able to decide what course of action would be best.3 This was not meant as an unconditional surrender to the politicians. Smith’s politics was about man of character and public spirit, who governed in moderately and in tempered ways, or as he called it, in line with the sentiment of propriety.4

Smith did not engage in the debate on the differences between nations and national characters. Usually he was neutral and factual, arguing that “the different situations of different ages and countries are apt . . . to give different characters to the generality of those who live in them.” There were general

Smith, War, and Commerce ● 59

and natural rules and practices of propriety in all societies, just as there were plain principles of right and wrong in every country. They all served to keep a society together.5 Geographical circumstances were also important for the differences between nations. Smith asserted that Africa, parts of Asia, and herding peoples like the Tartars had always been barbarous and uncivilized, because of a lack of basic conditions sufficient for economic and cultural development. Examples were difficult conditions for defense, lack of fertile land, and bad access to communications by land or waterways.6 Sometimes he showed signs of national prejudice, for example, when he directly related national interests and national characters. He stated that nations of manu-facturers, like Britain and France, naturally breed people that are frank, liberal, and good fellows. Yet the inhabitants of Holland and Hamburg, trading nations that could only grow rich through parsimony and privation, were characterized by narrowness, meanness, and a selfish disposition.7

In general, Smith thought a man was always displaced in a foreign country, no matter how polite and human the local people were.8 Given the strength of the ties between the individual and the nation, Smith did not follow the cosmopolitan Stoic views that otherwise substantially influenced him. The notion of world citizenship was at best a very loose idea, because the ties between smaller social units were much stronger and more important to the individual. It was natural for humans to put family, friends, and the nation first, normally also in that particular order. There was a difference between the love of your own country and the love for mankind. Both sentiments existed, but independently of each other. Smith thought countries are loved for their own sake, not as a part of “the great society of mankind.” He was not at all sure such a society existed, but if it did, it would always be served best by individuals who directed their love toward a particular portion of it. This was within the sphere of man’s abilities and understanding and in line with the natural system of human affections.9 People had stronger feelings for those who were near to them. He gave the example of an earthquake in China: people would be shocked to learn about such a natural disaster, but they would also quickly continue with their own lives. They were far more concerned by much smaller events with a direct effect on them.10

Universal benevolence and practical good offices could seldom be stretched across the nation’s borders, but at the same time Smith recognized that the idea of goodwill also knew no boundary, it could even embrace the immensity of the universe. A wise and virtuous man was at all times willing to sacrifice his own interest to the public interest of his country. In turn, that country should sacrifice its interest to the interest of the great society of all sensible and intelligent beings, of which God himself was the immediate administrator and director. Yet this administration of the great universal


system, the protection of happiness of all rational and sensible beings was the business of God and not of man. Humans just had the duty to mind the happiness of relatives, friends, and country.11 In a world of different coun-tries, the state was the most important actor to conduct international rela-tions. In Smith’s thought, cosmopolitan unity was beyond human ability and therefore it was not a serious political goal.

International society

For all his doubts about cosmopolitanism, Smith certainly saw and wished some order in international relations. He did not regard world politics as perpetual anarchy. There were a number of rules and regulations for inter-state relations. Outcomes of international affairs were judged by his concern for individual liberty, which was best served by international stability and economic openness.

Compared to Hume, Smith was more critical about the binding force of the laws of nations, which he described as “the different regulations that subsist betwixt different independent states, with respect both to the mutual intercourse betwixt them in time of peace and what privileges may be granted them, and to the effects of the success in war and what is permitted as lawful in the time that war is waged betwixt different nations.”12 Smith criticized this early international law, because he believed in individual responsibility. The existing laws of nations often failed to protect the most obvious rule of international justice: that only the warring party receive punishment. He noticed regretfully that in full compliance with the laws of nations, but without a relation to justice, innocent people suffered instead of the guilty by having their land and houses seized or getting killed.13 He wrote posi-tively about Grotius’ efforts to systematically describe the principles of the law of nations. The Rights of War and Peace was “the most complete work that has thus far been written on that subject.” He particularly valued it for comprising the rules of natural jurisprudence. He saw those in good opposi-tion to the existing positive laws that deviated from natural law, through the meddling of political influence from different quarters of society. Systems of positive laws could never be on par with the rules of natural justice.14 It is noticeable that Smith articulated a classical liberal distrust of international law before its great expansion in the following centuries. His divide between “good” natural-law-based international regulation and “bad” positive law would become a characteristic feature for classical liberal thought on inter-national law. It follows from the basic distrust of attempts to construct a better society through lawmaking and the greater faith in liberty and spon-taneous order.


A disadvantage of international law was that it was not as precise as pri-vate or national public law. Quoting Grotius, Smith asserted that there were hardly occasions when a certain rule was agreed with the common consent of all nations or observed by them at all times.15 He also recognized, though did not approve, that leaders of independent and neighboring countries, lacking a superior, live in constant fear and suspicion of one another. Every nation expected its own downfall when the neighboring countries rose in power. The laws of nations were “often very little more than mere pretension and profession.” Justice was hardly ever observed in war, and negotiation, truth, and fair dealing were often disregarded and treaties violated. Worse, that violation was hardly ever punished. Instead the “ambassador who dupes the minister of a foreign nation is admired and applauded, even when only small interests are involved.” This is derived from “the noble love of our own country,”16 which may be interpreted as a sign of Smith’s rejection of nation-alist sentiments.17

Smith was pessimistic about the actual binding force of international law, but still thought a sovereign had the duty to maintain the institutions (in the meaning of common practices) of international society. These were important, because they helped to defend or increase the general welfare of a particular country, for example, through the facilitation of commerce. Diplomacy stood out in this respect. In countries where building perma-nent structures to protect trade was not an option, permanent representa-tives should be posted to that end—even in places like Constantinople and Russia, where Smith did not detect obvious political reasons to maintain diplomatic ties.18 The immunity of diplomats should be sacred and pro-tected, and their homes “asylums for offenders.” Ambassadors stood outside the system of justice of the country to which they were posted and they should be exempt from taxes, just like the sovereign they represented. In order not to offend the hosts, diplomats should be cautious in exercising these rights, and involvement in conspiracies against their host country was a good reason for imprisonment. Smith thought diplomats were important for smooth communications in international relations. They were useful sources of information about the country to which they were posted. He disagreed with Grotius, who allegedly considered ambassadors “spies in resi-dence.” In Smith’s view, the increased level of international commerce made it impossible to preserve peace “for a month,” without permanent repre-sentatives who sorted out the daily frictions associated with international trade.19 Nondiplomatic foreigners should also be allowed to settle and enjoy the protection of the laws of the particular country, because they brought prosperity, commerce, and improvements in arts.20 In war, neutral nations had done no injury and therefore should not suffer injury. Their neutrality


should be respected, and they should be able to trade with both sides in a conflict.21

Natural liberty could not be protected by diplomacy alone. Smith and Hume agreed that order in international relations was preliminary the result of balance of power politics.22 Smith did not write much about the bal-ance, except for a few historical passages.23 Yet it is clear that he consid-ered the balance an important instrument for peace and tranquility. From a domestic politics point of view, international stability is a conditio sine qua non for all the different groups in society. Therefore, the balance of power was the most extensive form of public benevolence statesmen can offer,24 since it provided both international and national order. Apparently Smith did not regard the balance of power mechanism as an example of the work-ings of his invisible hand mechanism. Still, the balance of power can easily be seen as a spontaneous ordering mechanism, which produces stability as the unintended outcome of the action of self-interested states aiming for international dominance.

Despite the many differences he saw between countries, Smith repeat-edly treated “Europe” as a coherent economic and cultural unit, which was a widespread contemporary practice. He wrote at length about the “policy of Europe,” as well as the good and bad traits in the economic pol-icies in a range of states, including England, Scotland, and countries on the Continent.25 When he discussed their relationship with the American colonies, he spoke of “Europe considered as one great country.”26 In the con-text of restrictions of the corn trade, Smith argued that when all European states implemented a liberal system of free trade, they would become like provinces of a great empire in an economic sense. This would result in the absence of economic scarcity and the disappearance of famine. He noted that this vision was nowhere near implementation and trade restrictions in corn were almost everywhere in place.27 The resemblance of Smith’s ideas to the current European Union (EU) is striking. He assumed there was a com-mon cultural denominator among the European nations, although it would be anachronistic to see in it an argument for political unity. However, it may serve as counterevidence to those modern commentators who argue that the EU can never be more than a loose trading area because of its alleged lack of a common cultural base.

War

IR theorists often equate liberalism with pacifism or a desire to abolish war. Insofar as the classical liberals Hume and Smith are incorporated in these ideas, these modern scholars are plainly wrong, because both Scots regarded


war as a normal feature of international society, which was informed by their view on human nature.

Smith thought the idea of human sympathy could not be stretched indef-initely28 and emphasized the relationship between trade and conflict. Smith was a critic of many contemporary international customs, especially the sen-timent of international jealousy. Like Hume, he argued that it was wrong for the French and the British to envy each other’s happiness and prosperity, the cultivation of land, advancements in arts, manufacturing, and culture, or the increase in commerce, and even the security and number of their ports. The only good reason for suspicion was an increase in the neighbor’s naval and military power.29 The Anglo-French animosity was an example of lost opportunity, even though, he added that being neighbors meant “they are necessarily enemies.”30 For nonneighboring countries, a state of tran-quility was easier to achieve, because natural prejudices and hatred seldom extended beyond immediate bordering countries.31 One of the least noted aspects of Smith’s writings is the importance he attached to defense, military organization, and patriotic and heroic military virtues.32 However, he never blindly endorsed war and like Hume broadly remained within the confines of the just war tradition.

Smith thought the occurrence of war needed to be limited, but it could sometimes be an inevitable option for leaders of states. Wars should not commence without a morally justified ground. He defined justice, both domestically and internationally, as “the abstention from injurious behavior to others” and thought of it as the best way to regulate relations between people domestically and between different peoples.33 War needed “the same proper foundation as a law suit before a court of justice.” He used the com-mon Grotian examples when discussing justified violent action, such as the violation of property rights by another state, the killing of one’s citizens by another state, or when the other state imprisons citizens without recourse to justice. In such cases, Smith saw it is as the duty of a government to pro-tect its citizens. Likewise, punishment was demanded when another nation continuously failed or refused to repay its debts, or if it violated the terms of a contract in different ways. “Every offence of the sovereign of one country against the sovereign of another, or of the sovereign against the subject, or the subject of one country against the subject of another, without giving rea-sonable satisfaction, may be the cause of a war.” Retaliation and preventive action were also justified in clear cases of conspiracy, or when territories were threatened.34

Like other theorists in the just war tradition, Smith added restric-tions to the behavior in war. In ancient times, all people were involved in the decision of waging a war35 and therefore it was justified that they


all suffered in war. But contemporary wars were fought because of kings and sovereigns who engaged in imprudent wars and foolish peace, as the one concluded in Utrecht.36 Smith therefore disagreed with his teacher Hutcheson, who thought that all people of a country were indirectly accountable for war through their support of their government.37 Foreign captives were entitled to a humane treatment and Smith highly regarded the practice of exchanging prisoners after a war, with the losing state paying the balance. In the case of a conquest, the leaders of the territory should be replaced, but the customs of the conquered people had to be left unaltered. It was also good that ambassadors remained at their posts dur-ing hostilities. Somewhat surprisingly, because not much is known about his religious feelings,38 Smith gave most credit to the Pope for establish-ing these rules, in his (secular, EvdH) role as the common Father to all humans.39

Besides questions related to justice, obvious and major disadvantages of war were its costs and the waste of resources involved. Public expendi-ture on war totaled to enormous amounts. For example, the wars by Britain against the French, in 1688, 1702, 1742, and 1756 resulted in a total British national debt of one hundred and forty-five million pounds. In addition, there were great losses related to missed economic opportunities.40 Wars were normally paid for by contracting debt and this could be in line with sound economic policies, as long as the dues were paid back. However, poli-ticians rather spend public money than repay debts. Therefore, Smith pro-posed that wars be paid by taxes that were immediately felt by the public, which would surely diminish the desire for wars and would also limit their length.41 Smith acknowledged that some parties benefit from war. The Italian cities Venice, Genoa, and Pisa made fortunes from rendering services to the armies of the crusaders. Accordingly, “the most destructive frenzy that ever befell the European nations was a source of opulence to these republics.”42 But when a nation became opulent, the general warrior spirit faded away, because rich countries did not call upon their citizens to fight a war. They hired foreign mercenaries instead.43 This was a negative develop-ment, which Smith proposed could partly be redressed by public education. It would not only encourage order, decency, and respect for the government, but also teach a martial spirit.44

As is evident from this last remark, Smith did not think that all was bad about war. Warfare was the noblest and complicated of all arts, and it could have great effects on personal character building.45 A man of spirit and ambition would see in a foreign war a chance to gain fame and honor, despite all the chaos and bloodshed involved.46 In war, men learned to overcome the fear of death associated with weak people. Military men


developed the important virtue of self-command, the most distinguishing feature in the character of the favorite heroes of all ages. It was the virtue from which all other virtues seemed to derive. Soldiers were prepared to die in fights in faraway places. This was against their personal interests, but this willingness to sacrifice stemmed from the strongest passions of public spirit and the sense of duty and propriety.47 However, these posi-tive elements were no reason for Smith to actively endorse warmongering public policies.

Individual liberty could only prosper in a stable international environ-ment. Questions of war and defense needed to be taken seriously. Human society would always coexist with violence, but in anarchy, there were no chances for the expansion of natural liberty. That was one of the reasons for Smith’s active participation in the contemporary public debate on Scottish defense. He wrote extensively about military organization, strategy, and his-tory.48 He thought that raising an army was the first duty of the sovereign. In an advanced society this army would be small in number and be manned by specialists and professionals. This was required by the invention of fire-arms and general improvements in the art of warfare, besides the principle of the division of labor.49 Unlike many of his friends whom he regularly met in a society called the Poker Club, with Hume and Ferguson among them, Smith did not favor a Scottish militia.50 Militias were nonpermanent and demanded that people with different professional backgrounds would also act as soldiers. Militias were therefore inferior to standing armies and national defense should not be a matter of part-time soldiers.51 At best, mili-tias should act as reserves, or fulfill an educational and moral role by setting examples for others.

Contrary to Fitzgibbons’ assertion,52 Smith preferred the establishment of standing armies in civilized nations throughout his career.53 It may be right that history showed that armies are dangerous to individual liberty and that Smith sometimes exaggerated the benevolent sides of a standing army.54 This is surely not a sound enough basis to judge Smith as “a non consistent liberal.” He was not blind to the possibility that an army could become a threat to civil liberty, but thought this would not be the case as long as the army was placed under the civil command of the sovereign. In many cases, the army could also act as a protector of freedom because it put down small internal strife. Another advantage of standing armies was, paradoxically, the expenses involved. Only the most prosperous nations could afford the best defense and since these were also the most civilized nations, civiliza-tion in general would be spread through them winning wars,55 although this was not enough reason for Smith to endorse wars for the sole aim of the expansion of civilization. Militias were purely defensive forces, and were


homebound, as Neimanis expressed it: “in Kiplingesque words, the white men’s burden cannot be carried by militia.”56

As noted above, commerce and war were related in Smith’s view; he reg-ularly referred to the bellicose side effects of international trade. It enabled countries to carry on foreign wars and to keep fleets and armies in distant places.57 Insufficient defense was a danger to the stability of the state, which in its turn would inevitably lead to a loss in national wealth. This was reason for Smith to famously argue that “defense is more important than opulence.” He did not think that economic interdependence promoted a harmony of interests between societies.58 Only the combined efforts of diplomats and the military could ensure prosperity through trade. Admittedly, Smith (like Hume) also pointed out some peace- enhancing traits of commerce, for example, the different individual virtues that were directly related to the act of trade. Yet he did not foresee, nor predict, a development toward peace from commerce and trade alone.59 Peace in the commercial age still depended on measures of “high politics,” like building strong nations and wise statesman-ship, supported by a martial spirit of the people and, if needed, the use of force.60 War was not one of his foreign policy goals, yet its occurrence was as inevitable in the commercial age as it was in earlier times.

Free Trade

Of course, Smith was an ardent defender of free trade for different reasons. He took position against mercantilism, the political economy expression of special interest, most notably those of merchants and manufacturers with a natural desire for monopoly and the shifting of risks.61 Smith saw the nation as a society of all wage earners, instead of just the property-holding, cultural elite. He rejected the idea that statesmen would be able to plan the economic affairs of the nation. Mercantilism focused on the transfer of wealth, whereas Smith concentrated on the production of wealth.62 The free market and free trade offered the best possibilities for all people to improve their position. There should be no place for governmental protection in the economic realm and there was no ground for the mercantilist assertion that all human beings, whatever their chosen purposes or paths of action, must regard themselves as politically defined entities. The dividing issue in the debate about economics was essentially of a political and philosophical nature.63

Concerning trade, Smith famously asserted: “what is prudence in the con-duct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.” If a foreign country could supply cheaper or better goods than domestic industry, a nation should employ its industry in an area where it did have


an advantage.64 Governmental efforts to control the import and export of money and precious metals were fruitless, as were concerns over the balance of trade. No nation could be ruined by a negative balance of trade.65 Smith, like Hume, thought that policies to preserve the balance of payments were misguided. There was no reason why that balance could not look after itself; almost all regulations that distorted trade were founded on absurd notions. When conducted without force or constraint, trade was always advanta-geous to both parties in terms of increased annual revenues, even though the wealth would not always be distributed equally within a state.66 Smith supported free trade with the Irish and supported the idea of the American colonies to treat all nations alike in matters of duties.67

Smith disapproved of the idea among politicians that their interest lay in beggaring their neighbors, in the false belief that trade was a zero sum game. Countries looked jealously at the increase in wealth of other nations and considered those gains as their own loss. In contrast, commerce among individuals as well as nations, “ought naturally to be” a bond of union and friendship, although Smith was careful and realistic enough not to write that trade in fact was or would become such a bond. He readily admitted that trade could not overcome human nature, manifested, for example, in the violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind, beyond the justified concerns for security and international order summed up above. In general, even the most foolish ambitions of kings and princes could still not match the immense welfare losses resulting from the jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. Trade would remain an eternal source for discord and ani-mosity, but the mischief of the tradesmen toward their fellow citizens could and should be prevented. In every country, it was always in the interest of the majority of people to have access to free commerce and trade.68

This puts his attitude toward war in a clearer perspective. Smith thought that mercantilism was worse than war; it was “the silent killer” that did not attract enough attention compared to high profile public violence. Trade was good from a power political standpoint: more trade with your enemies means better ability for defense against them. More trade would shift the focus of international relations from military affairs toward diplomacy69 and this would stimulate the development of international society. The balance of power was the main mechanism for ensuring international stability.

Contrary to common modern perception, Smith was no absolute free trader. In a few cases, he thought it was warranted to restrict trade by putting burdens on foreign industry to the advantage of domestic industry. His con-cern for industry involved in national defense comes first in this respect. In relation to “high politics,” trade restrictions were justified, even though they bred monopoly and other disadvantages. Smith insisted that defense was of


more importance than opulence. The wealth of a foreign nation could be dan-gerous; it allowed them to keep fleets and armies, and the opportunity to develop superior weaponry. Second, when a trade war broke out, retaliatory measures had to be allowed. Third, shortly after trade was interrupted by, for example, a war, the domestic industry would need time to recover its com-petitiveness. Fourth, there was a case to equalize the terms of trade between domestic and foreign competitors, especially when there were differences in taxation. Special interests always attempted to limit free trade beyond these exceptions, Smith noted with some disgust. Of course, he overlooked the ex-tent to which his own exceptions opened the door for these practices. Later classical liberals had more historical evidence of this and therefore often called for less or no exceptions at all to the free trade rule. Smith may have been aware of this, because he accurately predicted: “to expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.”70

Empire and American Independence

Smith applied his system of natural liberty universally and was generally hostile toward imperialism, colonialism, and slavery both in case of the American colonies and to the less developed parts of the world. He strongly opposed oppression and economic exploitation related to colonialism. It was unjust and harmful to both the colonizers and the colonized, because it went against his ideas of justice.71 In contrast to liberal successors who defended imperialism, like Mill, Smith was broad-minded in his analysis of unfa-miliar societies and he was not prejudiced against other people. Smith’s most important difference with these later liberals “who turned to empire,” was that he did not think that Western society was superior or that Europeans had a historical role to further advance or educate other nations. Following the Scottish Enlightenment fashion to analyze the different societal devel-opments of countries in terms of historical stages, he argued that these other societies were in one of the three earlier stages of development (hunters, shepherds, or agriculture). In principle, they could also advance to higher stages, with commercial society as the ultimate ideal.72 Besides Britain, only Holland had entered this last stage. France, Spain, and Portugal still had political systems that were too illiberal, authoritarian, and oppressive.73

The most important lesson Smith thought needed to be drawn from the American experience was the crucial role played by freedom. It was not the wisdom and policy of European governments that peopled and cultivated America. They only left disorder and did many injustices to the settlers. Europe deserved credit only for the education and the great views of the


founding settlers. The main reason behind the colonies’ prosperity was the inability of their “mother countries” to strictly govern them. They grew rich owing to the abundance of good and cheap land, combined with several freedoms, the opening of a new and inexhaustible market to all commodi-ties, new divisions of labor, higher productivity, new sets of exchanges, and improvements in arts and sciences.74

Europe “considered as one great country” benefited from the coloniza-tion of America through the introduction of new products and commodi-ties, increased governmental revenues, and the empowerment of the military might of the (British) empire. The discovery of the East Indies was of even greater importance to foreign commerce, even though European govern-ments made the mistake of setting up exclusive trading companies like the Dutch East India Company. This meant that the fruits of real free trade were not harvested, which, according to Smith, constituted one of the worst violations of the sacred rights of mankind.75 Trade-related advantages were shared with other nations, while the inconveniences of keeping colonies, for example, their defense, were the sole burden of the colonizer. The English colonies could afford low taxes because they did not contribute to the defense of England, even though the British defended them.76 For Smith, this was another reason to argue against British colonial rule.

In a paper dated 1778 (but discovered in 1929), Smith provided more de-tail on his views on the American question. He initially distinguished four possible solutions: First, the complete submission of America, with a contri-bution of all colonies toward the expenses of the Empire; second, complete freedom for America, without any bonds with Britain; third, the (near) resto-ration of the old system, for example, with Crown-appointed governors but without contributions from the colonies for defense, and; fourth, submitting a part of America to the British, with the rest becoming independent. Smith thought the first three options were very unlikely, for various reasons that need not be elaborated upon here. The fourth option was the most probable, but it was also the most unhappy outcome for Great Britain.

Therefore Smith favored a federal union with parts of America with com-mon representation and a constitution. Canada should be returned to France and the Floridas to Spain. This incurred less expenses and the advantages of parting as friends seemed substantial—for example, the natural formation of alliances in international political affairs. The other European nations would consider this outcome shameful to Great Britain, and so probably, it would be too damaging to national pride. More importantly, it also went against the private (financial) interests of the rulers. Smith did not expect his solution to become reality, because it would require more statesmanship than was available on either side of the Atlantic. Full separation was the


more likely outcome. With foresight, it seemed to him inevitable that blood would be shed, even though it would be impossible for Britain to lay down its rules by military action.77

In this context, Smith referred to himself as “a solitary philosopher” without support. Yet he was not alone in his plea for a constitutional union. Franklin, Lord Kames, and Governor Pownall had suggested such schemes before him. Although without success in the American case, it is sometimes argued that the model of constitutional union was implemented in the case of the parliamentary union with Ireland of 1800, under the leadership of Pitt the Younger, who was strongly influenced by Smith.78

His plan for America was another sign that Smith was not the one-sided economist he is often taken for. He showed great awareness of contempo-rary international questions and offered solutions and opinions consistently informed by his concern for the expansion of individual liberty. Starting from his view on human nature, he regarded the state as the prime interna-tional actor. World politics was more anarchical than domestic politics, but it offered sufficient opportunity for international order. He had high regard for the institutions of international society, which would enable such an order in which individuals could prosper, not least through free trade.

While he does not refer to Smith, Robert Jackson held similar views in The Global Covenant. Most importantly, the book is “an essay on international freedom,” and international freedom itself “a specific historical expression of classical liberalism.” International society and its institutions constitute the best defense of international freedom, because it allows people to live their own lives, under their own rulers, in independent sovereign countries. Jackson probably does not consider himself a classical liberal; for example, he rejects political analysis on the basis of a view on human nature. Yet in the course of his argument many classical liberals insights pass through, not least about human fallibility, the fundamental notion that all politics is human action, that human action has unintended consequences, that capacity of the human reason is limited, that politics and values cannot be separated, or that war is an inevitable human institution.79

IR and Adam Smith

Compared to Hume, Smith is less often mentioned in IR texts and, in the few cases it appears his views are often misinterpreted.80 As noted before, he figures in texts on international economics, but there are hardly any articles on his views on international relations as a whole; nor is he mentioned in many general overview articles on the liberal tradition in IR. M.J. Smith wrote a chapter on the liberal tradition in IR without considering Smith (or


Hume for that matter). Instead, he focused on Kant and (predominantly) nineteenth-century thinkers such as Bentham, Cobden, Bright, and both the Mills.81 Burchill follows this one-sided example in a popular textbook, and only refers to Smith in a few minor cases related to economics.82 This approach may be regarded as common IR practice. If Smith’s name is men-tioned by IR scholars, it is almost also exclusively in relation to trade and economics. His ideas on imperialism are mentioned in a few minor cases, while in many other instances his name is just dropped without much con-sideration of his ideas.83

The point is not that all these references are erroneous, but that they are incomplete and fail to appreciate Smith’s ideas on international rela-tions in full. Sometimes this incomplete picture leads to mistakes. Many modern commentators, most influentially Doyle,84 but also writers such as Howard,85 Oneal and Russett,86 and Panke and Risse87 erroneously present Smith as an early proponent of the thesis that economic interdependence leads to peace. These examples are further evidence of the rather sloppy way international political theory is treated by IR theorists.

Of course, there are exceptions, for there is a small number of writers who have analyzed Smith’s views on international politics in more depth. Polanyi gave a critical, but generally fair representation of his work, although his focus was still mainly economic. He pointed out Smith’s distrust of the ruling elites, called him “the initiator of anti-imperialism,” and gave him credit for anticipating the American Revolution.88 Carr though erroneously regarded him as the founder of the laissez-faire harmony of interest doctrine in international relations. He argued that Smith’s followers, among whom Carr counted J.S. Mill, T.H Green, Bastiat, and Bagehot, stretched this notion too far by bringing it into the realm of nations, instead of limiting themselves to individuals. Carr showed his Marxist credentials in his crit-icism of Smith’s free trade principles, arguing erroneously that free trade was never accepted outside Britain and that “biologically and economically, the doctrine of the harmony of interests was tenable only if you left out of account the interest of the weak who must be driven to the wall, or called in the next world to redress the balance of the present.”89

It is interesting to note that Carr presented Smith as the quintessential arch-utopian in international relations, which is not warranted at all, as this chapter shows. Indirectly Hammarlund supported this view by solely referring to Smith as a major influence on Richard Cobden,90 a writer who fits Carr’s description far better. This is discussed in chapter 5, where it also becomes apparent that Cobden continually misinterpreted Smith. Brown, Nardin, and Rengger pointed out that Smith was “always conscious of the need to mod-erate the cosmopolitan policy implications of the laws of political economy


by giving due weight to the requirements to preserve national power.”91 They rightly noted that Smith was not a cosmopolitan and that he cared about the state, but they missed the point that for Smith there is no necessary link between “the laws of political economy” and “cosmopolitan policy implica-tions.” Hurrell also showed a deeper than average understanding of the clas-sical liberal ideas on international relations. He recognized that Smith put far more emphasis on security and national power than many contemporary liberal commentators on globalization are aware of.92

The most extensive analysis of Smith’s views of international relations came from Andrew Walter. He forcefully and convincingly argued against those IR theorists like Carr, Wight, Waltz, Gilpin, and Howard, who con-sidered Smith a revolutionist, a cosmopolitan, or a founder of liberal inter-nationalism. Walter rightly noted that this rests more on “a tendency to read back nineteenth century ideas into Smith,” than a close analysis of the Scot’s writings and their societal context. Besides emphasizing his view of human nature, Walter underlined that Smith saw perpetual sources of con-flict resulting from international anarchy. There was no Smithian belief in a natural order of harmony at the international level. International order was needed for the greatest degree of natural liberty, but contrary to the nineteenth-century liberals, Smith demanded an active role for the state in international relations. Commerce alone would not lead to peace; a strong defense was a far more appropriate means. Walter reckoned Smith should predominantly be portrayed as a realist.93

On the basis of his views on war, balance of power, and international law, one can conclude that Smith was certainly more of a realist than a Kantian. Remarkably though, the Grotian option is overlooked by Walter despite noticing that Smith offered a bridge between realist and liberal analyses of the relationship between power and wealth in international relations.94 Walter overemphasized the “combatant” parts, and understated the impor-tance of the Grotian traits in Smith’s ideas on world politics. Smith and Hobbes differed in many respects, especially concerning the role of the state in the life of the individual. The Scot was no Hobbesian in domestic,95 or in international politics. He put far more emphasis on the value of inter-national society, the need for just war, and adherence to the principles of natural law rather than the contemporary practice in the relations between nations. His views on the negative sides of warfare and glorification of the state must also be taken into account. Smith cannot be regarded a realist; nor was he a forerunner of nineteenth-century liberal nationalism and impe-rialism. Fleischacker96 was partly right to decouple Smith from nationalism, but wrong to present his ideas as “pacific cosmopolitan,” which is the same term the influential IR scholar Doyle often uses.


In the nineteenth century, some scholars had already noted that Smith was not an “apostle for perpetual peace.”97 In his political philosophy, Smith rejected utopianism for both moral and epistemological reasons. He con-sidered utopian theories as speculative philosophical constructions, which failed to take into account individual behavior in concrete situations. This type of thinking was far too rationalistic for his taste. External defense was the first and most important task of the state,98 and he never thought the need for that would diminish. This is also a sign of his nonutopian expec-tations about international violence. His view on human nature did not permit such thoughts. He rejected revolutions and did not support schemes for the creation of a supranational state. Even the promotion of free trade, while a necessity for many reasons, was not expected to substantially change the nature of international affairs. War and the balance of power remained of such importance to Smith’s views on international relations that it is impossible to see him as a Kantian.99

There is the strongest evidence to see Smith as a Grotian. While he did not elaborate on it, Knutsen is one of the few IR theorists who established a relation between Smith and the natural law tradition,100 just like a number of Smith scholars did before him, most notably Teichgraeber.101 More gener-ally, the influence of Grotius and Pufendorf on Scottish legal thinking was significant. In the first half of the eighteenth century, many Scottish stu-dents, but not Hume or Smith, went to Leiden and Utrecht to attend private classes on the ideas of these natural law scholars.102 Smith studied Grotius’ and Pufendorf ’s work throughout his life.103 Of these two, the influence of Grotius appears most profound.104 Several of the Dutchmen’s works were in his private library, often in several editions, like The Rights of War and Peace. He explicitly referred to Grotius in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Lectures on Jurisprudence, despite the contemporary custom to work without exact references.105

Within the Grotian tradition, Smith leaned to the pluralist side, just like Hume. This is not surprising, given their comparable views on human nature. The institutions of the international society of states provided some order, in particular diplomacy, the principles of international natural law, and (just) war, and the balance of power. Without order, free trade could not increase the material and immaterial welfare of all people. Imperialism and colonialism largely had a negative influence in this respect. Like Vattel,106 Smith believed in the value of an international society of states, founded on the mutual recognition of the sovereignty and legal equality of states.107

The analysis shows there are no serious signs of a revolutionary or Kantian persuasion in the views on international relations of the two great-est eighteenth-century classical liberals. Clearly they were not visionaries


for a “society of peace and freedom” as Ebeling erro neously asserts.108 It would be easier to classify both writers as realists, but closer scrutiny reveals they are pluralist Grotians. Their views differed substantially from most common ideas held on them in IR, but also from the regular perspectives on liberalism and IR. The analysis of the ideas on international relations of Mises and Hayek will show whether these views were extended into the twentieth century.

CHAPTER 5

Ludwig von Mises, Capitalism, and Peace

Like Hume and Smith, Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (1881–1973) is mainly known for certain parts of his work. Of the four classical liberal thinkers studied in this book, Mises has written the most on

international relations. Two of his books, Nation, State and Economy (1919) and Omnipotent Government (1944) were exclusively devoted to international topics, while he also discussed international issues in many other pieces. This is not surprising, since his life was deeply marked by the two world wars. Born in Lemberg, in the eastern part of the Austrian Empire, he served as an officer in the Austrian army in the First World War. In 1934 he escaped from Nazism, first to Geneva and from there to America in 1940. He became a United States citizen and lived in New York City until his death.1

In interwar Austria, Mises was one of the most influential and most famous economists, through a position at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. Besides his full-time duties at the chamber he published numerous books and newspaper coeditorials. He was the leading thinker of the third gen-eration of the Austrian School of Economics, taking over from his mentor Eugen Von Böhm-Bawerk who worked in the tradition established by Carl Menger. Mises is most famous for his writings on the epistemology of eco-nomic theory, the theory of the business cycle, subjectivist economics, the theory of money, and especially for his fatal blow to socialist economics.2 Early in the 1920s he showed that socialism could never work because of the lack of a price system, which makes it impossible to make economic calculations. Socialist planning systems fail, because there is no ground for determining the value of commodities or services.3


Besides being a productive author, Mises was also an influential teacher. He never held a full professorship, but acted as an unsalaried Privatdozent to the faculty of law at the University of Vienna, where he taught weekly seminars between 1913 and 1938. In addition, Mises organized his now famous Privatseminar for students with a doctorate, held every fortnight at his office in the Chamber of Commerce, from 1920 to 1934. Around twenty-five selected students and guests gathered to discuss economics, social philosophy, sociology, logic, and the epistemology of human action.4 He became the driving force behind the intellectual development of the important fourth-generation Austrians, many of whom such as Hayek, Machlup, Haberler, and Morgenstern became professors at top American universities. After the Second World War, Mises lectured at New York University Business School and again succeeded in attracting and guiding an increasingly important libertarian following, among them Israel Kirzner, Murray Rothbard, Hans Sennholz, and Bettina Bien Greaves.5 Many of his students recall being struck by his gentleness and humor in personal contact, in part because he had a reputation (“fully justified,” according to his wife) for being uncompromising in academic and public debate.6

In this chapter, Mises’ economics is hardly touched upon, because it has been analyzed at length by numerous other authors.7 Here the focus is on his international political thought, a largely overlooked area. This neglect is partly due to his own friends and followers. For example, it is telling that out of the sixty-six contributions in a two-volume Festschrift offered to Mises on his ninetieth birthday,8 not one seriously analyzes his ideas on international relations. Despite its many references to international politics, the same holds for a book commemorating his magnum opus Human Action,9 while his views on international relations are briefly and incompletely touched upon in one contribution (out of twenty) in a 1956 collection of essays to honor Mises.10 His biographer, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, in a massive and rich text, does not give a full analysis either, although he provides sufficient insight into many elements of Mises’ ideas on international relations.

Important for the understanding of this and the next chapter is that the political aims of Mises and Hayek differed from those of Hume and Smith even though their ideas were very similar. The two Scots did not aim at the implementation of classical liberalism as such, as this was unknown to them. Yet for Mises and Hayek, this was precisely the overriding goal. They lived in the age of ideologies. With only a small number of support-ers, they fought against the dominance of socialism and other forms of collectivism, and presented classical liberalism as the only feasible alterna-tive. They could do so, because classical liberalism was then recognized as a coherent ideology and program for political action. The establishment of

Von Mises, Capitalism, and Peace ● 77

the classical liberal society was their ideal in the ideological “war of ideas” as Hayek called it.

Nation and Nationalism

Like his eighteenth-century predecessors, Mises acknowledged the impor-tance of nations for individuals. Originating from the Austrian Empire with all its divides along national lines, it would have been strange indeed had he overlooked this powerful trait of human nature. In fact, he devoted Nation, State and Economy to this issue. Mises saw the nation as a social collective, which came into being through the actions of its members.11 It was differ-ent from a state: “the nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor decreased by changes in states, the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.”12 With the scattered German nation and the frag-mented population of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in mind, he argued that the idea of a nation was not related to a geographically bound location, because people moved and borders were dynamic. Ancestry did not play a role either, as “there is no nation of pure blood,” hence nation and race do not coincide. Instead, he regarded nations primarily as speech communities. For Mises the essence of nationality was language, although he did not deny the importance of those other characteristics.13

Language originates in a social or ethnic community. A common language binds, and differences in language separate. Language determined the way individuals think and express themselves and consequently people who did not (properly) master a language could not be counted as full members of the nation.14 Members of nations usually cannot speak more than one language, which led Mises to predict the division of both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. He even argued that Britain and America were not two nations using the same language, but one nation not unified in one state. The same was true for Norway and Denmark.15 Later he deferred from this rather idiosyncratic position by acknowledging that the United States and the United Kingdom were separate nations and that the French did not regard the French-speaking parts of Belgium, Canada, or Switzerland as part of their nation, but as French-speaking foreigners. He also acknowl-edged, if only out of personal experience, that for the individual, human language is not necessarily a stable factor in life, because people can move and change the language they speak.16

Contrary to Hume and Smith, Mises did not believe in the idea of national character as a predictor of individual action. It presupposed too much stability in its constituent characteristics and in its influence on the individual. Mises held such a strong opinion against the notion of national


character because he rejected the popular idea among his contemporaries that Nazism was the outcome of “the German character.” He felt this was bad science and unwarranted generalization. It was possible to speak of a nation’s mentality at a certain point in time, but only if the definition of national character was reduced to “the will of the majority,” subjected to change. Otherwise, the idea of national character was mainly the result of “precipitate and ill-considered induction from an insufficient number of ill-sorted examples.”17

Given the historical context of his writings, it is no surprise that Mises put emphasis on the role of nationalism, or “the principle of nationality” in international relations. He agreed with many commentators that nation-alism was related to modern politics. However, this is questionable, since the chapters 3 and 4 show that the idea of nations and nationality had a powerful presence in the eighteenth century as well. There were nations before nationalism,18 although nationalism was a much stronger political force from the end of the nineteenth century onward. For Mises there were two possible political outcomes of the development of nationalism: liberal and pacifistic, or militant and imperialistic. In the first, the boundaries of state and nation coincided, as was the case, he argued, in France or England. This nationalism was not directed against other nations; the nations con-cerned wanted peace and friendship with their neighbors, and so the idea of freedom reigned. Militant nationalism developed in areas of mixed popula-tions. It was the dangerous type, “the policy of cool-minded Machiavellian politicians.” It differed substantially from chauvinism, which was just “an overestimation of one’s own nation’s qualities and achievements and a pre-judicial disparagement of all other peoples.”19

Given the many issues with subnational groupings in most larger countries, Mises’ idea of pacifist nationalism in Western Europe does not stand up to his-torical scrutiny. Still he rightly pointed out the different situation in Eastern Europe. Gellner agreed that in that intensely fragmented region, the creation of culturally homogenous states can be accomplished only by ethnic cleans-ing.20 Mises went as far as to claim that the principle of linguistic nationality would not work in multilanguage territories,21 where genuinely opposed inter-ests exist between minorities and majorities. Introducing democratic majority rule in such polyglot territories would create situations where the rights of minorities were violated, leading to struggles between nationalities.22 This fighting would aim at control of the state, and its importance could only be limited if the state did not have much power or means at its disposal.23

The liberal solution to problems of nationalism was individual self- determination. Mises thought each individual should be free to change nationality or to emigrate, while colonies should become independent if


they wished.24 In practice, this meant that groups of people could decide, by plebiscite, about their national future.25 The size of the state’s territory did not matter much. Yet not every individual, or small group, could start their own state. At a minimum, there should be “several hundred thousand speakers,” the number required to keep an independent standard language alive and in most cases also the number needed to finance the state tasks. Smaller nations could not exist independently.26

Mises’ position attracted criticism from different sides. It has been noted that contrary to Mises intentions, this stretching of the right to self- determination may easily lead to anarchy.27 Libertarian secessionists criticize Mises for being too strict in his defense of states,28 and Raico emphasized that Mises overlooked that free immigration should be regarded as a different cat-egory of policy decisions. The influx of immigrants may actually pose a threat to an existing liberal social order, with the newcomers radically altering the democratic political body owing to their different histories and cultural back-grounds.29 Mises’ focus was more on the people who wanted to leave a certain state and not on the natural rights of the people in the receiving state.

In his personal life Mises was often confronted with the worst outcomes of militant nationalism. It is therefore remarkable that he never proposed to get rid of states altogether, in contrast to many other thinkers in the liberal tradition. A one-state world was acceptable if it was the outcome of a natural and free process, but Mises thought this was a very remote and theoretical idea. The principle of national sovereignty was fully compatible with the international division of labor and peaceful international collaboration, as long as all countries clung to democracy and capitalism.30 If states had a lim-ited number of tasks, their importance diminished accordingly. For Mises liberalism did not aim to abolish the sovereignty of states, not least because it would lead to endless war.31 People were free to decide to what extent they wanted to harmonize their laws with those of other states.32 They were at liberty to leave existing states, which in most cases would actually lead to more states, not to a decreased total number of states. Like Hume and Smith, Mises expected that states would remain the leading actors in both domestic and international relations. The collectivist character of nation-alism excludes it from any classical liberal approach to IR theory. It is nat-ural to feel emotion for one’s country, but such passion is still limited by other concerns, such as the natural rights of people in other countries.

Mises and International Relations

The Misesian ideas on international relations covered at least as many fields as those of his eighteenth-century classical liberal predecessors. Two things


stood out: his emphasis on the issue of war and his economical viewpoints. As in his other writings, his overriding concern was with enlarging indi-vidual freedom through minimizing the role of the state and maximizing economic liberty.

War and Peace

Superficial reading of Mises can easily lead to the conclusion that he was one of the greatest pacifist thinkers of the twentieth century. It is under-standable that given his personal experiences, he never tired of warning against the devastating effect of warfare and actually hardly ever stopped talking about the war. According to his former student Engel-Janosi,33 he took his own army experience very seriously and Hayek recalled: “Mises must have lived the First World War with a great deal of intensity. In the 1920s and 1930s it came out every few minutes in his conversation.”34 This continued throughout his life; his war stories sometimes got on the nerves of his wife.35 In 1969, in one of his last interviews Mises said that preventing a Third World War was the most important topical problem.36 He wrote a great deal about war because “he could not avoid it.”37 Despite some paci-fistic tendencies, deeper analysis of his opinion reveals far more sophistica-tion. Mises also became more belligerent over the course of his life.

Like Hume and Smith, Mises first turned to human nature for his views on the causes of war. There was something deeply human about war. It could be satisfying for people, as the desire for bravery and heroism was part of human nature. Mises thought that attack was a primary motivation, and that in his feelings man was always an imperialist. Therefore people should be urged to contain their feelings.38 In contrast to some contemporary opinions, he did not think warfare was not the driving force behind social development. Otherwise, unsociability would rein in human action, but for-tunately the world was not characterized by a perpetual war of all against all. For him, civilization was the achievement of the liberal bourgeois spirit, not of war and conquest. There was nothing inevitable about war between certain groups, classes, races, or nations.39 But Mises dared not predict that war would ever become obsolete, because there were perpetual causes of war and conflict.

Mises acknowledged that wars had many different causes and that the choice for war was not always irrational. Political decisions to wage war could be taken with full account of the (economic) costs involved. Pacifists were wrong to argue that it was impossible for people to gain from war. Individuals, separate nations, and states could well be enriched by it, if only for a short time and not through a general rise, but a shift of wealth. The worst possible motive


for war was religion because religious wars were waged without a prospect of conciliation.40 Differences in language were another eternal source of friction in international affairs, leading to imperialism and hatred between nations.41 Economic nationalism was a third cause of war; it created a situation in which every citizen had an interest in “the nullification of interests by which foreign governments injure his interests” and in seeing his or her own country mighty and powerful, if only because of an expectation of personal advantage from his or her nation’s military might.42

Despite his awareness of the multiple causes, Mises’ solutions for prob-lems of war and the promotion of peace aimed almost exclusively at the economic origins. He hardly ever addressed the other causes, which led to imbalances and inconsistencies in his views on international relations. Prime examples are found in his book Liberalism, published in 1927. He argued that the ultimate goal of classical liberal foreign policy was to achieve peace between nations, defined as the perfect, frictionless cooperation of man-kind. In this respect, classical liberal thought was cosmopolitan, because it did not stop at borders, nor was it applied only to limited groups.43 He agreed with humanitarians that war was detestable because of the death and misery. Classical liberals offered the better solution for this. They appealed to the self-interest of the people who wanted war by pointing out how much more economically beneficial peace would be for them.44 Yet here Mises was inconsistent, as he also asserted in preceding and later works that for some people war is perfectly rational, that they could gain from it, and that human nature was a stimulating force behind war. It appears that Mises, in his attempt to counter the contemporary dominance and appeal of the collectivist ideologies, was a little too eager to propagate liberalism. His por-trayal of liberal foreign policy in Liberalism was far more Cobdenite than in his other works.

More consistent was his economic viewpoint in his discussions of international affairs. He often emphasized that the state was responsible for war through its interference in (international) economics. Economic nation-alism could not go together with peace; protectionism was a philosophy of war. War was bad for business, bad for the economy, and inflation and war were strongly related, because all governments turned to the printing press to cover the costs of warfare.45 The Second World War was therefore the logical outcome of the disastrous political and economic policies of the pre-vious decades,46 a view that later would be shared by many historians and politicians.

The main Misesian vehicle for peace was the international division of labor. When left completely free, it would ensure the greatest welfare for all people, and this would take away the incentive for aggression, as long as


it was accompanied by a general change of mind. People needed to realize that their best interest was in unhampered international transaction. Mises thought liberal social philosophy could achieve this and therefore described it as a theory of peace, as, in his view, it was the harmony of economic interests between nations that eliminated the rational basis for warfare.47 Like many current IR theorists, Mises also thought democracy could be instrumental in eliminating domestic and international conflicts. His evi-dence primarily came from the Manchester School activists (to be discussed below), who in his view argued that democracies do not fight wars, but settle their affairs peacefully, not least because they would not attach too much importance to the size of their territory. Still democracy alone would be insufficient to create peace; it needed to go together with unhampered capitalism and a limited state.48 Political structures alone would be unable to bring about change; that could be accomplished only by individual human action.

Despite his theoretical optimism, Mises remained ever pessimistic about practical political developments. In 1940 he wrote:

Occasionally, I entertained the hope that my writings would bear prac-tical fruit and show the way for policy. Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology. But I have never allowed myself to be deceived. I have come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.49

Consistent with his overall economic position Mises was in favor of free market warfare, as opposed to the planned and interventionist war economy that was taken for granted even in capitalist countries. War did not demand a centrally organized economy, because it ruined the economy of the country concerned and made the transition back to normality after the war harder.50 It was nonsensical to aim for economic autarky, both in times of peace and war. Following the title of one of his interwar essays, he argued that autarky was “the road to misery.” It would not prevent war, nor provide economic security. Striving for autarky was a threat to European culture, he warned the Germans just before Hitler came to power.51 They did not listen, and in Mises’ economically determined view, the German desire for autarky was a main reason for the Second World War. He main-tained that the market was capable of adjusting to changing demands in times of war, although war and capitalism were incompatible in the long run. He added that there was no use in discussing whether it was fair to make a profit out of the misery of war. Perhaps it was not, but then nothing


in war was fair. Soldiers should have good equipment and the profit system produced the best weapons.52

Contrary to popular contemporary opinion, Mises did not think that the armaments industry was the cause of war; it only responded to govern-mental demands. He found it preposterous to think that nations turned bellicose for the ordnance of the weapon industry.53 Capitalist countries would always be better prepared for war and would respond more aptly to it, because of the creativity of the free market economy. Mises did not provide details on how international trade could continue when the enemy occupied parts of the country, confiscated the resources of the main trading partners, or blocked important logistical lines.

Mises was no pacifist, partly because he refuted the economic ideas of most of the “dreamers and humanitarians who have long campaigned for the idea of general and eternal peace.” In line with the realistic classical lib-eral assessment of human nature, his objection to these utopians was that they appealed to the high-mindedness of the rulers. This “philanthropic pacifism” did not get to the causes of war, nor did “delusive” appeals for international arbitration. Mises asserted, erroneously as shown in chapters 3 and 4, and again rather inconsistently, that the liberal pacifism of the Enlightenment was different, because it knew no rational basis for warfare. Only liberalism and democracy could accomplish peace. Pacifism not based on a liberal economic order was utopian.54 Modern war was worse than pre-vious wars, because all the people of the warring nations were involved in the fighting. It was ruthless, did not spare pregnant women or infants, and lacked respect for the rights of the neutrals.55 Writing after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he nevertheless asserted that nuclear weapons were not particularly to blame for this. These were just new, more powerful weapons. In his view, there was no reason not to use technological advantage against the enemy.56

While he had most faith in spontaneous processes, Mises thought that questions of war and peace needed government action. If all men were good and benevolent, there would be no need for government, but as this was not the case, it was the government’s business to make provisions for war; the policy side of peace and war could not be left to entrepreneurs.57

Generally, Mises failed to provide a full analysis of the causes of war and peace, in sharp contrast to his custom when dealing with economic problems. The general pattern of his argument was that he first described the negative aspects of war, followed by a plea to introduce the interna-tional division of labor. This left a number of analytical gaps. He acknowl-edged that there were several political causes of war, but neglected these. For example, it is hard to reconcile his idea about the peaceful effects of


the international division of labor with his opinion that frictions between language groups would always remain. Mises also circumvented, consciously or not, questions arising from his own philosophical views. For example, how should people come to realize the value of the international division of labor and in what way would this overcome their proneness to war? How did this relate to his view of human nature? If language and religion were per-petual causes of war, how exactly were these to be reconciled with the nat-ural peaceful effects of free trade, democracy, and free migration? Despite his strongly articulated views, Mises did not provide comprehensive answers to these questions. This appears to have been caused by his general oversight to explore the ways in which his economic insights could be translated into policy. For him it was natural and self-evident that his economic analysis led to certain classical liberal political demands: it was the application of eco-nomics to society.58 In the process he often failed to address important issues that did not directly follow from economics.

International Law

Mises stood in the just war tradition, although his rejection of the label natural law, discussed in chapter 2, forbade him to actively explore the intellectual roots of this position. Some wars were just, for example, in case of self-defense. He thought that in such instances everything needed to stop the crime was permitted. In this context, brave deeds were justly rewarded and heroic behavior was rightly extolled and praiseworthy, because they were performed in the service of a good end. He asserted: “peace breakers should be punished like people who resort to violence within each country.”59 With approval he noted that in foreign policy “the value of peace has risen above the profit of a victorious war. Even the strongest rulers responded to the need for a just cause of war. They all attempt to give a valid reason, at least in their view, for war. This was ‘a solemn recognition of the principle of law and peace.”60 In a criticism of some of the pacifists he asserted that to pre-serve peace, the state had to be prepared to crush the onslaughts of peace breakers.61

In principle Mises supported concerns about the rules in war, the other part of the just war tradition. This was a demand he traced back to the ear-liest beginnings of society. The rules in war should aim at hurting and not at simply annihilating humans. After a conflict, renewed cooperation with the former enemy was often desirable; therefore enemies should always be regarded as fellow humans. He credited the just war tradition for helping to create a situation where war had become an exception, instead of the normal state of human affairs. Mises concluded with satisfaction that the Smithian


“Great Society,” characterized by rules covering all men and nations, was becoming more established.62

In his strongest statement in favor of war, Mises argued that neutrality was unjust in a total war, like the Second World War. “There cannot be any question of neutrality,” as this was “equal to virtual support of Nazism.” Human cooperation and lasting peace were impossible if individuals placed higher value on their loyalty to a particular group, instead of loyalty to humanity, moral law, and individual responsibility. The ideals of pacifists and conscientious objectors were noble, but their attitudes “result in com-plicity with Nazism.” In this case somewhat less concerned with just hurting the enemy, he thought, there was only one way to save civilization: “to wipe Nazism off the earth, radically and pitilessly. Only their total destruction would allow the world to start building a good society.”63

Mises approved of international law that overruled national law to create a level playing field in international affairs. Without agreement on the con-tent of international law, there could be no working international dispute settlement system. Still international law was one of the most immature forms of public law, for example, because under certain conditions violence was seen as a solution, while revolutions were completely outside its realm.64 It was still rudimentary in Mises’ eyes and he did not often turn to this topic, most probably because he disapproved of the content of modern posi-tive international law and mistrusted the intentions of most lawmakers, who were rarely aiming at increasing individual liberty.

Balance of Power

Mises did not write much either about the balance of power, or as he called it, the European Equilibrium. He showed a clear understanding of its work-ings, but concluded that despite its heyday in the nineteenth century, the balance of power belonged to earlier ages. In contrast to Hume and Smith, he initially thought it could not be a part of a liberal world.65 But he changed his opinion during the Second World War, when he proposed the formation of two political blocks in global politics, the Western Union and the Eastern Union, which would be “the only reasonable program for the defense of civ-ilization and for a reconstruction of Europe and the whole world.”66 With this, he appeared to have anticipated although never predicted the formation of the balance of power system during the cold war. Mises strongly objected to Soviet Russia and its policies in Eastern Europe,67 and so his change of opinion can also be accounted for by practical developments.

Regarding international political interventionism, Mises also shifted toward a more positive position. In 1927, he stated that the American and


European governments should leave Russia to its militaristic self, or “let the Russians be Russians.”68 Later, Mises opted for foreign intervention. Political isolationism was no option, he wrote in 1943, undoubtedly under the influence of the time. The United States could not hide from world pol-itics, and countering the arguments of the pacifists, he stated:

[the pacifists say] it is very deplorable that the peoples of Europe are fighting each other, that they have wrecked their glorious civilization and that they are consequently doomed to starvation and misery. It is no less deplorable that similar things happen in Asia. Unfortunately, we can-not save them from disaster. They themselves have to learn that peace-ful cooperation would be more beneficial to them than war and mutual extermination. We cannot police the whole world. All we can do is to look out for ourselves and to preserve the Western Hemisphere’s inde-pendence. We will keep neutral, will not interfere with other continent’s affairs and thus preserve our American way of life.69

Against this pacifist position, which ironically has a lot in common with some of the modern libertarian ideas on international relations, Mises ar-gued that what happens to the rest of the world was of great interest to America. For the sake of its own national interest, the United States could not remain neutral in world affairs or live in political isolation. Every inter-national conflict would involve America too, at least at some point in time. Therefore it had to act to establish a peaceful world order. Every nation had to choose, the United States as well. Mises endorsed active engagement of, at least, the United States, in establishing international order, most probably because he realized that liberty would never flourish in times of war and military occupation.

Free Trade and Immigration

Where Hume and Smith allowed some exceptions to the rule of free trade, Mises favored the almost absolute free movement of goods, capital, services, and labor. He noticed with regret that the world was not developing into a zone of free trade and perpetual peace, contradicting the optimistic predic-tions in the nineteenth century. There was no superior alternative to the free market system when it came to increasing productivity. The liberaliza-tion of trade and subsequent stronger economic ties in the world economy through the free movement of labor were the best ways to deal with differ-ent geographical and natural circumstances.70 He concluded that policies to promote trade were protectionist and they failed to achieve their own goals.


History was a struggle between peaceful free trade and militaristic imperi-alism, with the latter mostly on the winning side. Where peace was praised or war condemned, rudiments of the argument for the division of labor were to be found.71 His pleas for free trade and the international division of labor are found all over his work.

Mises argued that a world of free trade and free migration no longer had incentives for war and conquest. As noted above, this was in contrast to Hume and Smith and also to a number of his own ideas. Mises was under the spell of Cobden on this point, which is elaborated upon in more detail in the next section. Yet even Mises did not always endorse free migration. For example, at the end of Second World War, he favored restrictions on immigration from the totalitarian states on the grounds that this would entail the complete surrender of the West.72 Chapter 6 shows that this is most consistent with a general classical liberal position toward immigra-tion, because completely free immigration can only be allowed without any remaining issues of property right violations.

World Organization

While recognizing the value of some forms of governmental international organization, Mises definitely did not appreciate the League of Nations. He strongly criticized the League, partly drawing on his own experience as Austrian representative to one of its economic committees,73 and also because of the overall classical liberal mistrust of state action. He was not isolated on this point; many contemporaries agreed with him: for example, Carr, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau.

As early as 1919, Mises predicted the League’s failure, expecting it to bring new bloodshed and misery to mankind. The League attempted to divide the world between full and qualified members and overlooked the difficulties of states with mixed populations. Its authority was built on force to which the disadvantaged must yield, which could not result in a lawful order. It basically lacked an ideological foundation in liberalism74 by which he of course meant classical liberalism. The League proposed erroneous solutions for world peace, focusing, for example, on the redistribution of raw materials, instead of supporting their free movement.75 As its member-ship lacked some of the most important nations, people who presented the League as the ideal international organization caused a lot of harm to the idea of a genuine world organization.76

That was not meant to imply that Mises had any faith in such an improved world organization. For example, solutions for European imperi-alism and nationalism could not come from outside, through the action of


President Wilson and the United States.77 In the late 1930s, it became even clearer to him that the League was a complete failure. The mishandling of the Italian invasion in Abyssinia was its death blow; this crisis showed it had no moral authority at all.78

The only useful roles of the successor of the League, Mises wrote in 1944, were to combat contagious disease, drug trade and prostitution, to act as an international bureau of statistics, and to develop work in the field of intel-lectual property rights. The prospects for the United Nations were bad as long as all nations saw trade as a zero sum game.79 Only classical liberalism could make the world safe for peace and prosperity: “The spirit of conquest cannot be smothered by red tape of international organizations, treaties and covenants.”80 This is a good example of applying the classical liberal distrust of governmental organization to the international level.

Talk of a world government was also certainly futile and illusory, given the big differences in standards of living and civilization between the nations of the world. The majority of the world population lacked the mentality for peaceful international cooperation. What was needed was a change of spirit, but this would take a very long time. Meanwhile the idea of a commonwealth of nations should not be disregarded,81 as long as it would not be a world-planning entity with a unitary government. This would lead to world socialism. A world gov-ernment and world parliament would allow special privileges to certain states, would rule over underprivileged states, or would not permit free migration, and so forth. In this way world organization could not take away the sources of conflict. In fact, he asserted, there was no need for a supranational world gov-ernment at all if democracy and free markets ruled everywhere.82

This was another change from his views espoused in Liberalism, where he was rather internationalist. There he even called for a political organization that would culminate in a world state uniting all nations on an equal basis.83 It seems likely that the harsh experiences of the Second World War and the rapid spread of socialism and communism made him change his mind.

European Integration and Supranational Organization

In the years preceding the Second World War, Mises became rather positive about the idea of European integration. In the 1920s, he doubted the value of plans for a United States of (Continental) Europe. Mises agreed in principal that a widening of the international division of labor was a good idea, but at that time, the champions of Pan-Europe did not favor a liberal program of the abolition of nationalist thought, chauvinism, and sovereignty. Instead, he felt that they planned to reconstitute the old militaristic and imperialistic state at the European level.84


In the same fashion, Mises was also critical about the far-reaching and widely debated proposal by Clarence Streit, who favored a federal union of all Western democracies, including states outside Europe. Mises expected a bureaucratic disaster. A federation always posed the danger of centralized interventionism and planning, as the experiences of the United States and Switzerland had showed. A federal union ran the danger of giving way to the politics of interest groups at the federal level. No legal constitutional scheme could bypass the sentiments of economic nationalism and love for the state.85 At best, a smaller, Europe-only federation was possible, but even that would be hard if economic nationalism continued to rule.86

He modified this position as a reaction to the developments in the 1930s, when he became involved in the Pan-European movement led by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. In Lisbon in 1940, Mises spent some time with him while waiting for a place on a ship bound for America. After his arrival in the United States, Mises participated in many of the Pan-Europe Conferences,87 served on their Council, and was a member of their Economic Committee.88 So it is not surprising that in Omnipotent Government (1944), he argued strongly in favor of a union of Western (European) democracies to prevent Europe from slipping back into the interwar modus. The Europeans had to choose effective solidarity and abandon national sovereignty in favor of a new supranational authority. He thought that the need for closer integration was obvious for small countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, as they could no longer rely on the balance of power to maintain their inde-pendence. This confirms his understanding and positive opinion of the bal-ance’s ordering effects. Yet the European Union should also comprise Great Britain and France, while the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand had to closely cooperate with all other democratic people.89

As ever, his support was conditional. A Pan-Europe had to be based on sound economics, without trade barriers or a large bureaucracy.90 If the Europeans wanted to keep governmental control over business, all attempts for international cooperation would be futile.91 Even if these conditions were met, it would still be hard to get the plan working as a great measure of sov-ereignty had to be forfeited by all members of the union.92 Besides actual political issues, he realized this might be troublesome, given the strong emo-tional ties between individuals and nations.

It is completely in consistence with these views that Mises opposed the Marshall Plan, which, in his view, was an example of misdirecting American taxpayer’s money to building deficit railroads and supporting other inter-ventionist schemes.93 Many modern commentators regard the Marshall Plan as one of the important drivers of European integration in the 1950s.94 In reviewing his book How Can Europe Survive, Mises supported Sennholz in


his assertion that only the restoration of capitalism and the unhampered free market economy could restore economic prosperity in Europe.95 He was alone in this position; the support for the governmental Marshall Plan was overwhelming even among members of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS).96 Hayek founded the MPS in close cooperation with Mises, although Mises would never be completely at ease with a number of members who favored a greater degree of state intervention.97

Eastern Europe

Mises was outright radical, yet again inconsistent in his published and unpublished solutions for the troublesome eastern half of Europe, including a plan for Austria’s postwar reconstruction.98 Prewar economic association between the Danube states failed, because no country was willing to make the slightest concession.99 Therefore, a more fundamental solution was needed. The multilinguistic character and national rivalries left the people of the Eastern Europe at the mercy of the three big adjacent pow-ers, Germany, Russia, and Italy. A new Eastern European order had to be established, with a unitary government. Mises called this state the Eastern Democratic Union, or EDU.100

In the EDU “new political standards” needed to be implemented. A fed-eration would not suffice; the region had to become one political unit. The principle of national sovereignty was simply inapplicable in Eastern Europe. The old organizational units, like the Kingdom of Romania, were allowed to remain, but the importance of their borders had to be reduced to that of the state borders in the United States. The major tasks of the EDU were to prevent discrimination against nationality, to ensure full freedom of move-ment for all subjects, and to organize a sufficiently strong external defense apparatus able to repel the aggression of Germany, Russia, or Italy, or a combination of two of them. Economic nationalism had to be ruled out; therefore central government had to get all financial powers. Special com-missaries would oversee the functioning of the local governments and only private schools were allowed. The appointment of the first president and the first cabinet was in the hands of the League of Nations.101

It is hard to believe that Mises wrote this, but nevertheless he did. He brushed aside the ideas of self-determination and his continual assertion that differences between nations could be overcome by the workings of the international division of labor. Apparently, the people of Eastern Europe were different; they lacked the right mind-set for his “normal recipes.” Mises desired the creation of a very liberal state and certainly had the best intentions, but as Simons102 noted, his constructivist, top-down planning


is evident here. He proposed to make peace durable in the nonliberal age of radical nationalism and thought something special was needed for the region where both world wars commenced but which was largely left out of any of the plans for postwar reconstruction.103 Still this cannot war-rant such a radical departure from his principles. It is a confirmation that Mises was far more consistent as an economist. His numerous political writings simply lacked the same analytical rigor although his intentions were identical.

Imperialism and Development Aid

The debate on the future of the colonies was topical in Mises’ day. Mises did not think all was bad about colonial rule. For example, imperial Britain had been instrumental in the creation of the modern free trade economy104 and had also enabled the creation of a viable Indian state, a territory which oth-erwise had remained “a conglomeration of tyrannically misruled petty prin-cipalities” engaged in continuous war, and perpetually troubled by anarchy, famine and, epidemics.105

But like Hume and Smith, he generally opposed imperialism. The clas-sical liberal claim of individual dignity is universally valid, and so Mises argued against treating native people in colonies as means, not ends. Imperialism was also in essence a collectivist theory, which rejected indi-vidual freedom.106 The first wave of Western imperialism had often had more to do with slavery and piracy than with trade. The nineteenth-century conquests were motivated solely by considerations of national pride and mil-itary glory.107 There was no wealth creation involved in acquiring new terri-tories; there were also heavy administrative costs. More importantly, liberals should resist all imperialistic plans because they depended on military force, which may easily lead to terrible atrocities such as conducted by the Belgians in the Congo. Mass opinion was wrong in its belief that empire and the preservation of national independence were related. The Europeans should therefore withdraw immediately, even if this is likely to cause anarchy in the former colonies. The colonizers had no business in taking care of the inter-ests of the natives. Most colonies were integrated in the European economy, which enabled them to gain from trade. Only where this was not yet the case, the Europeans could stay to assure legal and political conditions for entrance in the trade system. Detecting a useful task for the troublesome interna-tional organization, Mises thought it was better to let the League of Nations govern the colonies during a transitional phase, so that the Europeans could move out immediately. All colonies would first become mandates of the League before turning fully independent.108


After the colonial period, the nations of Africa and Asia should of course embrace capitalism. But Mises noted that the contacts with the West had not changed the way most indigenous people thought. While they received weapons and medicine from the West, this did not modernize their mind-set. Most importantly, the Africans and Asians did not adapt the key social institutions such as private property, economic freedom, capitalism, and entrepreneurial spirit that enabled the West to develop. What separated East and West was the social and economic system. “It is of no use to import the paraphernalia of capitalism, without admitting capitalism as such.” Capitalism was the only way forward for the developing countries, partic-ularly in the light of their population growth rates. In this respect, Mises rejected plans for state intervention of birth control, because he believed in a free economy, and thought that people would only have as many children as they could sustain without lowering the standard of living of the whole family.109

Mises argued that economic theory and actual history showed that laissez-faire was the most successful method to abolish poverty.110 Accordingly there was no need for the West to feel guilty about the circum-stances in the underdeveloped nations, given the terrible, collectivist eco-nomic policies of their governments, supported by the progressive powers in the West. Dependence on donations was not a solution.111 It was the devel-oping world’s economic policy that distracted foreign investment, through foreign exchange control, discriminatory taxation, and the nationalization of industry. Staying out of international capital market created their plight, as there could not be capitalism without capital. The developing countries needed to adopt the policies of “rugged individualism,” not the collectivist doctrines their elites learned at Western universities from Fabian, Marxist, or Socialist professors. This only led to “Occidental pseudo- progressivism.” There was no use in concentrating on a fairer distribution of existing wealth, so long as wealth was not first created. America and Europe was not to be faulted for that; only the bad ideas of the Asian and African elites were to blame. Development aid was therefore nonsensical and would not create prosperity.112 No doubt, if Mises had been still alive, he would be happy with the current achievements of most Asian countries, but he would also see his ideas confirmed by the bad state of affairs in most sub-Saharan coun-tries. Mises applied the principles of capitalism to international relations and it is clear that Raico is off the mark when classifying Mises as a “free trade imperialist,”113 or someone who would reject formal empire but still hold that countries should be forced into trade.114

Summing up, like Hume and Smith, Mises’ ideas on international rela-tions started with the individual and his emotional tie to the nation. He


thought nationalism, both political and economic, was one of the biggest threats to the establishment of peace. Peace was created through the imple-mentation of the division of labor and unhampered free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. While the prevention of war was his leading motive, Mises was no pacifist or isolationist. There were some just grounds for war and just rules for warfare were needed. He became more favorable to the balance of power during the Second World War and remained so throughout his life. Mises argued in favor of international cooperation between national states, certainly in Europe. Worldwide international organizations were of limited use and a revolutionary overhaul of the world system was utopian. International law was defunct, but in itself a helpful institution. As long as positive law did not increase too much, international law could help the smooth functioning of the international society of states. Imperialism and development aid were a threat to individual freedom.

As a result of the dominance of economic analysis, his international polit-ical views were not always consistent. Despite his lifelong interest in interna-tional affairs, Mises failed to provide a full analysis of international affairs, although it is obvious that all his writings were directed toward the increase of individual freedom. While it was certainly not his intention, Mises can be considered as an early example of the still prevalent phenomenon, both inside and outside classical liberal circles, of what might be called “econo-mists’ hubris,” the idea that a strict economic viewpoint will be able to solve all problems of humanity.

Mises and International Relations Theory

With his strong faith in the peaceful effects of trade and the division of labor, Mises clearly differed from Hume and Smith, although he regularly but often erroneously, referred to them. For example, he mistakenly claimed that classical liberalism had always been pacifistic and antimilitaristic,115 that Smith’s philosophy was one of peace between nations, and that the classical liberals had full confidence in man’s “perfectibility.”116 Like many other liberals, he seemed to have “been obscured by the nineteenth century association of economic liberalism with pacific sympathies.”117

The Origins of Mises’ Ideas about International relations

Mises made it clear that his ideas on international relations were influenced by both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberals. Next to Hume and Smith, he most frequently mentioned Bentham, Ricardo, Bastiat, as well as Cobden and other Manchester School thinkers. With the exception of


Bentham, whose writings on international relations were mostly written at the end of the eighteenth century, these were influential nineteenth-century theorists and activists. Their work on international affairs is briefly scruti-nized to enable a better understanding of Mises’ views.

Jeremy Bentham’s reputation as an IR theorist is mostly based on his essay “A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace.” Recent research showed this is problematic. This essay was never written; it was a product of inadequate editorship by John Bowring, the editor of Bentham’s collected works. He composed it out of three different essays after Bentham’s death. As a result of this misconception and a lack of analysis of his other works on international affairs, Bentham is erroneously seen as a liberal international theorist on the basis of his idea that commerce leads to peace, his support of international law,118 and his rejection of most wars.119 These are exactly the elements that Mises took from Bentham, referring to the German translation of a section of Bentham’s collected works entitled Principles of International Law.120

It is important to note that Bentham’s thoughts on international relations contained many arguments not shared by Mises. For instance, Bentham’s overriding concern was with security. He also proposed a “common tribunal” or a formal international organization as a solution for international conflict and as an alternative to war. This is sometimes seen as a main inspiration for the League of Nations, so despised by Mises. Bentham’s overall position on international relations was a mixed bag, with a lot of realist elements,121 many of them contrary to Mises’ outlook. Bentham was not resolutely anti-imperialistic, although unlike his followers James Mill and John Stuart Mill, he was not a supporter of colonialism either.122 Of course it is not fair to judge Mises on the basis of research published after his death. He just fol-lowed the mainstream interpretation of Bentham’s international relations, but apparently never went into the details of his actual writings.

Ricardo is not often seen as a political thinker, although he had a short spell as member of parliament between 1819 and 1823. His writings were mostly on technical economics and if the international area was touched upon, it was also in economic fashion. Ricardo was not a wide-ranging scholar and had no “well-mediated, articulate, all embracing social and moral philos-ophy.” He was first of all a businessman who turned to politics. His economic thought was largely in line with Adam Smith.123 The utilitarians Bentham and Mill were keen to count him among their group, but Ricardo was not much interested in their social philosophy.124 He did claim that free trade “binds together, by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of nations throughout the civilized world,”125 and he was an opponent of the Corn Laws.126 Mises clearly admired Ricardo for his economic work, especially his comparative advantage model of international trade.


By far the most important sources for Mises’ views on international rela-tions were Cobden and the Manchester School,127 and therefore their ideas are examined in more detail. During the Second World War, Mises wrote that only the return to Manchesterism would enable mankind to safeguard peaceful relations between individuals and nations, although he did not expect this to happen very soon.128 Like many others he took the unity of the School for granted, but in fact there was no such thing as one Manchester School. It was a group of different people without a coherent philosophy or a common doctrine. It was an expression of middle-class radicalism that originated in Manchester, but became a nationwide movement. The core of the School was formed by the Anti–Corn Law League.129 In modern terms it was a successful single issue group, which was at least partly responsible for the repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws.

The League associated itself strongly with the idea of the alleged link between (unilateral) free trade and peace. Their line of argument was as follows: trade represented the advantageous exchange of mutual abundance and to the extent that commerce was allowed to proceed freely, the eco-nomic interests of nations became increasingly mutually interdependent. The reciprocal dependency on free trade reduced quarrels and would break down the political and cultural barriers that separated states. Mutual interest and dependence bound people together and this would result in permanent and universal peace.

Many Leaguers believed trade also spread civilization and Christianity. A number of them, Cobden included, were devout Dissenting Christians, so for them there was also an element of moral crusade involved. Representing the middle class, they saw diplomats and military commanders as related to the protectionist aristocrats and the land-owning higher classes. Not surpris-ingly, there were also close ties between the League and the pacifist move-ment, which mainly consisted of the Quakers and the Peace Society. They desired nonintervention in international politics and opposed the balance of power doctrine. It is striking that Mises, the ardent antipacifist, drew much of his inspiration from a group strongly associated with pacifism.130

Richard Cobden was by far the most famous Manchester School repre-sentative. Because of his work for the League, Cobden became an interna-tional celebrity and a member of parliament, and later in life he negotiated the famous Anglo-French Free Trade Treaty of 1860, which lifted a number of trade barriers.131 His overall political philosophy could be characterized as “altruistic utilitarianism,” which aimed at the transformation of the rela-tions between nations by giving foreign policy a higher and more humane purpose.132 Cobden called for international arbitration to settle disputes and refuted the balance of power as well as increased expenditure on the navy


and military.133 He rejected most wars and regularly held pleas against inter-vention in the affairs of other nations, including colonies.134

Mises did not follow Cobden in all respects. The latter opposed loans to the Russians that enabled them to procure armaments. “No free trade in cutting throats” he said. In the 1920s, Mises would argue in favor of the full incorporation of Russia into the international economy. In 1857, Cobden and his compatriot Bright caused the fall of the Palmerston government over the British misbehavior in the Opium Wars against China. Mises later defended the English.135

In Cobden’s view, “commerce was the great panacea, which, like a benef-icent medical discovery, will serve to inoculate with the healthy and saving taste for civilization all the nations of the world.”136 He had been a member of the Peace Society since the 1830s, but he kept a distance from people who repudiated war in all cases and contended that war was sometimes needed, for example, “in defense of our honor, or our just interests.”137 Yet Caedel showed he was very close to the Peace movement and shared most of their aims.138

Foremost, Cobden was a man of action. He was no deep thinker, but a brilliant orator and politician. He took some of his theoretical insights from the French political economist Frédéric Bastiat,139 most importantly the argument for international disarmament and of course the idea that free markets increase the harmony of the interests between individuals, groups, and states.140 Like Hume and Smith, the Frenchman realized that warfare had “a root deep in the human heart, in the makeup of man,” but unlike the two Scots he believed this could be overcome by the “harmonious laws of the social world.”141

Cobden’s argument for free trade was not just about a linear relation between peace and free trade. Trade created international specialization, which in turn prevented a nation from becoming self-sufficient enough to wage a war. “Free trade unites two remote communities by the strongest of motives of which our nature is susceptible, rendering the interest of the one the only true policy of the other, and making each equally anxious for the prosperity and happiness of both.”142 Mises’ argument differed a little from this; he held that the international division of labor made peace inevitable through the inherently peaceful nature of commercial exchange. Free trade took away common grounds for warfare such as the desire for territorial con-quest, because there was nothing to gain from it.143

There are many possible objections to the idea that commerce and peace are related, which are discussed in more detail in chapter 7. For now, it suf-fices to note that some of Cobden’s contemporaries, like Malthus, imme-diately objected to “the trade leads to peace thesis.” They emphasized that


states, just like people, were at times governed less by interest than by pas-sion.144 Even in a perfectly free trading world, many causes for war remain. As indicated before, Mises acknowledged that in parts of his writings, but still preferred to defend the ideas of the Manchester School.

Cobden saw Adam Smith as the greatest single influence on his thought. He called for the establishment of Smithian Societies, devoted to the promul-gation “of the beneficent truths of the Wealth of Nations.”145 Cobden and his colleagues actively used the legacy of Smith to further their own aims and to discredit economic protectionists and other opponents of the Corn Law repeal and free trade measures. A comparison with the outcomes of chapter 4 shows that Cobden grossly misinterpreted Smith’s views on international relations. The Scot did not believe in the relation between trade and peace; did not think that harmony between states was possible; was not leaning toward pacifism; approved of military expenditure; and in general held rather belligerent views on international relations. As Magnusson notes, the Manchester School thus “turned . . . Adam Smith’s plea for more diver-sion of labor on an international scale into a call for a utopia of peaceful co-operation through universal free trade, which was certainly not in line with Smith’s more skeptical outlook.” Later, turn-of-the-century writers such as Hirst and Hobson presented Cobden and the Manchester School as important examples in the fight for peace, which was also one of their own main concerns.

From the last quarter of the nineteenth century onward, the Cobdenite view on international relations became the dominant line of thought in lib-eral circles. Cobden’s ideas and the later British “idealist” tradition in foreign policy became firmly linked.146 The idea of a positive relation between trade and peace was held by most liberals from the nineteenth century onward. In America, Woodrow Wilson was a “self-confessed Cobdenite” and the Cobdenite tradition was generally influential in U.S. liberal circles. This lasted at least until the First World War, which provided so much empirical counterevidence to disrepute Cobden’s ideas,147 but not for Mises, though; he resolutely stuck to the Cobdenite line, which was even more remarkable, given his critical views of Wilson and the “new liberals” in Britain.

This brief overview makes it clear that Mises did not analyze the ideas of his sources in detail. Apparently he was not aware that they often held views contrary to his own. His prime focus was on their international eco-nomics and he used their international political ideas selectively. This was not characteristic of Mises, but it does explain some of the inconsistencies in his own thoughts on international relations. Given the many positive refer-ences to them throughout his works, it is all the more remarkable that he once said: “the optimism of Bentham, Cobden and Bastiat was not justified,


they were liberal Utopians.”148 To do justice to him, this was during a talk for the Yale Economic Club on May 22, 1941, shortly after Mises’ arrival in America when he was rather depressed. More fundamentally, his ideas about the relation between the division of labor and peace also appear as utopian, as is elaborated in chapter 7.

Mises and the Three Traditions

One looks mostly in vain for references to Mises in modern IR literature. Perhaps partly because of the inconsistencies, his work on international rela-tions is largely neglected by IR scholars and even by most of his followers. The most prominent reference is a short review of Omnipotent Government in Foreign Affairs in April 1945. Here his work was received with badly hid-den distaste and the assertion that it will “become the source of considerable controversy,” because of its uncompromising and unitary explanation of the rise of Nazism by statism, “and thus it is subject to serious discount.” More recently, Mayall149 referred to Mises as a passionate defender of liberalism in a nationalist and imperialist world, but he did this only in a note. Jackson150 is another exception, because of his short reference to Mises’ ideas on sov-ereignty in his book on that topic. Nevertheless, in contrast to the chapters 3 and 4, there is no need to attempt to correct an erroneous image, simply because Mises is not a serious actor in IR theory. This neglect seems due to the general disapproval he met among academics, economists included, but his own incomplete analysis of international relations probably did not stim-ulate his inclusion either. This leaves the comparison of Mises’ international thought with the three English School traditions.

It is clear that he was no realist. Much of his work on international poli-tics was directed against the power politics of Germany and the other great European powers. He preferred an international order consisting of states, even when the national government’s power is limited to its own territory.151 Mises strongly rejected imperialism in general and the German conquest for lebensraum in particular. His support for the balance of power was at best halfhearted, although he had good insight into its workings and its rel-evance for the survival of (small) states. His rejection of offensive war also makes him unfit for classification as a realist. Moreover, Mises was strongly normative in international affairs; he always put concerns for individual lib-erty and freedom at the heart of his writings.

At first sight, Mises and the Kantians are much better matched. They shared a desire for perpetual peace and the freedom of movement for labor, capital, people, and goods. Mises’ conviction that the international division of labor would be able to bring perpetual peace had a strong Kantian touch.


He endorsed several forms of supranational organization. Yet, he also rejected core Kantian solutions at the world level. He associated pleas for world state with Marx and Lenin152 and was generally no fan of Kant’s philosophy.153 Mises regarded Kant’s categorical imperative as a foundation for socialism; regarded socialists as neo-Kantians; and thought Kant’s ethics were weak compared to those of Ferguson and Smith.154 Kant’s proposal to prohibit the raising of loans for waging war was extremely naïve, because as long as war was considered advantageous, no rules would prevent its outbreak.155

Mises was also unimpressed by twentieth-century liberal internationalism, widely seen as one of the main expressions of Kantian international thought (see chapter 7). For example, he argued that President Wilson wrongly assumed that only autocratic governments were warlike and democracies inherently peaceful. Mises asserted this was only true in a system of pri-vate ownership and free market. The pacifists never addressed the root cause of nationalism, which was the trend toward government control of business. The creation of a new international bureaucracy was definitely not a solution.156 His objections against the League of Nations were discussed above. In a few of his remarks on contemporary IR, Mises opposed Norman Angell, one of the most famous interwar international theorists and a sup-porter of the League.157 He found Angell’s plans for peace too abstract and accused Angell of completely missing the economic nationalist dimension in world affairs.158 This was obviously unfair, as it was the central theme in The Great Illusion. Mises and Angell did share a belief in the peaceful effects of interdependence and both refuted nationalism.159 With modern Kantians, Mises was at odds over the international role of capitalism and issues such as development aid. Hence, while there are some Kantian traces in Mises’ ideas about international relations, the differences with this tradition are too big to consider him a Kantian.

While the case for Mises as a Grotian is not as clear as those of Hume and Smith, it is still the most convincing option within the English School framework. The basis for this was his endorsement of the institutions of the international society of states. He wrote with approval of Bodin’s theory of national sovereignty, as well as Grotius’ theory of war and peace. He thought both thinkers promoted the peaceful coexistence of sovereign states and limited warfare, while they opposed boundless conquest.160 Except for Eastern Europe, Mises thought a commonwealth of free nations was the best international order.161 He adhered to the nation as a collection of indi-viduals. Even though he pointed to its defects, he valued international law and he required a just basis for war, which was fully in line with Hume and Smith and the wider just war tradition. Mises was no pacifist and he mainly deviated from them with regard to the importance of the balance of


power. His disapproval of international organizations and development aid is greater than is common among modern international society theorists, but of course these scholars are hardly ever classical liberal. Compared to the clearly pluralist Hume and Smith, he leans more to the solidarist side of the Grotian tradition.

Buzan’s complaint162 about the lack of English School engagement in political economy and globalization can be addressed by looking at Mises. But contrary to Buzan’s expectations, this does not strengthen the world so-ciety tradition in the English School. Indeed, Mises’ greatest contribution is to Grotian international relations through his plea for the limited state and unhampered capitalism.

CHAPTER 6

Friedrich Hayek, International Order, and

Federalism

It is most likely that Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) was the most important classical liberal of the twentieth century. A Nobel-Prize-winning economist who turned to political and legal philosophy, he

also wrote about theoretical psychology and the history of ideas. Together with his mentor Mises, and later Milton Friedman, he was one of the most important intellectuals who took up the fight against socialism. He founded the important classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) and actively sup-ported think tanks and public policy institutes around the world. Among others, he influenced Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and, less well-known, the German politician Franz Josef Strauss.1 In his view, a chief task of the economic theorist or political philosopher was to influence public opinion in order to attempt to change political impossibilities into realities. Objections to his proposals did not deter him in the least from developing them.2 Hayek was a full professor most of his life, at the London School of Economics, Chicago, Freiburg, and Salzburg. Compared to Mises, he was more a public face of classical liberalism, just like Friedman. Hayek waged “the war of ideas” and lived long enough to enjoy victory after the cold war ended with the collapse of communism.3

Current Hayek and Mises scholars sometimes make much of their dif-ferences, which partly originated from the influence of the Austrian School economist Wieser on Hayek’s ideas on economics—for example, his views on money and capital theory. One of their main disputes was whether socialism and planning would fail because of the impossibility of calculating prices, or


because of the failure of the human mind to process the enormous amount of information needed. Another difference was the question of the reintro-duction of the monetary gold standard. During the Great Depression, Mises thought this should be done immediately, while Hayek, who supported the gold standard in principal, argued this would create too many difficulties. They also argued about the number of state tasks; Hayek defended more state involvement in the life of individuals, especially in the third part of The Constitution of Liberty. To an extent, these divides reappear in their views on international relations, but the disputes should not be exaggerated. Mises regarded Hayek as his best pupil4 and Hayek said he learned more from Mises than from any other man, even if he characterized their relationship as “curious.”5 By and large, they were good friends engaged in the same fight against collectivism.6 The same is true for the much-debated differences between the Austrian and the Friedman-led Chicago School of economics.7

Hayek on International Relations

Hayek was first drawn to the problems of political organization during the First World War, while serving in an Austrian regiment where eleven languages were spoken. As with Mises, it made him realize that nation-alism was the main reason for the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Questions of international affairs stimulated Hayek to start thinking about politics; in his youth, he even intended to join the diplomatic academy, but this ceased to be attractive after the demise of the empire.8 Later, he repeat-edly expressed the wish to write more about international affairs and regu-larly showed concern for the international context of his ideas.9 Still Hayek’s contributions to this topic were unsystematic, mainly dispersed in chapters, articles and, significantly, newspaper coeditorials. The MPS was his postwar attempt to facilitate exchange between the often isolated classical liberals in all countries, not least Germany. It must be counted among Hayek’s lasting impact on the global revival of classical liberal ideas.10

Nation and Nationalism

Like his classical liberal predecessors, Hayek recognized the importance of the group for the individual. In international politics, he thought that the relevant group was the nation, which he somewhat narrowly described as “a homogenous community.” The nation was not an entity outside people, but an important element of individual identity. Although he once spoke of the “myth of nationality,” his overall position was that nations were prime sources of human organization and individual loyalty. Common culture, defined as

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“a shared style of expression in words, facial expressions, body language, style of clothing, preparation and consumption of food, and so forth” was a strong motivational force for all people.11 The division of the world in nations was fundamental: Hayek thought that humans did not tolerate any long-standing domination by groups of a different nationality.12 Human bondage depended as much on culture as on geographical nearness. Like Smith, Hayek noticed that humans had a weaker emotional bond and lacked deep feelings of respon-sibility for people living far away. They may be moved by the misery of poor unfortunates, yet cannot make this abstract knowledge a guide to everyday behavior.13 This confirms the centrality of the emotional bond between the individual and the nation in the classical liberal view of IR.

Different common cultures lead to different national characters. These are manifestations of rules governing both the actions and the perceptions of people and can be represented by concrete symbols, like a flag or a shrine, or the person of a monarch or leader, while they could also contain abstract rules defining what is done, or not, in a particular society.14 Hayek recognized that the notion of national characters is open to misinterpretation. Like Mises, he was concerned about the generalizations about Germans and Germany among the British population in the 1930s and 1940s. Since he was not allowed to join the British war efforts, he offered the BBC and the Ministry of Information his assistance in their propaganda efforts, especially to address this issue.15 The offer was not accepted, but he did not let it go. He called upon the read-ers of The Road to Serfdom, a book explicitly meant to appeal to the public, to recognize that Germans were not inherently vicious.16 There was not one German national character. Compared to Britain or France, Germany was far more dispersed in geography, history, and culture, which led to many regional German identities, but little cultural homogeneity at the national level.17

In sharp contrast to his thoughtful remarks in public, and hard to explain, he could privately be “culturally insensitive and stereotyp ical of particular nationalities,” for example, when talking about his Bengali students,18 the one time he referred to “dancing Negroes,” or even sometimes when he dis-cussed his beloved Japanese.19 At most, these rather illiberal remarks show that Hayek did not always appreciate the existing national differences and that he was just a fallible human being.

Most importantly, it did not lead him to embrace nationalism. “The nation must be valued, but nationalism is poison.”20 He saw the roots of the nationalist development in the struggle for national freedom, or the appli-cation of the freedom concept to a collective. Yet there were important dif-ferences between national freedom and individual freedom. History showed that striving for the former may not promote the latter. In his view, nation-alism was closely related to the false rationalist liberalism of the Continent,


with its centralizing and socialist leanings.21 He repeatedly criticized the nineteenth-century liberals, especially John Stuart Mill, for joining forces with the nationalists.22 He also saw a direct relationship between nation-alism, imperialism, and socialism. Most planners were militant nationalists,23 not least because they thought that foreign contacts hindered the effective organization of society. Arguing against his former employers, Hayek noted that the founders of the LSE, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, were prominent examples of this, with their preference for large and powerful “administra-tive” states, and their contempt for smaller ones. This glorification of power almost inevitably led from socialism to nationalism.24 When a person regards his own nation as superior to others, it is a small step to depart on civilizing missions abroad. He emphasized: “my personal position makes me unable to sympathize with any form of nationalism.” Patriotism, in Hayek’s view “the deep attachment to national traditions,” was not dangerous however.25

Existing states were often imperfect because they contained heteroge-neous populations26 and like Mises, Hayek regarded federalization as the preferred solution. While he did not endorse the organization of the world along strict national lines, he thought that states, or “sovereign nations,” were the ultimate units of international order.27 This is fully in line with the other three classical liberals and their view of human nature.

War and International Security

Like Mises, Hayek was no pacifist, and in line with Hume, Smith, and Mises he never regarded war as a regular foreign policy instrument, although he became rather hawkish at the end of his life. He regarded the occurrence of war as inevitable, a normal feature of human life also arising from human nature. War could be a threat to individual liberty, and so it should be lim-ited. During the Second World War, he firmly stated that “the first task is to win the war.”28 His bottom line in all international affairs was that without safety, there could be no liberty,29 just as liberal domestic politics depended on a minimum degree of order.

He stretched this principle to its classical liberal limits, by arguing that the prevention of war and civil strife needed to take precedence over even the most sacred principles of a free society. In his view, it was allowed to temporarily sacrifice individual liberty during a war.30 The provision of external defense was an essential state task, which required it to have certain coercive powers, such as the capacity to raise taxes and the ability to recruit an army in times of emergency.31 Ebenstein stated Hayek even approved of military conscription, but failed to provide direct evidence for this.32 In the large number of writings analyzed here, there are no references to support this claim. If Ebenstein was


right, it would make Hayek a clear exception to the classical liberal rule of the prohibition of state coercion in (regular) military recruitment.

In line with his support of federations (to be discussed below), Hayek never regarded defense as the exclusive realm of individual states. He saw advantages in the pooling of resources. In the 1930s, eager to try to prevent the outbreak of war, he proposed a system of mutual armaments control in Europe,33 which is not unlike the type of schemes still in place. In the 1970s, Hayek was positive about NATO, not least because the reliance on a supra-national defense organization prevented the North American and Western European members to wage war against each other. Supranational defense cooperation could even lead to the decentralization of the state because prep-arations for war were often strong centralizing forces in domestic politics.34

In common with Mises and Smith, Hayek saw war as an economic problem. He also favored nonintervention in the war economy, because this could prevent the inefficient governmental control of raw materials, imports, private consumption, capital market, interference in capital flows or interest rates, and so on.35 His bottom line was that economic planning fails both in times of peace and war.

A lifelong and frequent contributor to the public debate, Hayek pub-lished a significant number of his views on specific foreign policy issues in newspaper coeditorials, especially after he received the Nobel Prize. As was also apparent from his ties to many think tanks worldwide, he clearly had a desire to influence current affairs. Compared to other classical liberals and libertarians, he was rather belligerent. It is most likely that this was a result of living through two World Wars that convinced him there was a need to keep a stable international order. He publicly supported President Reagan’s level of defense expenditure, saying that world peace depended on America staying strong. Hayek doubted that the Soviets would ever start a nuclear war, but underlined the fact that they would not hesitate to use a position of military superiority against the West. Therefore the West should be at least as strong as the Soviet Union.36 He expressed strong support for the Western boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics37 and endorsed the policy of nuclear deterrence. He believed that it promoted peace, and stated: “I have indeed from the first moment that nuclear bombs have been used, been confident that I would not see another major war in my life time.”38

In The Times of January 12, 1980, Hayek criticized the American gov-ernment for failing to act more belligerently in the Iran hostage case, arguing that

peaceful international relations and the safety of persons in foreign coun-tries would have been much better served if the US had at once sent an


ultimatum saying that, unless every single member of the embassy staff were within forty-eight hours handed over unharmed . . . bombs would be falling at an increasing rate at the seat of the Iranian Government.39

According to his longtime secretary Charlotte Cubitt, Hayek thought that President Carter was “a fool” for trying to solve the Iran conflict peacefully. Hayek was often in favor of immediate military action to solve international crises, although he found the 1986 U.S. attack on Libya “alarming.” He regarded pacifism as a main cause of war, spoke fondly of his own war expe-riences, and recalled with disgust the many fellow officers who used the first available excuse to return to Vienna.40

During the Falklands War, he wrote that the Argentine government broke many long-standing rules of international law, which fully justified a British counterattack. He proposed the permanent stationing of a submarine in the South Atlantic to destroy Argentine weaponry when deemed necessary.41 He consistently and repeatedly argued that individual liberty depended on the maintenance of international order, with a central role for state violence. He was less concerned than many of his liberal contemporaries with the poten-tial breaches of individual freedom this entailed.

Federation

Hayek was equally consistent in his support for federalism in cases when a regular state system did not function. To him the major advantages were that federations limit central governmental power,42 curb majority power in general,43 and enable heterogeneous populations to live together in peace.

In the 1930s, the merits of federalism were widely discussed among intel-lectuals of different persuasion. Hayek supported several plans for feder-ation, for example, those by his LSE colleague Lionel Robbins, the Streit plan, and he even endorsed Norman Angell’s idea to federally unite France and England. When it became clear that a new war could not be avoided by limited federation, Hayek went a step further and proposed, as Churchill and Monnet would later, full economic and political union between the two countries. He thought this was the best way to win the forthcoming war. Federation was also the only viable solution for polyglot Central Europe: “if federation was not desirable for other reasons, it would have to be invented” (for this region, EvdH). To maintain the European balance of power and to prevent German domination in the region, a Central European federation had to be extended to include France, perhaps the Northern European coun-tries, and certainly Britain. The British needed to assure French security concerns and had to overcome their “false pride” and face the restrictions


on national sovereignty that a real rule of international law undoubtedly entailed.44

During the Second World War, Hayek lowered his ambitions and wrote that federal union may only work in a small number of Continental Western European countries and could eventually be expanded. A form of coopera-tion with the British Commonwealth and the United States was preferable in this respect.45 Hayek believed in supranational state cooperation, but not in a Kantian way. It was not a goal as such, but only a solution to specific political problems in a certain region. In Europe “neither Staatenbund nor Einheitsstaat, but a Bundesstaat” had to be formed. He did not argue for the abolishment of national states, nor advocated a world government. His aim was interstate federation, which, in his view was, a classical liberal correc-tion to the erroneous nationalist path taken by the nineteenth-century liber-als. Federation would bring peace between the constituent parts and would limit conflicts with other states. This was not due to any inherently peaceful external effects of federations, but simply because a militarily strong federa-tion would eliminate the danger of outside attack.46 Hayek employed a bal-ance of power argument in this respect; he held no Kantian illusions about a peaceful state of humanity; nor did he believe in the inherent peacefulness of particular political structures.

Political and economic union were strongly related ideas, Hayek wrote that he did not know of examples of successful common foreign and defense policies without economic union. Foreign policy by a federal (European) union presumed central control over all international issues, including eco-nomic ones, because these could be a cause of war. Internal economic barriers hindered the best use of available resources, especially in the area of defense where internal fragmentation directly weakened the federal military might. Also advantageous was that a federation made economic nationalism and economic planning practically impossible. As long as a laissez-faire policy was in place, the economic power at the central level remained limited. Devolution of powers to local units enabled competition between local com-munities and ensured there would be no favorable treatment of one group over another.47 Hayek thought that people of one state would be unwilling to support strangers if a planning authority ordered them to do it, because of a lack of common ideals of distributive justice. Hence his rhetorical ques-tion, “Which Dutch worker would be willing to pay more for his bicycle to help the Coventry mechanic?”48 Ironically, in the modern European Union, the desire for international wealth redistribution is much greater than Hayek held possible or would have approved.

The main task of the federal government was to reject measures that entail possible harm to the constituent parts. Given his pleas for a limited


federation, it is somewhat puzzling that Hayek also recommended the ideas of the socialist Ivor Jennings.49 In a concise book, the latter discarded ideas about an intercontinental organization by limiting his federation to Western Europe. Its main function would be to act as a brake on nationalism, while the federation had to have powers over defense and foreign affairs. However, he also proposed a degree of control over colonies and a large number of gov-ernmental measures,50 which clearly contradicted Hayek’s ideas.

Even though post-1945 Europe did not develop into his proposed federa-tion, Hayek remained a supporter of federalism. He advocated the federaliza-tion of Jerusalem, saying that the fate of the city was a cause dear to his heart, as he “has followed the Jewish aspirations with sympathy.” He was worried about the threats to Israel’s existence, for example, by Yasser Arafat, whom he regarded as a terrorist leader not worthy of being spoken to by Western leaders.51 Between 1978 and 1985, he wrote several letters to the Israeli poli-ticians Moshe Dayan, Teddy Kolek, and Menachem Begin.52 He suggested making Jerusalem the capital of a Royal Palestine, or a Levantine Federation, which would include Israel, East Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, and possibly Lebanon. Jerusalem would be like Washington, District of Columbia, with assured free access for all citizens of the member states. The scheme intended to make Jerusalem permanently but not exclusively Israeli. He said this idea had ripened since his visit to Israel in 1968, although he acknowledged that his Israeli friends were very skeptical.53 He warned the Israelis that if they did not act themselves, the idea might be forced upon them. His plan was “a suggestion of crucial importance . . . which offers the unique possibility, in the long run, to the unswerving support of the whole Christian world for the preservation of Israel.”54 He only got polite but firmly negative Israeli responses, which motivated him to send his plan to the editor of The Times.55 Initially he had hoped that somebody else, for example, the Israeli prime minister in a speech to the Knesset, would go public with it.

Hayek tried to bring these ideas in line with his overall philosophical position. In 1939, he argued that “the abrogation of national sovereignties and the creation of an effective international order of law were a neces-sary complement and the logical consummation of the liberal program.”56 This was a flawed remark considering his view of human nature. He did not employ it in his later works, which were more directly concerned with political theoretical questions. Shearmur57 in a more general context, ques-tions whether the Hayekian preference for the creation of federations was constructivist and therefore contradictory to other parts of his thought. At first sight, this may indeed seem the case. However, Hayek proposed institutional changes only in case of failure of the regular state system, often due to strong and destructive nationalist policies and sometimes religiously


inspired. In those cases, many forces obstructed the spontaneous formation of order, which led to clear threats to individual liberty. Then there was a need to consider other options, with an eye to establishing a classical liberal limited state. In those circumstances, there is no contrast between a limited federation and classical liberalism.

International Organization and International law

Hayek gave some ground for confusion about his ideas on global interna-tional organization. Although he favored comparable policies throughout, he was not always entirely consistent in his wordings, most probably because of his unsystematic treatment of the subject. This applied in particular to his views on the preferred international organization. He gave the impres-sion of at least having a partial belief in the possibility of a Kantian out-come. Hayek once suggested that a European federation could be expanded to a larger group of states, “and perhaps” one single global federation.58 In 1950, he proposed the admission of the individual German states and other Western European countries into a Union with America59 and incidentally he favorably referred to a “universal peaceful order.” At the same time, he forcefully argued against political or economic organization beyond unions of national states. In The Road to Serfdom he dismissed “the silly claims made on behalf of a federal organization of the whole world, during the height of the propaganda for a Federal Union” (in the 1930s and 1940s, EvdH ). For him, there was no need or obvious merit to fuse different coun-tries in a single centralized state. There should be no superstate with (eco-nomic) powers, if only because humankind had not learned to control these powers in the more restricted national sphere. Indeed, Hayek said “until I find a sane person who seriously believes that the European races will voluntarily submit to their standard of life and rate of progress being deter-mined by a World Parliament, I cannot regard such plans as anything but absurd.” He also expected “the other races” to refuse to submit to a “white-race-dominated world.”60 Therefore Skidelsky obviously misses the point when stating “Hayek thought that a world government would be needed to entrench economic liberalism internationally.”61

At the end of the Second World War, when he began venturing into political issues, he warned against the creation of a new League of Nations. Like Mises, Hayek thought that the League’s span of control had been too big, it lacked power, and geographically it was too dispersed. “While we must aim at preventing future wars as much as possible, we must not believe that we can at one stroke create a permanent organization which will make war in any part of the world entirely impossible.”62


Applying the classical liberal principles of limited state and natural rights, Hayek was not in favor of an omnipotent global organization, because he feared “rationalist constructivism.” At the same time, he did not outright reject all forms of international organization, but thought that installing too many different international organizations could also lead to more con-flict.63 In the 1970s, he argued against the United Nations, calling it inef-fective and constructivist. This was not remarkable, given his view on the origins of the UN. Partly inspired by the reports of some members of the drafting committee, particularly the Marxists Laski and Carr, Hayek con-tended that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was “an attempt to fuse the rights of the Western liberal tradition with the altogether different tradition deriving from the Marxist Russian Revolution,” which added “ill-defined, absurd and unenforceable” social and economic rights to the tra-ditional negative rights portfolio.64 It was tragic that the General Assembly of the United Nations, “the most comprehensive authority which man has yet created” proclaimed that “everybody should keep the Declaration con-stantly in mind.” This undermined the respect it ought to command and showed that the assembly “indulges in the self-deception that we can at the same time benefit from the spontaneous forces of society and mould them to our own will.”65 Attempts to ensure peace through international orga-nization started from the wrong end; large specialized organizations were unable to accomplish that. Not surprisingly, Hayek also had a low opinion of the International Labor Organization (ILO).66 He actually shared this criticism with Martin Wight,67 although there is no indication that the two influenced each other.

Hayek thought it was wrong to regard human rights as positive claims, both domestically and internationally. “Nobody has a right to a partic-ular state of affairs, unless it is the duty of someone to bring it about or preserve it.” For example, parents had a duty to take care of their children and people were entitled to equal political rights. A world in which all people have governments protecting certain human rights was preferable, but not enforceable or feasibly created. The world was a loose society, not an organization resulting from “Platonic rationalist constructivism.”68 True international law would limit the powers of national governments to harm each other. “If the highest common values are negatives, not only the highest common rules, but also the highest authority should essentially be limited to prohibitions.”69 Hayek believed in the power of international law, but was increasingly critical about its development. He asserted that the concepts of sovereignty and state were kidnapped by legal positivists who made the development of true international law impossible.70


In The Constitution of Liberty, there is an inconclusive section point-ing out that questions of international relations require philosophical foundations different from those of domestic politics. Hayek wrote that there was no moral foundation for the establishment of an international rule of law comparable to the rule of law in national politics, and there-fore problems in international relations were hard to solve as long as states were the ultimate actors at this political level. It is not clear what Hayek meant by this, because he did not normally argue against states as actors in world politics and he continued the passage in his regular anti- international-organization fashion: transfers of “the new powers of governments” (by which he meant any power that went beyond the classi-cal tasks of the state in a laissez-faire situation) to supranational agencies were a danger to individual freedom. Only makeshift solutions were pos-sible at the international level, because people had not yet discovered rules to effectively limit governmental powers, nor how to divide these powers between the several levels of authority. “Until the protection of individual liberty is much more firmly secured than it is now (in 1960, EvdH ), the creation of a world state would probably be a greater danger to the future of civilization than even war.”71

Hayek was generally in favor of nonpositivist international law, as was shown in a joint letter with Karl Popper sent to President Reagan on February 11, 1981. They requested the president to subject a certain topical issue to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, arguing that this would satisfy all kinds of “crucial requirements” and would lead to prompt drastic action and the cooling down of feelings. They also anticipated that it would lead to a formal restatement of “a basic doctrine of international law, without which a return to normal relations would be impossible.”72 The subject of their concern was not named and is not easy to detect either. Most probably, it concerned the rocket crisis between Syria and Israel in South Lebanon, and not, as Hennecke argues, the Iran hostage affair. The latter crisis ended on January 20, 1981, a few hours after Reagan’s inauguration, while the International Court of Justice had already ruled in United States’ favor in May 1980.

Despite all his writings in favor of negative individual rights, Hayek apparently did not mind the risk of being used for propaganda purposes by governments that infringed those rights. He toured South Africa, despite his regret that the Dutch reactionary Afrikaners took the lead in the country, instead of the English-speaking liberals.73 Hayek thought its racial policies unjust and wrong, but nevertheless publicly argued that the international community held in many ways scandalous double standards toward South Africa. He doubted the wisdom of the weapon embargo and wondered


aloud whether the international community could force its own moral standards upon South Africa. Here he overlooked that these Western stan-dards were also his own, as apartheid and classical liberalism are completely incompatible.

In 1977 and 1981, he also went to Chile, which he regarded as a great economic success. Although it was an authoritarian state, the totalitarian Allende period had been much worse in his view. He was convinced of an ongoing campaign against Chile by Western countries and felt harassed by public opinion and organizations such as Amnesty International for lec-turing in the country, just as Friedman experienced after he advised the Chilean government. Hayek complained that no social scientist ever got that sort of treatment after visiting China, Libya, Algeria, or Uganda. While that was correct in itself, it was a weak line of defense. Again he easily stepped over the differences with his own overall normative perspective. More to the point was his argument that (economic) sanctions should be based on the violation of clear and published international rules, not just on public out-rage. He criticized the United Nations for acting arbitrarily as in this case and added that the UN could only hope to regain influence when it stopped this kind of biased action.74 In 1982, he protested against the publication of a political cartoon in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which pictured the Polish and Chilean regimes as equally bad. Hayek argued that any Pole able to flee to Chile would be very lucky.75 He sent this piece to Margaret Thatcher, but to his great disappointment, she rebuffed him by responding that Chile had indeed gone through some economic success, but that some of its other policies were entirely unacceptable.76

Hayek chose to support or at least to stay neutral to the politics of these regimes, even when these clearly clashed with his own ideas about individual political liberty. His general position was that democracy was the best political system, but that it was still possible to protect personal freedom in less perfect countries like Singapore, Liechtenstein, or Chile.77 He cared far more about the economic developments, possibly because he was excited to see his own policy recommendations implemented. Hayek was displeased by the different, less critical, reaction by world opinion lead-ers to human rights abuses in the communist countries. He also had a desire to remain loyal to his often long-standing personal contacts in Chile and South Africa. In addition, he was so used to forms of public outrage and contempt for his ideas that he was not impressed by the protests of students or nongovernmental organizations,78 and in this case, not even by protests from his friends.79 Yet, despite his valid remarks about the way the world employs sanctions, it is hard to overlook this inconsistency between his words and deeds.


Imperialism and Development

Hayek did not write much on imperialism, but generally favored decoloni-zation on both political and economic grounds. British colonial rule had shown that even mild forms of planning known as “colonial development” led to the imposition of ideals and values other than those of the ruled.80 Like his classical liberal predecessors, he never endorsed foreign domina-tion of other states as a legitimate policy objective, nor did he argue against decolonization.

From the 1960s until his death, he was involved with the question of the (economic) development of the newly independent states, partly under influence of the path-breaking work on the economics of development by MPS member Peter Bauer.81 Bauer argued against the dominant idea that rich countries caused poverty in underdeveloped states or the existence of a “vicious circle of poverty” from which no escape was possible. Neither central planning nor foreign aid was a prerequisite for development.82 Aid enabled bad governments to continue policies that were counterproductive to the interests of their people: for example, warfare or other policies that created refugee flows; restriction of capital inflow and foreign private invest-ment; suppression of private trade; expulsion of (productive) ethnic groups; repression of women; confiscation of property; forced collectivization; all kinds of economic intervention and so on. There is “no use in money trans-fers from the poor in the rich countries, to the rich in the poor countries,” as Bauer famously stated.83

Like Mises, Hayek thought it was problematic that the leaders of developing countries were so strongly influenced by collectivist ideas dur-ing their education in the West. Bad economics would keep poor coun-tries poor. For example, artificial increases of the speed of industrialization at the cost of agricultural production led to food shortages for industrial workers. The forced copying of successes elsewhere was just another var-iant of governmental planning. Only free economic growth could enable development. Hayek believed greater global richness would bring greater technological innovation, which could directly help to reduce poverty and misery. Indirectly, many countries that lacked freedom could in this way still benefit from the freedom of others. The world population was a “cap-tive of progress,” in that the abolition of starvation, of filth and disease, and rapid expansion of its numbers, were all sustained by sufficient economic growth.84 Hayek and Mises emphasized that societies that restrict capi-talism were depriving themselves of the fruits of the information-processing capacity of the market order, and therefore “succeed mainly in impoverish-ing themselves.”85


Hayek warned against the idea of a need or right to international redistribution of wealth. “There exists neither on the national nor interna-tional level a moral ground why poorer regions should be entitled to tap for their purposes the wealth of richer regions. . . .[T]he silly race with Russia” (for political influence, EvdH) makes the West also dole out favors to the socialist experiments of underdeveloped countries.86

Not surprisingly, Hayek strongly opposed the 1980 “Brandt report,” of the Independent Commission for International Developmental Issues, chaired by the former German chancellor. Hayek thought it was “flawed,” because it supported the “traditional fallacy that poverty can be cured by a massive transfer of wealth.” He rejected most forms of aid, but allowed mar-ket-based solutions like government guaranteed loans by private lenders.87 Only countries that wanted to become capitalist were entitled to Western support, he argued, adding that all others should turn to Russia for assis-tance. Overall, the Brandt report was “stupid waffle, which shows such a complete ignorance about the real problems, it is scandalous.”88

There is controversy over Hayek’s last work, The Fatal Conceit, because of the alleged “overgenerous” editing by William Bartley. Ebenstein89 con-cludes after detailed analysis that the chapter entitled “The Extended Order and Population Growth” is genuine Hayekian, so it can be used here. He argued that in a world of specialization and division of labor, growing num-bers of people would lead to increased productivity, enabling further popu-lation growth for an indefinite period. The related economic growth would be beneficial to the poor, as it would provide them opportunity to stay alive, raise children, and see to all kinds of other needs. Capitalism indeed gives life, he argued. Without it, the poor would be worse off. The developed world morally had as little right to prevent the growth of populations in other parts of the world, as they had a duty to assist it. A moral conflict could arise if materially advanced countries continued to assist and even subsidized the growth of population in regions. He gave the Sahel as an example and argued that there appeared to exist little prospect that its pop-ulation, let alone an increased one, would, in the foreseeable future, be able to maintain itself by its own efforts.

Hayek thought that it was partly due to Western interference that popu-lations could grow beyond the point of natural feeding capacity. The use of resources by a larger world population was no problem; the Club of Rome and their supporters were just doomsayers. Populations anywhere had the right to development; the West should refrain from idealizing the primi-tive life of the nondeveloped peoples, or to limit their desire for modern-ization. The increase in population in large cities in the underdeveloped world stemmed from the fact that people living in the shantytowns who


have already reaped the benefits of urban economic development still cling to a traditional lifestyle by keeping a large family to provide for them in old age. In his view, “whatever men live for, today most live only because of the market order.”90

In this last passage, the influence of Julian Simon, the environmental economist, is evident. In 1981 Hayek wrote to him: “I have never before written a fan letter to a professional colleague, but to discover that you have in your Economics of Population Growth provided the empirical evidence for what with me is the result of a life-time of theoretical speculation, is to exciting an experience not to share with you.”91

Hayek was convinced that only a sufficient amount of freedom would be able to bring further development and prosperity as numerous examples of partially free states around the globe showed: even a limited expansion of freedom has already brought greater prosperity.92

For Mises and Hayek and a number of contemporary classical liberals, there were three persistent yet erroneous assumptions about aid: it promotes development; it alleviates poverty; and there are important political and eco-nomic interests at stake for the donor countries. They argued that economic development mostly depended on internal factors. Capital accumulation was the result of economic development, not its precondition and it certainly did not depend on aid. Evidence showed that even poor people were able to save for investment. Aid often created political gridlock, as it enabled ruling regimes to stay in control through patronage, money transfers, and other means of power projection. Governments most often sanctioned money transfers to private projects and so this was not a better way of giving aid. Moreover, aid enforced the idea that economic development depended on circumstances beyond one’s control.93

International Economics and Migration

In line with his three classical liberal predecessors, Hayek was a convinced free trader.94 As his support for the balance of power indicated, he believed in spontaneous ordering at all levels of political organization. Trade and the growth of civilization were positively related in his view; government interference in trade was seldom to anyone’s benefit.95 All international eco-nomic barriers had to be abolished to achieve the highest material welfare for all the people in the world.96 He was positive about the removal of trade barriers in the intergovernmental General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and even “in some measure the intentions, if not the practice” of the European Economic Communities. He believed both had helped to cre-ate the “Great Prosperity” of the postwar period.97


Like Mises, Hayek thought economic nationalism would often lead to war. International economic planning was only possible through the naked rule of force, laid down by a small group of people imposing their views on millions of others. The chances for economic international order were small as long as every country employed zero sum policies aimed at its own immediate interests without regard to its external effects. When interna-tional economic relations become a matter of states instead of individuals, it “must end in clashes of power.”98 Territorial barriers also had the effect of protecting economic benefits by certain groups, like trade unions, who were typically the first to call for justice nationally, but remained protectionist internationally.99

Hayek’s idea of positive ties between the individual and the nation did not extend to emotional bondage with the national currency. In the late 1930s, he warned against monetary nationalism.100 Later, he proposed the full denationalization of money, as a result of his general opposition to the economic and monetary influence of governments and their central banks.101 He called for the absolute freedom to use currencies of all nations in all ter-ritories102 and the abolition of the regulation of free-flowing money in the broadest sense between the rich countries. Only this would curb inflation, provide “honest money,” and terminate the governmental monopoly of the issue and control of money.103 As a clear sign of his direct political influence, the British government tried in vain to implement his ideas in the 1980s104 to prevent the introduction of what he then called the “Utopian European Monetary Unit.”105 While he had been in favor of European monetary union before, he no longer expected the member states to be able to agree on the common monetary authority’s policies. He thought it was also unlikely that they would be able to administer a new currency any better than they did their old separate ones.106

Free immigration of people was another of his ideals, but Hayek was afraid about the destabilizing effects of large groups of immigrants entering a relatively homogeneous territory. This would most probably lead to nationalist reactions and a retreat from friendly positions toward newcomers. His opinion was based on the lessons he drew from the great influx of Jewish peasants from Galicia and Poland into Vienna in the interwar period. This caused racial resentment and anti-Semitism among even the most decent Viennese people. Therefore, Hayek publicly supported Margaret Thatcher’s call to stop immigration:

[H]owever far modern man accepts in principle the ideal that the same rule should apply to all men, in fact he does concede it only to those whom he regards as similar to himself and only slowly learns to extend


the range of those he does accept as his likes. There is little legislation can do to speed up this process and much it may do to reverse it by re-awakening sentiments that are already on the wane.107

In the public uproar that followed, he tried to clarify himself through a number of coeditorials in The Times. He rejected the accusation that he thought racialism was the fault of the victim, restating that “regrettably” experience showed that ordinary man only slowly reconciled himself to a large increase of foreigners among his neighbors, even when these people only differed in language and manner. To prevent an unpleasant reawakening of primitive instincts, the wise statesman ought to aim at keeping the influx low.108 He repeated that acculturation is a slow process, which may almost grind to a halt when the new groups of immigrants were large enough to form their own communities. To Hayek’s regret, this was almost universally resented by the indigenous population.109 His position was in line with his concerns about movements that aimed to “to keep foreigners out” for eco-nomic reasons.110 He favored free immigration in principle, but also clearly distinguished the regrettable negative social effects of large migration flows. While he did not elaborate on it, in the modern welfare states there were also issues of the protection of property rights involved, particularly monetary transfers for education, health, and welfare. The events in many European countries from the late 1970s onward showed him right in this respect.

Free Trade and Peace

In contrast to Mises and many contemporary liberals, Hayek hardly dis-cussed the alleged peaceful effects of trade. There is no direct evidence, but is seems likely that his careful reading of Hume and Smith prevented him from feeling great optimism in this respect. Gissurarson erroneously claims that Hayek consistently argued in favor of it.111 Hayek was rather ambiva-lent. He did not completely diverge from his peers, among whom the idea that trade promotes peace was rather popular. He hinted, but never fully embraced or elaborated on the idea. Because of the importance of this thesis for existing ideas on liberalism in IR, the relation between free trade, peace, and Hayekian thought is analyzed in more detail.

Hayek once claimed that the emergence and development of trade could be a general model for the development of rules and order in society as a whole. Trade rules regulated human conduct independent of the particular purposes of the people concerned. The order so formed could eventually enable the development of a universal peaceful order. Hayek was careful never to predict a certain outcome. His general ideal was the establishment


of the nomocracy, or the purposeless, law-governed society, as opposed to the telocracy, the purpose governed system. Only in a nomocracy, the possibility for peaceful coexistence could be extended beyond small groups of people such as families, herds, and tribes. This type of order grew spontaneously through the process of natural selection. Hayek called it the Great Society (as Smith did), the Open Society (as Popper did), or the “extended order.” In it, all people were able to pursue their own purposes in peace.112 He mainly described the Great Society in terms of domestic politics, but he contended, albeit without further clarification, that its formation “produced at least the beginnings of a world society.”113

Hayek thought that trade had the character of a nonpersonal exchange, taking place on the basis of a common interest between the people involved to voluntarily truck and barter. Both sides would gain from the exchange; otherwise, there would be no trade at all. Individuals were not required to agree on ends; the agreement on means sufficed to enable their collabora-tion.114 Therefore, free trade was seen as a model for international sponta-neous order. Hayek hinted at positive spillover effects from trade into other areas of international relations. More trade would lead to greater prosperity and a larger degree of interdependence in international relations. This could limit the desire for war, because the individuals involved had a larger interest in keeping peace.

Here Hayek started to contradict himself. To apply his own terms, at the international level there is often a need to agree on ends, rather than means alone. International politics is more often a zero sum game, which implies there are numerous situations in which rules do not, or only partially, exist. His writings on these issues showed Hayek knew that and it is therefore not surprising he failed to provide evidence on how free trade facilitated international rules to develop spontaneously. More importantly, it is hard to imagine that Hayek really thought trade could ever accomplish inter-national peace, given his view on human nature. To briefly recall, Hayek and the other classical liberals considered humans to be inherently social. They could not function without each other; they were not egoistic atoms solely concerned with their own interests. Sometimes people, owing to their “Humean enslavement by the passions” would prefer the short-term quick win to the long-term wise decision. Humans were also inclined, though not destined, to act wrongfully in a moral sense. Hayek famously pointed at the imperfections of human knowledge and stated that there were many grounds for disagreement, arguments, and fights among people.

In domestic situations, these could partly be solved by agreements on means, the dispersion of private property, the protection of personal lib-erty, and the implementation of the rule of law. The international arena


is different, not least because the mutual feeling of sympathy cannot be stretched without limits. Like Hume and Smith, Hayek believed that people in “small groups” have strong feelings for one another, while in the extended order affection and bondage is less strong.115 In the Great Society, the effect of a person’s actions on others would be largely unknown and there would be fewer duties toward other people. The principle of limited but equal treatment of all men was probably the only chance for peace. Hayek also emphasized that the greatest obstacles to a universal application of rules of just conduct were still the individual’s loyalty to class, occupa-tional groups, clan, nation, race, or religion. He acknowledged that special rules that explicitly permit hurting a stranger if that was deemed beneficial to the own group were only slowly replaced by rudimentary general rules of international law, enabling the Great Society to develop and thus offering “the distant hope of a universal order of peace.”116

Peace was one of Hayek’s “three great negatives”; together with freedom and justice, it had been the result of the rules of civilization.117 Again this does not go well with his views and insights on international relations. Since humans were least attracted to strangers, there were greater chances for ani-mosity between the leaders of states. After all, state action is human action. This did not mean there had to be international disagreement all the time, or that peace was not worth striving for. Yet in the Hayekian view, conflict and war were inevitable. Human nature simply implied the occurrence of conflict and war, and trade was unable to overcome that. Hayek flirted with the “trade leads to peace thesis” but it must be recognized that this clearly contradicted his own philosophical position and most of his opinions on international affairs, such as the belief in the value of the nation, the inev-itability of war, his support of the balance of power, international society, federation and forms of international law, and his rejection of development aid. He may have desired to sketch an overly rosy picture of the future as an additional argument to embrace his other thoughts and plans. Apparently he did not think it thoroughly through.

Hayek and IR Theory

Hayek is not often mentioned by IR theorists, not even in essays on inter-national liberalism. Sometimes his general or economic ideas are touched upon, although seldom in a positive way.118 Only a few exceptions deal with his ideas on international relations. Easley and Wilson rightly count him among the prominent federalists of the 1930s and 1940s,119 while Young takes his idea of spontaneous order into account when explaining the forma-tion of international regimes, explicitly linking spontaneous order and the


balance of power mechanism.120 Richardson is a prolific writer on Hayek, whom he portrays as a ruthless antistate thinker unresponsive to calls for international justice. He links Hayek to realism, owing to his alleged desire to exclude ethical considerations from international relations.121 Ashworth discusses Hayek’s ideas in an almost malicious fashion. For example, he erroneously claims that Hayek rejects Christian morality and lacks sophis-tication when referring to positive outcomes of market relations.122

Of the Hayek scholars, Curzon-Price underestimates the extent to which Hayek directly addressed problems of international relations.123 Ebenstein just mentions some of his newspaper articles on foreign policy.124 By far the most detailed and well-researched overview is provided by Hennecke,125 but he does not provide a theoretical context.

Acton and Tocqueville

Hayek was not very clear about the sources of his ideas on international rela-tions. Unlike Mises, he appeared not to be influenced by the Manchester School thinkers, although he incidentally praised their views on free trade.126 Besides Hume and Smith, he mostly referred to Acton and Tocqueville in his writings. These were seen as the two leading nineteenth-century representa-tives of true individualism and liberalism.127 Their influence on his ideas may have been considerable, but it is hard to detect more than a few direct links between their thought and Hayek’s ideas on international relations.

Is seems likely that Acton influenced Hayek’s view on the relationship between liberalism and nationalism and on federalism.128 The clearest evidence for this is found in the epigraph that opens the chapter on inter-national relations in The Road to Serfdom. It is a quote of Acton on precisely that topic.129 They also shared a distaste for imperialism and realpolitik, thought alike in terms of national characters,130 and strongly opposed Mill’s nationalism and imperialism.131 Acton also emphasized the negative side of nationalism.132

Hayek and Tocqueville shared a number of convictions, but it is impos-sible to establish a pattern of influence concerning their opinions on inter-national affairs. One of the reasons is that Tocqueville changed his mind radically. As a parliamentarian, he started out rather bellicose,133 but during his short spell as foreign minister in 1849, he became an advocate of inter-national peace and diplomatic dispute settlement.134 Some common posi-tions were the insight that wars and administrative centralization often go together,135 that states should behave with a certain morality and respect for international rules,136 or the acknowledgment that individuals are emotion-ally attached to their nation.137


The Three Traditions: Realism

Compared to Mises, Hayek is much easier to classify in terms of the three traditions of the English School. Hayek had some realist tenets. He shared their view on human nature and the idea of the state as the prime inter-national actor. Hayek regarded the balance of power between states as a natural and positive phenomenon and pointed out that it would be very unlikely for a dominant power to behave idealistically in international affairs: “how small is the likelihood it will be unselfish and how great are the temptations!” Public opinion was no pacifying force either. On the other hand, Hayek generally refuted realpolitik138 and called Hobbes’ “primitive individualism in the state of nature . . . a myth.” He did not believe there was ever a war of all against all.139

Hayek’s antirealism showed most clearly in his strong criticism of E.H. Carr, the prominent realist of the interwar period. He called him “one of the totalitarians in our midst” and particularly refuted Carr’s ideas about the subordinate position of morality in world politics.140 To Hayek’s dislike, no rule was safe in realism, nor pacta sunt servanda a moral imperative. He strongly opposed this forfeit of general principles and emphasized that inter-national treaties should have practical meaning. Hayek even accused Carr of arguing that England fought the First World War on the wrong side and asserted he sympathized with Carl Schmitt, “the leading Nazi theoretician of totalitarianism.” Hayek rejected Carr’s assertion in Conditions of Peace that war was the “most powerful instrument of social solidarity,” with a clear sense of meaning and purpose. Carr’s “pitying” of the “well meaning English people” and their nineteenth-century belief that war is without pur-pose or meaning were also far removed from Hayek’s position.141 In a review of Carr’s Nationalism and After, Hayek noticed some improvements with regard to his “collectivist thinking,” but Carr was still too optimistic about the possibility of containing nationalism.142

Kantian Tradition

There is some debate about the Kantian influence on Hayek,143 on whether his liberal philosophical inheritance was an unhappy mix of Kant and Hume.144 He only saw an indirect influence himself.145

His thoughts on international relations were hardly influenced by Kant or the Kantian tradition. Hayek famously made a plea for a liberal utopia, but this was in the context of a call for a better “marketing” of liberalism in the battle of ideas. He certainly did not think that a perfect order was pos-sible and his social evolutionism was stringently anti-utopian.146 Utopianism


was a danger to the classical liberal ideals,147 because once idealists were proved wrong in practice, they would start coercing people.148 In 1939, Hayek opposed the optimism of Mitrany who predicted in the interwar pe-riod that planning would be out of fashion within a generation because it came at the cost of freedom of thought. Hayek pointed to the power of state propaganda as counterevidence. It was more likely that the struggle for the survival of ideas would become a war of ideologies between nations. This could lead to the “the destruction of everything which to us represents the greatness of humanity.”149

Hayek rejected most international organizations and considered a world state a major threat to individual liberty. He opposed his Chicago colleague John Nef ’s call for “more love” in world politics. “Love is bound to the con-crete and individual sphere and ought to be kept out of all these problems of international order.”150 Hayek mostly aimed for a spontaneous international order, but allowed for state action if an existing order was threatened.

His respect for tradition and spontaneous evolution prohibited him from supporting revolutionary designs for a better world. Although people should generally aim at its establishment, the international rule of law would not be achieved by creating new international institutions. People did not know how to restrict organizations and therefore it was illusionary to think that more international organizations would lead to peace.151

The closest Hayek came to Kantianism was in his support for feder-alism, but even then, he made it clear that the role of national states should be preserved. The Hayekian approval of some supranational institutions matched his ideas on spontaneous order. “The elements of the spontaneous macro order are the several economic arrangements of individuals, as well as [emphasis by Hayek] those of deliberate organizations.”152 There is no contradiction in this. Throughout his work, he stressed that if mankind found ways to develop more efficient ways of organization, no classical lib-eral would object to international organizations. He rejected many of the contemporary international organizations mainly because of their construc-tivist goals and methods.

The only article of Hayek that can be regarded as straightforwardly uto-pian was a long piece he wrote (but apparently never published, EvdH) as a young man, most probably during his stay in New York in 1924. He argued that the First World War could possibly have been prevented, or at least have been restricted in the number of participating countries, if only the public had been completely and impartially informed. To prevent such a war from happening again, he proposed that “all countries bind themselves to require the daily newspapers within their territory to print regularly a page of news


and articles compiled by an international committee,” which should guar-antee that all interests are given their due place on that page.153 There is no need to discuss the problems associated with this proposal. It suffices to stress that he quickly and permanently changed his mind, most probably under the influence of the events in the rest of the interwar period and the Second World War.154

Grotian Tradition

Like Hume, Smith, and Mises, Hayek was a Grotian. This is not to say that Hayek studied the work of Grotius in detail, as he offered two contradictory opinions about him within a period of three years.155 Yet his views on war, the balance of power, and international development aid clearly mark him as a Grotian pluralist. The importance Hayek attached to the maintenance of international order excludes him from the solidarists. “As is true with other evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than war itself. If we can reduce the friction likely to lead to war, this is probably all we can reasonably hope for.”156 He realized the inevitability of war.

Besides his endorsement of international law, the best evidence for his Grotianism is contained in the following quote: “neither an omnipotent super state, nor a loose association of ‘free nations,’ but a community of nations of free men must be our goal.”157 Hayek’s ideal was the Great Society (emphasis added, EvdH). International society had to grow spontaneously; it could not be constructed through positivist international law.158

Hennecke is wrong to exclusively relate Hayek’s concern for the inter-national rule of law to the influence of Kant. Like Whelan in the case of Hume and Walter in the analysis of Smith and international relations, he overlooks the English School framework, although he rightly notices that Hayek’s international politics is not either dovish or hawkish, realist or institutionalist; nor was Hayek in favor of world government.159 Ebenstein exaggerates when claiming that Hayek’s ultimate goal was the establish-ment of a universal order of peace.160 He sometimes hinted at this idea, but his overall thought on international relations was different. Limiting states through spontaneous ordering processes and natural-law-based inter-national law to achieve some international order was the best possibility. This becomes even clearer when looking at a quote of Hayek provided by Ebenstein himself. In 1968, Hayek argued in favor of “international law, not international government,” or a system of rules that bound individual states both in their relations to each other and in their relations to their citizens.


He added that one cannot have “an international authority so long as indi-vidual states are free to do what they please. International order will there-fore be achieved only by reducing powers of governments all around.”161

A strong relation between the Grotian tradition in IR and the classi-cal liberal tradition in political theory has been established in the last four chapters. This is a novel insight and it enables an attempt at further syn-thesis and discussion of its possible implications for liberalism in IR theory.

CHAPTER 7

Liberalism and International Relations Theory

The four classical liberals had a number of common ideas on the time-less issues of international relations such as war and peace, trade, international law, and the balance of power. This allows for the

presentation of a synthesis in the form of a comprehensive classical liberal theory of IR, which is very different from the current accounts of liberalism in IR theory. A caveat applies, though; the preceding analysis only allows the presentation of the contours of the theory. It must be acknowledged that almost any individual element of the theory could be further elaborated, but this would require chapter-length treatments. That is beyond the scope and intention of the present chapter and of this book.

This classical liberal theory of IR has two functions. First, it is meant to be an analytical device, which helps to understand world politics by pro-viding a specific way to look at and judge current world affairs. Second, it is a normative preference, or the ideal that classical liberals aim for. In their view, the world should comply with the overall framework presented here. Any deviations from this ideal are criticized, or targeted for improvements. References to “the classical liberals” are given here for reasons of convenience. It is not meant to claim that all people who currently identify themselves as classical liberals think along these lines, as they were probably not or only partially aware of the analysis in the preceding chapters. Undoubtedly, some will be surprised by the argument, because a significant number of current classical liberals have been rather happy to embrace the moral high ground in international affairs, as associated with many of the social liberal posi-tions to be discussed in the second part of this chapter. Therefore, they


will be surprised to learn that classical liberalism in international relations entails for example the rejection of the relation between peace and trade, or the calm acceptance of war as a regular institution in international affairs. Still, the theory outlined below is a consistent application of the classical liberal principles and views, which calls for reflection and then rejection of the previously held positions. Insofar that a number of classical liberals have taken a long hike from international reality, it is now time for them to face the difficulties and the ugliness often associated with world politics.

Perhaps this process is made easier by the fact that a key aspect of classi-cal liberalism is its application of the same core principles to domestic and international politics, while acknowledging the differences between these two spheres of political action. The ultimate goal of classical liberalism in international affairs is the same as in domestic politics: to maximize indi-vidual freedom for all people in the world.

The outline of the theory follows the presentation of the classical lib-eralism elements in chapter 2. This is a straightforward way to show that the theory is indeed classical liberal and that it follows the same bottom-up approach to politics. In the process, the relation with the Grotian position in English School theory is emphasized. In the second part of the chapter, the main differences with other liberalisms in IR theory are highlighted.

The Individual and Freedom

International relations are all about human action. Therefore, the starting point for the classical liberal IR theory is its view on human nature and the implications this has for international affairs.

Human Nature

Classical liberals have a realistic view of human nature: man is seen as flex-ible and the maximum amount of personal and societal freedom let him use his reason to choose and adapt to changing circumstances. Man is best capable of choosing the life he feels is best under circumstances of freedom; no other person or institution can do that for him. Driven by a well recog-nized self-interest, individuals are best capable of choosing between differ-ent ends. Rationalism is not the sole driving force of humans. Man is also “a slave to the passions”; he often prefers short-term minimal gains or incli-nations to long-term real interests. Humans possess imperfect knowledge, misjudge circumstances, and regularly make mistakes. Man is not always rationally chasing maximum utility or always acting rationally. Classical liberals do not believe in natural harmonies of interests. Societal order is

Liberalism and IR Theory ● 127

possible through the workings of spontaneous processes such as the devel-opment of morality, customs, traditions, and the maintenance of the general rule of law. However, conflict remains a fundamental part of the human condition and therefore of domestic and international politics.

Views of human nature are much discussed, because they are of central importance to any political vision. In this context it is worth noting that there is growing albeit not yet conclusive evidence from the life sciences for this classical liberal view from evolutionary psychologists and neuro-scientists. For example, contrary to the ideas of many social scientists, the mind and its innate reflexes and conditions direct individuals and their capabilities to a great extent, as a result of evolution and adaptation to spe-cific circumstances.1 The mind is not a blank slate waiting to be filled by external ideas. This erroneous idea had devastating effects; for example, it gave opportunity to all kinds of regimes to try to change the lives of humans through social engineering. The numerous attempts to get rid of human violence go against the strong and timeless relation between violence and the psychology of the idea of honor, which causes ongoing cycles of violence between gangs, militias, ethnic groups, and states. Warfare is a natural con-dition, although there have always also been attempts at conflict resolution and peaceful cooperation. Which of the two prevails depends on the partic-ular circumstances of the situation.2 Evolutionary theorists explain that war, power struggles, ethnic struggle, and attempts to gain and defend resources have been proven strategies for survival and natural selection since the Stone Age. It is not surprising this type of behavior still exists today. Nevertheless, war and conflict cannot be exclusively explained by bioscience; human insti-tutions are able to suppress conflict in some cases.3 The behavior of states depends both on the biological factors affecting agents and the strength of social institutions.4

While unfamiliar with these modern insights, the classical liberals have always realized that the relevant question in international affairs is not how to get rid of violence, but how to deal with and limit its inevitable occur-rence. This fundamentally differs from all other (liberal) IR theories that by and large believe that eventually humans will be able to abolish conflict.

Nation and Imperialism

Another part of human nature with special relevance for international rela-tions is the classical liberal belief that man is unable to survive without social ties. Individuals retain these strong emotional bonds all the way up from the level of their immediate communities to their nation or state. Education and upbringing may further stimulate the formation of a national conscience in


individuals.5 While some states are “imagined communities,” or the prod-ucts of an active “construction” of national ties between the people in a cer-tain territory,6 this does not really affect the force of national feelings. Hume and Smith made it clear that emotional ties between individual and nation existed long before the age of nationalism; the national feelings are “pure” emotions with direct political relevance. The existence of different nations and states also means that the relations between nations are and will remain perpetual political phenomena.

Classical liberals have no problem with the expression of positive national feelings in the form of patriotism, which comes down to harmless pride in one’s nation. It starts to become troublesome when patriotism degenerates into nationalism. This is in essence a collectivist and in many instances violent theory, which poses a serious threat to individual freedom. Classical liberalism and nationalism are antithetic, as Hayek and Mises made clear.

One of the worst features of nationalism is its strong relation with imperialism. If one holds one’s country superior to others, it is indeed a small step to go out and attempt to improve the world and to rule “the infe-rior barbarians.” This is encouraged by perceptions, as those of John Stuart Mill, that imperialism offers geopolitical gains and chances for economic exploitation.7 Anti-imperialism has been a prominent feature of classical lib-eral international relations, from the support for American independence by the Scots to the support for decolonization by the Austrians. There is no need to start or keep an empire and secession is warranted to a large degree. Groups of people that can sufficiently support themselves should be free to leave an existing empire or country, as long as there is overwhelming pop-ular support among themselves and all issues with the remaining people are satisfactorily settled.

Thus the classical liberal view of human nature is the basis for the most important differences with other forms of liberalism in IR theory. It has some commonalities with the views of classical realists like Morgenthau and Niebuhr, but compared to them, classical liberals attach far greater moral and practical value to individual liberty.

Natural Law and Natural Rights

The classical liberal elements of natural rights and natural law find their IR expression through the defense of classical human rights and the importance attached to just war. There is also the recognition that war has a lot of hid-den costs that infringe upon natural rights, especially those to liberty and property. Negative individual rights are integral to classical liberal theory. Individuals have inalienable natural rights and accordingly natural law must


be the basis of any justified state action. This applies to both domestic and international politics, although the four classical liberals did not elaborate on all relevant elements in this discussion. The question of humanitarian intervention was, for instance, one of the omissions.

Classical Human Rights

None of the four classical liberals limited their application of natural rights to the national border. Hume was largely silent on the subject except in the discussion on American independence. Allowing for the different contexts Smith, Hayek, and Mises—all argued in favor of the universal application of the basic human freedoms. The state was seen as the main defender of these rights, not least by maintaining international order. Mises and Hayek strongly rejected the application of social and economic rights, domestically and through international organizations such as the UN. These were seen to intrude upon individual negative liberty and would allow undue state expansion. It was an example of what Hayek called “social constructivism” and was identical to Smith’s warning against the “man of system” in poli-tics. Only the defense of classical human rights can be counted among the elements of the classical liberal IR theory. This is largely consistent with the Grotian position in the English School. Realists will argue that the national interest is of greater importance and the Kantians will argue for broader notions of human rights.

One could question how classical liberals reconcile this belief in universal negative rights with a dislike of (Kantian) cosmopolitanism. Don’t universal rights call for supranational enforcement? None of the four thinkers gave evidence of having thought deeply about these issues. Still, taking their line of thought further, it seems that classical liberals do not share the concern.

There is no need for a universal enforcer of universal rights; classical liberals feel each separate nation is or should be able to perform this task. Some “policy competition” between states may even be beneficial in this respect. Most nations appear to have developed a few basic rules to make cooperation among the members possible, such as the protection of life and property. This is of course not to say these rights and the right to liberty are well defended everywhere. A universal enforcer would pose a bigger threat to liberty. Classical liberals also believe that communication and the cul-tural exchange associated with international trade will make the differences between nations apparent. It will set examples to the inhabitants of the less free countries, which is probably the best the outside world can do. The clas-sical human rights have universal application, but do not demand central enforcement from outside powers.


Applying the Humean insight that all government rests on opinion, clas-sical liberals also do not propose to topple the leaders of powers who con-sistently deny their people these natural rights. This may be a side effect of a war fought for other reasons, such as a need to keep the balance of power, but they doubt that one nation can impose a fundamental change of atti-tudes on the people of other states.

Wolfe, in his religiously inspired book on what he calls “natural law lib-eralism,” argues that it follows from natural law that states have the duty to act benevolently for the good of other states if this can be done without excessive cost.8 The classical liberals studied here did not accept such a duty in the international sphere, although the issue of humanitarian intervention was not their direct concern. They thought the attachment between people declines as distance between them increases; they valued the principle of sovereignty and feared the possible destabilizing effects of international intervention. They did not see any value in Wilsonian constructivism in world politics, not least because they doubted the alleged positive effects. All this points to a great classical liberal hesitance toward enforcing individual rights through warfare or other forms of intervention.9

Just War

The classical liberal adherence to just war principles does not give much guidance on this point either. Traditionally the just war principles have not incorporated a right to humanitarian intervention, because it would fundamentally upset the society of sovereign states. There is continuing debate on these and related issues like the right to conduct a preventive war and the proper way to fight asymmetrical wars against terrorists. All these issues were beyond the concerns of the four thinkers analyzed here. They referred approvingly to the classical just war principles about legit-imately initiating a war and rightly conducting one. For example, they agreed that only a competent authority may start war, as a last resort when all peaceful solutions are not an option any longer and when there is pro-portionate use of violence. Noncombatants should be left out of the fight-ing as much as possible and all harm done should be proportionate to the good expected.10 Hume applied these just war criteria to topical interna-tional issues such as the 1771 Falklands War and Hayek to the Iran hos-tage affair in the late 1970s.

Classical liberals view war, either by or between states or nonstate groups, as one of the most important institutions of international society. They regard its occurrence as inevitable and attempts to abolish war as futile. Hume and Smith even pointed out that war also had some positive elements


for its participants, in particular character-strengthening effects. These ele-ments still persist in the modern military, for example, through decoration systems. In the classical liberal mind, war also has important functions such as the preservation of a balance of power.

Yet all classical liberals show concern about the impact of war on the general level of freedom in society. There is reason enough to never regard war as a regular policy instrument. Times of war often lead to the expansion of state interference in the lives of individuals. All four thinkers focused on the costs of war. The idea that a war economy needs government planning and control was strongly rejected by Mises and Hayek. The negative effects of other controls, like propaganda and restrictions on free speech, were also elaborated upon. All these concerns are real, as the modern classical liberal Robert Higgs made clear on numerous occasions.11 The open and hidden costs of war are important elements to take into account in the war-decision-making process, but for classical liberals they do not have a “veto power.” Human nature cannot be changed and sometimes the only defense of liberty is through war.

Limited Government

Despite the danger states pose to individual liberty, a world without states is unthinkable for classical liberals. The sovereign state was the prime inter-national actor according to Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek. They recog-nized and to a certain extent appreciated individual and nongovernmental action at the international level, but did not consistently argue in favor of, or believed in, a world without states. States are direct outgrowths of the individual attachment to the nation. Internation and interstate dealings come naturally to human society.

In the classical liberal view, this interstate world must be or become an international society as defined in the introduction. It is “the histor-ical expression of classical liberalism,” because it provides people with the ability to live together in their own independent state, according to their own conventions, ideas, and morals, governed by their own leaders.12 In the English School, both the Grotian and realist tradition see the state as the most important international actor. Classical liberals and Grotians think that interstate cooperation is more than a power game with its origins in a perpetual security dilemma in anarchical conditions. Kantians aim at a world beyond state domination, but the classical liberals believe that a world without states, or a one world state, must be rejected on principal and prac-tical grounds. Most importantly, they fear that in such a world, classical liberal principles would be crunched.


State and Federation

The state is thus the prime actor in world politics and external defense against intrusions of individual liberty is among its principal tasks. States communicate and negotiate through diplomacy, which helps to reduce fric-tion and conflict. Classical liberals demand that the number of state tasks must be limited, both in the international and domestic context.

However, Hume in the essay Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth13 and Smith in The Wealth of Nations14 endorsed (transnational) federations. Mises and Hayek, also fully elaborated on the special occasions that called for alter-native organizations as interstate federation. Such was the case when the formation of a regular society of states was not feasible due to (violent) issues of nationality, religion, or ideology. Accordingly, the idea of transnational federation is also part of classical liberal IR theory, not as a first preference but as a second best in difficult cases.

The appeal of the federal idea is that it is meant to preserve the unique characteristics of its constituent nations. As long as it is decentralized, and supranational unification strictly limited to a small number of tasks, such a federation is not likely develop into a superstate.15 If established in this way, a federation is in line with classical liberalism. The English School is mostly silent on this issue, but federation is compatible with all three traditions: the realists and the Grotians put emphasis on the overall world of states that remains even when a number of states merge into a federation, while the Kantians regard it as a first step toward world federation.

Theoretically, it is possible to think of a case when there are so many problems with national states that it calls for the formation of a world federa-tion. How would classical liberals react? There is no historical precedent, but they obviously would oppose it. Such a state would easily become a danger to individual liberty. As Hayek pointed out, humans have not even learned to effectively control the state powers in a national setting, let alone in an international one. For many current classical liberals, the expansion of the tasks and the regulation of the European Union provide sufficient contem-porary evidence.

Diplomacy

In the international society of states, official day-to-day relations between states are conducted by diplomats. Part of their job is to reduce the ever-existent frictions between the actors in international society, and thus, diplomacy is an expression of the existence of international society itself.16 It is no wonder that all four classical liberals, Hume and Smith most explicitly, valued the influence of personal conduct and agency in world politics.


Diplomacy or the “people-side” of international relations is of great value. The classical liberals agree with Hill, who argues that diplomacy remains an inherent part of all international action, from serious crisis to routine day-to-day politics. Diplomacy is a crucial instrument for international stability; it is “the human face of getting your own way in international politics.” Diplomats perform four important tasks: communication, negotiation, participation in multilateral institutions, and the promotion of economic goods.17 Classical liberals reject this last task because it easily leads to mer-cantilism and economic nationalism, and would limit the number and span of control of international institutions. Still they fully agree with the first two tasks; diplomacy is an important institution in classical liberal interna-tional relations. This is also in accordance to the Grotian view that diplo-macy unites the members of international society, whereas the Kantians see diplomats as members of the warmongering classes, whose secretive dealings present dangers to world peace.18

European Integration

As indicated in the introduction, the English School is mostly silent on the issue of European integration, but the classical liberals had rather strong views on this issue. Smith spoke of Europe in terms of a cultural unit and Mises and Hayek actively endorsed attempts to form a European federation. Yet as indicated above, many current classical liberals are rather hostile to the process of European integration. This is enough reason to elaborate a little further on this issue.

For Mises and Hayek, a regular division in states was not feasible in Europe, so they favored the formation of a small, limited, and decentralized European federation. They went as far as to include at the federal level traditional cen-tral state tasks such as foreign policy and defense.19 They also emphasized that it was essential that the integration proceeded with full consent of the (large majority of) people involved. The limited number of federal tasks would reduce the chance of a perpetual struggle for a large share of central power between representatives of the constituent nations. The maximization of freedom of European individuals had to be the main goal of any European federation.

This kind of European federation hardly ever figures in current discus-sions about the EU. In contrast, European federation is strongly associated with centralization and big government. A brief assessment of the current EU, as an exercise in the application of the classical liberal perspective, illus-trates this even better.

Assuming the possibility would exist in practice (admittedly this is far-fetched at the time of writing), the EU needs to radically transform itself,


before classical liberals would endorse federalization. In its current form the EU does not fulfill the classical liberal demands. It actually confirms Mises’ and Hayek’s early assessment that the European leaders set out to create a superstate, which has become a major threat to individual liberty. The EU is now a prime example of political constructivism, with the continued expansion of tasks and regulations at the European level. These are much harder to reverse or abolish than is the case in domestic politics. In this sense the EU is both an example of Mises’ argument that “a middle-of-the-road- policy leads to socialism” and Hayek’s “road to serfdom,” which largely explains the hostility of the current classical liberals.

In the latter’s view, people are trapped in a half-liberal construction. This makes it hard to predict when the EU will ultimately fail. But that will be its certain fate if the state leaders continue its growth without public support. A constructivist basis, “overreach” in terms of policies and power, its sheer complexity, and at best weak emotional ties between the EU and its inhab-itants explain why the EU remains politically weak compared to the more solid foundations of most member states.

For classical liberal approval of the EU, big changes are needed. Most of the current policies of the EU should be abolished, because these are not proper state tasks at any political level. Obvious examples are the European policies in the fields of social welfare, health care, agriculture, science, educa-tion, regional policies, innovation, development aid, and most of the policy areas designated for closer cooperation in the redesigned and renamed, but almost unaltered former European Constitutional Treaty currently known as the Lisbon Treaty. A classical liberal EU will discard tasks that take up about 80 to 90 percent of the EU budget.

Only a limited number of tasks would be allowed at the European level. The main ones are the basic mechanisms for the internal market, although there is a need for close scrutiny of many harmonizing laws and regula-tions. There is no objection to the Euro as such (for Hayek it would need to freely compete with other currencies), but the common currency needs to be based on the gold standard and the policies of the European Central Bank need to be noninflationary. There is also classical liberal support for the further development of EU foreign policy and the attempts to develop a European common defense mechanism, as these are prime state tasks that could benefit from the pooling of resources. A small number of policies for cross-border issues could also be supported, for example, in the field of cross-border environmental issues. Federation is mainly seen as a means to keep the member states vital, it is a political end in itself. Transfer of power to the transnational level can only be approved when individual liberties are safeguarded.


The classical liberals do not object to the formation of new federations elsewhere, as long as they rest on popular support. The pooling of a number of states essentially leads to a decreased number of participants in interna-tional society, but it does not fundamentally challenge its existence. Cultural and national differences will prevent the development of a world state, which they principally reject anyway. Of course a classical liberal EU is a distant prospect at best. But there is no need for a complete classical liberal rejection of European integration either.

Rule of Law

From a classical liberal and Grotian perspective, international law is an expression of the common norms and goals of international society. It serves as the rule of law at the international level, albeit in a world of states without ultimate arbiter. As Bull asserts, lacking a central enforcing authority, inter-national law is in principal enforced by the member states themselves in the form of sanctions or ultimately war. Sometimes a particular rule is broken or interpreted in such a one-sided way that it leads to conflict. Nevertheless, it is more important to recognize that states usually judge it in their best interests to conform to international law. International law is the content of the rules of coexistence among the states and other actors and it also helps to mobilize compliance with these rules.20

Good international law for classical liberals ensures the smooth func-tioning of international society and contains a limited number of general rules to help solve international issues. Like law in domestic politics, inter-national law must be restricted to the protection of the individual natural rights. It was therefore not surprising that Mises and Hayek objected to the explosion of positive international law including the related establish-ment of international governmental organizations that occurred from the late nineteenth century onward. The limitation of international law is an important part of the classical liberal IR theory. It opposes the positivism of realism and Kantianism.21

Classical liberals regard most international organizations, which are often created by governments of nonliberal persuasion,22 as attempts at constructivism at the international level. Mises and Hayek were among the first to warn against the extended number of tasks of the League of Nations and both rejected the way the United Nations was set up. Hayek in particular warned against the inclusion of social and economic rights in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and was very critical of the International Labor Organization. In many instances international law takes precedence in domestic legal order, which makes it even more important


to limit its expansion. Consequently, classical liberals favor the abolition of international governmental organizations with tasks that extend beyond the principles of the limited state, spontaneous order, and the protection of individual natural rights. This is not a call for isolationism; they recognize that there can be common sense in some international state cooperation and sometimes even a need for an international bureaucracy. As a rule of thumb, if there is no need for state interference domestically, there is no need for international state action either. The exceptions are some tasks that follow from specific international circumstances. Without going into details, this principle may, for example, lead to classical liberal support for the International Criminal Court or the special UN war tribunals as the best way to punish people who violated natural rights. But it may also call for the abolition of organizations that interfere with free markets and cap-italism, such as the World Bank, the ILO, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Spontaneous Order

A unique feature of classical liberalism is its faith in processes of spontaneous order, both in domestic and international politics. It is an important reason behind the calls to restrict state influence and the free reign of capitalism. Young excepted (see chapter 6), IR theorists have hardly ever recognized the possibility of a relation between spontaneous order and international order.

Balance of Power

The four classical liberal thinkers acknowledged that there is no ultimate power in the international society of states. The creation of a world gov-ernment was not an option. Hume, Smith, and Hayek (Mises was mostly silent on this issue) saw the balance of power as an important mechanism to keep international order. The balance of power has all the characteristics of spontaneous order applied to the international arena. It is beyond the con-trol and often the immediate aim of any individual state; it is the result of human action but not of human design; it is never stable; and it is the result of competition between states attempting to further their own interests. The relative power positions of states, in military, economic, and cultural terms are important inputs to the overall balance at any moment in time. Classical liberals feel there is more danger to individual freedom in a world dominated by a single power than in a pluralist world. The balance of power aims to prevent such domination by producing order even though some or all of the participating states aim at domination. The balance assures many


smaller states the power of independent action by enabling them to choose between alliances.23

It must be acknowledged that the balance is not a perfect safeguard of everybody’s natural rights. Balance of power politics sometimes produces victims in international relations, for example, through war, or big powers refusing to become involved in a regional conflict. That is one of the reasons classical liberals do not rely entirely on the balance to keep international order. The other institutions of international society, for example, interna-tional law and diplomacy, are also important. In general, the balance of power has a tendency to work to preserve the status quo by putting brakes on territorial changes24 and for many countries the balance of power simply means survival. It has prevented many wars and the alternatives are “either universal anarchy, or universal dominion.”25 Hume famously said that the balance is “founded so much on common sense and obvious reasoning.”26 The classical liberals have this in common with both realists and Grotians, while it is another point of division with the Kantians. They strongly disagree with Cobden, who saw the balance of power as a meaningless myth.27

Trade and Peace

The classical liberals also do not share Cobden’s idea about the alleged rela-tion between trade and peace. Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek were princi-pled free traders, and in many cases their free trade position is the only aspect that IR scholars recognize. To trade and engage in economic activity is seen as an essential part of individual freedom.28 While acknowledging the lib-eralizing effects and accomplishments of the current regulated trade regime, classical liberals think this is all second best. States should not interfere in trade at all. They argue against all tariffs and all nontariff barriers of trade29 and favor unilateral trade liberalization in the belief that this will bring most benefits to most people including those in developing countries.30 Despite Bull’s assertion that the Grotians regard trade as the particular activity that best typifies international society, “or more generally economic and social intercourse between one country and another,”31 the economic element is almost lacking in traditional English School thought. The classical liberals add valuable additional insights.

Hayek was positive about the progress of trade liberalization in the GATT, but he still emphasized that government intervention in trade seldom had beneficial effects. This was in line with the other three thinkers. In com-bination with their negative attitude toward international bureaucracies, it implies that the ideal classical liberal world would not include international governmental trade organizations, such as the current WTO. In the WTO,


states bargain over issues that should be out of their control in the first place. Paradoxically the WTO itself has now developed into a major barrier toward more liberalized trade, because it has fallen victim to interest groups politics, legalism, and unnecessary harmonization of all kinds of standards.32

The question about the alleged peaceful effects of trade separated Smith and Hume from Mises and, to a lesser extent, Hayek. The Scots never pre-dicted a positive relation between trade and peace. Trade thrives in an atmo-sphere of peace, but does not create it.33 Most liberals from the nineteenth century onward did think so.34 In chapter 5 the influence of Cobden and the Manchester School was emphasized. Given the counterevidence, the older classical liberals had the better part of the argument and so their views are seen as part of classical liberal IR theory.

Hume and Smith noted that trade gave rise to all kinds of quarrels and jealousies, because closer ties between nations also foster disagreement. Commerce cannot change human nature; it following is unable to overcome such inherently human feelings as pride and jealousy that are the sources of much uncivil and belligerent behavior. Even in a world dominated by com-merce, there cannot be lasting peace. The influence of public opinion on foreign policy is not large; if it exists, it is often rather belligerent and so it cannot be seen to promote peace either. Trade does not erase other causes of war, such as those of a geopolitical or religious nature.

European integration has been successful in the prevention of war in the European continent, which may appear to provide important counter-evidence to this classical liberal position. However, this would be an over-valuation of the economic component in European integration. The EU started as a political project and has remained so ever since. This is not meant to deny the great economic success of European integration, but there are a number of compelling noneconomic reasons for the (West) European peace since 1945. Mentioning them briefly, these are the following: first, the three Franco-German wars in seventy preceding years and the devastation of the Second World War made many of the postwar leaders determined to prevent another European war at any cost; second, the European regional balance of power lost its prominence to the global one between the United States and the Soviet Union; third, the cold war forced the Europeans to cooperate and; fourth, this cooperation was stimulated by the United States through diplomacy and the Marshall plan. Economic integration was an important vehicle for European reconciliation, but not its cause. According to Gillingham, even the European Coal and Steel Community cannot claim credit for the prevention of war in Europe. The (hampered) trade in those products did play a role in the outbreak of the earlier wars between France and Germany, but the coal and steel sectors were no longer of the same


strategic importance after 1945. He argues NATO was more important for European peace, as it bound Western Europe and the United States, not least in the way of nuclear armament and the cold war doctrine of mutually assured destruction.35 Increased trade ties were beneficial for the member states, but power politics held the peace in Europe.

The argument that trade leads to peace is therefore a “liberal illusion.”36 The Scots asserted that only wise policies and sometimes force can promote order.37 The alleged relation between trade and peace is largely of a Kantian streak in terms of the English School. Realists and Grotians never held such utopian thoughts.

Capitalism, not Development Aid

The radical position toward international development aid is the last de-fining characteristic of the classical liberal IR theory discussed here. Chapters 5 and 6 made it clear that classical liberals prefer to rely on spon-taneous order, freedom, and limited state action. English School theorists have not often discussed the pros and cons of development aid in detail, but the question is of specific relevance to the pluralist-solidarist divide intro-duced in chapter 1.

Grotian pluralists, like realists, do not see a moral obligation for the pro-vision of development aid, although for the latter, it can be a useful tool in terms of power politics, as it buys support or influence. Solidarists and Kantians take the opposite position, arguing the provision of aid is part of being “a good international citizen.”38 Classical liberals belong to the first group, but as Hayek made clear they object to the provision of development aid for reasons of power politics.

The only path to development is through the restoration of global free trade, combined with national free market economic policies and social and political individual freedom.39 Of course classical liberals do not object to phi-lanthropy or nongovernmental engagement with developing countries,40 for example, in the areas of health and education. But they are critical of attempts to develop countries from the outside; therefore, decisions to spend on these kinds of activities should be made by individuals and not by governments with a power to tax. Classical liberals are convinced that unhampered capitalism is the ultimate form of human cooperation, nationally and internationally. It is the most important solution for issues of development and global poverty.

Concluding Remarks

The analysis of the international thought of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek shows that they apply their core ideas both to domestic and


international politics, and also with the same aim, namely, to expand indi-vidual freedom.

There is no indication that Mises or Hayek was aware of the existence of a Grotian tradition in an English School theory of international poli-tics. Hedley Bull for his part did not write about the classical liberals. So, it is all the more remarkable that both Bull in his classical Grotian English School text The Anarchical Society and the classical liberals see the ideal world order as a society of states and attach importance to the same insti-tutions in international relations: diplomacy, balance of power, war, and international law. They specifically value their combined capacity to pro-mote international order. Another similarity is their origins in natural law. While a direct line from Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment has been detected before, this link has hardly been elaborated upon in an IR con-text.41 A possible difference with the classical liberals concerns Bull’s fifth institution, great power management, as far as this would entail only a very limited or even no role for small states in international relations. The clas-sical liberals explicitly defend their standing as full members of an inter-national society. Nevertheless, there are strong relations between classical liberalism, the Scottish Enlightenment, the natural law tradition, and the pluralist Grotian position within the English School.

Classical liberals refrain from utopianism and reject all other forms of determinism in IR. They focus on real world problems and they do not have the rationalistic inclination, or the hubris, to think that they can “help.”42 The world may be improved, but only by piecemeal changes and reliance on spontaneous order. The classical liberal IR theory is therefore an expression of what Rengger terms “Anti-Pelagian” theory. It doubts the possibility of achieving Heaven on Earth.43 The classical liberal theory of IR has a plu-ralist Grotian nature from an English School perspective. This is an impor-tant point, because most IR scholars see liberalism as a strand of Kantian thought, as is discussed below.

It must be acknowledged that the theory, presented as the synthesis of the writings of the four classical liberal thinkers, does not address all the questions logically related to it from an IR viewpoint. An important over-sight is the question about the justification of humanitarian intervention on the basis of the concern for the classical human rights and the need for just war. This is an issue none of the four thinkers addressed, even though these issues were discussed among their contemporaries. Moreover, there is no shared position on the issue of free migration. Not only the right to free immigration but also the need for controlled immigration can easily be argued to arise from an individual liberty perspective, especially in a world where social welfare entitlements and modern transport allow for


great influxes of immigrants. Migration flows easily upset an existing social order. A classical liberal position on these issues is needed, but must be part of the suggestions for future work.

With the main building blocks of the theory in place, the question that needs to be addressed now is: how special is classical liberalism compared to other liberalisms in IR theory?

Liberalism in IR Theory

Liberalism, in many different forms, has been among the most dominant theories since the start of IR as an academic discipline,44 and is most often presented as the opposite of realism.

In an oft-quoted analysis, Zacher and Matthew describe liberalism as characterized by progressive, cooperative, and modernist elements. Liberalism is progressive, because liberals believe that when their ideas reign free, international relations gradually transform to promote greater human freedom by establishing conditions of peace, prosperity, and justice. Quoting Howard, Zacher and Matthew emphasizes that “liberals have faith in the power of human reason and human action so to change the world that the inner potential of all human beings can be more fully realized.” The alleged key for the liberal theorist is “to understand the balances between conflicting and self-interested concerns that can exist in particular stages of international history.” Liberalism is also cooperative, because, of central importance to the realization of greater human freedom is increased inter-national cooperation between states and other international actors. Without cooperation it is impossible to capture the benefits of interaction, interde-pendence, and the opportunities for realizing greater peace, welfare, and justice. Finally, liberalism is seen as modernist, because liberals believe that international relations are transformed by several elements that modernize the world, such as liberal democracy, international interdependence, cogni-tive (scientific) progress, international institutions, and international socio-logical integration (between persons and groups). The combined influence of the spread of these three elements, all liberals allegedly believe, “has intro-duced or enhanced the possibility of a dramatic improvement in the moral character and material welfare of humankind.”45

In his influential book Ways of War and Peace, Doyle argues that liberals put emphasis on the possibility for global peace through assigning a greater role for international organizations and international law to diminish the influence of war and diplomacy. For this to happen, the number of lib-eral societies must be increased, and these must be defined as democratic states where respect for individual negative and positive rights is of central


importance.46 Following Waltz’s levels of analysis approach, Doyle distin-guishes between liberals who explain international relations with a focus on human nature, domestic society, or the international system.

Like Doyle, Dunne follows the Waltzian scheme when introducing lib-eralism in one of the world’s best-selling textbooks.47 He rejects a separation between domestic and international liberal theory, which is in line with the approach taken in this book. But in contrast to it, he describes the core ideas of liberal thinking in IR as follows: peace between democratic states (to be discussed below); the positive relation between free trade and peace; the existence of a harmony of interests between people; the importance of creating international institutions and for some (idealist) liberals even world government; the peaceful effects of international integration and interde-pendence, or the interconnectedness between states and other international actors.

Another successful English textbook presents liberalism in interna-tional affairs as internationalist, with positive expectations about the role of international organization in enhancing the prospects for peace. The alleged peaceful effects of expanded international commerce also play a role, just as the protection of human rights and the need for humanitarian intervention do.48 This characterization of liberalism is fully in line with other introduc-tory accounts from past and present49 including the way M.J. Smith presents liberalism in an account aimed at a more advanced readership.50

The main argument here is that these accounts are not erroneous per se, but that they are incomplete because they largely overlook the ideas of classi-cal liberals. If attempts are at all made to connect liberal political theory and international relations theory, IR theorists tend to be imprecise and selective in their presentation of liberalism,51 focusing on one viewpoint, a particular element, or a few thinkers.

Therefore it is no wonder that classical liberalism is notoriously under-theorized and erroneously presented in IR. To further clarify this, the remainder of this chapter attempts to establish the main differences between classical liberal theory and the other most common forms of liberalism in IR. The aim is not to discuss all these differences at length, or to discuss all appearances of the term liberalism, but to provide enough detail to prove that classical liberal IR fundamentally differs from the established views. This calls for a reappraisal of liberalism in IR theory.

Liberal Internationalism

Liberal internationalism is one of the oldest IR theories;52 sometimes it is also referred to as idealism or liberal idealism. Its main argument is that it


is possible to change the world through the establishment of international organizations and the design and enforcement of international norms and rules. This will facilitate peaceful change, disarmament, and the use of arbitration to solve disputes.53 In Britain, liberal internationalism has been a combination of Cobden’s appeal for free trade and political noninterven-tionism, Bentham’s utilitarian emphasis on international law, and Kant’s emphasis on transnational interstate organization.54

The idea behind the creation of international organizations is that they help to overcome international anarchy and even accomplish economic redistribution and international justice.55 A clear example of liberal inter-nationalism is the famous Fourteen Points Speech of President Wilson, the most important American liberal internationalist. He demanded “open cov-enants of peace, openly arrived at, free international economic transactions and freedom of the seas, the reduction of national armaments, a qualified adherence to the principle of self-determination for colonized peoples, and the formation of a general association of nations, for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”56 Despite realist criticism by scholars such as Carr and Morgenthau in the 1930s and 1940s, liberal internationalism remained influential. The emergence of the Bretton Woods System and the UN and its satellite organizations after the Second World War is evidence of this.57

Liberal internationalism aims at the establishment of international order, but unlike classical liberalism, it rejects most of the institutions of Grotian international society. Diplomacy is criticized; war and the balance of power are denounced. The last is even seen as a major cause of international disorder, because of its alleged stimulation of competition between states, which often leads to war. Another difference is the liberal internationalist Kantian and Cobdenite optimism about the pacifying force of free trade and the ability of democracy to break the power of the elites over foreign policy. The idea is that if legitimate domestic orders can be established around the world, peace follows swiftly. Democracy allows public opinion to act as a restraint on international conflict, through the “inherent moral good sense of the people.”58 Militaristic and undemocratic elites looking after their own narrow interests are seen as the major forces behind the continual outbreak of wars. In contrast, trade allows for the peaceful accumulation of wealth, enhances mutual understanding, and stimulates an international interest in keeping peace.59

The underlying optimistic view on human nature contrasts sharply with the classical liberal approach. Liberal internationalism believes in the pos-sibility of lasting change in the international realm, with a large role for state intervention, optimism about the spirit of the people, and the influence


of economics on international political change.60 In classical liberal eyes, liberal internationalism overlooks the fact that there is no fundamental difference between the elite and the rest of the people when it comes to for-eign affairs. Liberal internationalism does not rely enough on spontaneous ordering and underestimates the danger of international bureaucracies to individual liberty.

(Neo)liberal Institutionalism

The idea that international organizations promote order and peace has been dominant in liberal IR. Liberal institutionalism is a modern variant of lib-eral internationalism. Sometimes a distinction is made between liberal in-stitutionalism and neoliberalism or neoliberal institutionalism, mostly on methodological grounds. Since the basic ideas of neoliberalism and liberal institutionalism are alike, they are included in one section here. Neoliberals adhere more strictly to methodological positivism and are more rationalist in their premises,61 just like their neorealist opponents in the so-called neo-neodebate that dominated IR for several decades. The neoliberals contend that international organizations and regimes lower the likelihood of “cheat-ing” in the international system, because they build a system of rules and conventions for cooperation and the punishment of defectors. All partici-pants gain from international cooperation in absolute terms.62

As the name indicates, liberal institutionalists focus on the possibilities for states to cooperate through international regimes and institutions. Liberal institutionalists are generally less idealistic than the liberal internationalists. They accept that states are the most important international actors in the anarchical international condition. Therefore states will cooperate, not to improve the world, but to achieve absolute gains. This differs from liberal internationalism, but many of the classical liberal objections put forward in the previous section still apply and therefore will not be duplicated here.

An early focal point of liberal institutionalism was the positive effects of international integration, especially in Europe. If states pool their resources and surrender some of their sovereignty to create regional (economic) orga-nizations, it would result in peace and prosperity.63 There are a few theoret-ical variants on this theme. Functionalism is closely associated with David Mitrany and his contention that international reform depends on transna-tional association instead of interstate mechanisms.64 Mitrany also believed in international planning and the possibility of lasting peace through the creation of technocratic, function-specific international organizations.65 Classical liberals oppose this, thinking that European integration is fore-most needed to correct a failure in the states system. For them regional


integration and prosperity are not automatically related. Transnationalism argues that once states, groups, and individuals get more entangled in polit-ical economic and social cross-border relationships, a situation of “complex interdependency” will emerge. Owing to the sheer variety of actors and the multiple channels that will then connect societies, military security ceases to dominate the international political agenda because it is no longer a viable policy option for states. This enhances or even ensures peace in interna-tional affairs.66 Related to this approach is regime theory, which asserts that there are social institutions in international affairs that govern the actions of the participants. These may be rules or formal agreements, in all sorts of areas, with many different functions,67 but can also be of an informal nature. They make it easier to predict events in the international arena, by making it less anarchic, less focused on military conflict, and more pluralist in terms of actors and ways of contacts between societies.

Classical liberals do not object to multiple international channels and complex interdependence. Actually, these would flourish in a classical lib-eral world. They also do not deny the value of international agreements on specific topics or general rules of nonpositivist international law. But the idea that international governmental organizations always promote peace is far too constructivist and one-sided in their eyes. They assert liberal institu-tionalists are too eager to expect positive results from international organi-zation, overlooking the possible detrimental effects to individual liberty and expanded government. The Misesian and Hayekian objections to the EU and the UN come to mind.

Embedded Liberalism

Ruggie’s “embedded liberalism” is a variant of liberal institutionalism. His basis is economic, but his focus is political. It argues that under American leadership, the post-1945 world was opened for trade and intergovern-mental management of exchange rates in finance. The political goal was to create a world order underpinned by multilateralism. National govern-ments remained sovereign, but their sovereignty was channeled and made accountable through participation in multilateral institutions such as the UN, IMF, and World Bank. Domestically, governments could still inter-vene to “soften” the alleged harsh effects of the international arrangements. Thus embedded liberalism is the “grand compromise” between laissez-faire liberalism in the international economy and interventionism at home.68 It is based on the idea that it is possible to trade off the advantages and alleged disadvantages of international economic cooperation through welfare states and other social arrangements. Ruggie fears that globalization will enforce


“disembeddedness,” because continued competition between states allows less room for national adjustments. This could result in conflicts over national economic arrangements; the denationalization of significant eco-nomic decisions; and it would decrease the ability of governments to live up to the promises they made in the domestic situation.69

There is no need to elaborate on the details of this theory. Suffice it to note that as an IR theory it relies on the same logic as liberal institu-tionalism, which leads to the same basic philosophical counterarguments from the classical liberal perspective. Classical liberals also take issue with Ruggie’s assertion that the postwar world was characterized by laissez-faire liberalism. There was perhaps more economic freedom than in the previous decades, but never did it come near to a really free world economy. As Sally points out, from a classical liberal perspective, embedded liberalism is “an unlikely congress of antithetical ordering principles to support a liberal in-ternational economic order.” National mixed economies are seen by classical liberalism as an unhealthy compromise of command and market economy. They are sources of international illiberalism, for example, in the form of trade protectionism and capital controls. It is impossible to promote a classi-cal liberal international economy without national economic policies based on the same principles. Negotiated governmental cooperation and interna-tional policy coordination characterized by reciprocal negotiations are often just plain interventionism. There can be no design of the international polit-ical economy drawn by governments. For classical liberals, unilateral liberal-ization and institutional competition are the preferred options.70

Liberal Democratic Peace

As one of the hottest debated topics in IR, the literature on “democratic peace,” the idea that established democracies never go to war with each other, is immense. Most interesting for the purpose of this book is that the idea is sometimes also referred to as “liberal peace,” on the basis of the claim that liberalism is the main foundation for the democratic peace.71 Doyle detects a large influence of liberalism on international affairs; in his view, this is explicit in its rejection of the balance of power, pleas for noninterven-tionism, and the idea that citizens should be free to establish international ties without government interference. When all these are combined, it alleg-edly results in “a liberal zone of peace, a pacific union.”72 This portrayal of liberalism excludes many of the classical liberal viewpoints.

The liberalism the democratic peace scholars refer to originates from a rather select group of thinkers. Although their interpretation of the ideas of the German may be wrong,73 Kant is their main source of inspiration.74 Other


writers add for example Angell,75 Cobden, and Schumpeter,76 or underline the importance of Montesquieu and the American Founding Fathers.77 A detailed analysis of the thought of these thinkers is nearly always absent; most often a few isolated quotes are provided, and differences between them hardly touched upon. In chapter 4 it was indicated that Smith is sometimes erro neously included as well.

MacMillan rightly singles out “left-liberalism” (social liberalism) as the rel-evant liberal variant in the debate on democratic peace.78 He is also one of the few theorists who takes into account the ideology of many of the politicians allegedly responsible for the liberal democratic peace. In postwar Europe, for example, these were mainly of a socialist or Christian-democrat persuasion and so to include them in a theory about liberal democratic peace means at least that the term liberal is used in an overstretched way. But not all is well in MacMillan’s writings in this book’s context. Explicitly arguing against Bull and other English School theorists, he claims that liberals are people who believe in the power of reason and have faith in the reconcilability of interests. They alleg-edly refuse to accept war as a natural or necessary part of international relations. In MacMillan’s view, international pacifism is integral to liberalism.79 Russett and Oneal are in the same league by arguing, at least partly erroneously, that “the classical liberals,” such as Turgot, Smith, and Paine were right about the pacific benefits of trade.80 Another example is found in the work of Owen. He defines a liberal state as “having two domestic institutions: freedom of discus-sion and regular competitive elections of those empowered to make war.” This ensures rational laws and decision making, and leads liberal states to refrain from waging war against one another.81 This is a very rudimentary definition of liberalism, unsound from a political theory perspective. Yet many researchers of democratic peace use the label “liberal” in such loose ways.

This is not the place to discuss the liberal credentials of all the different thinkers mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. There are major differ-ences between classical liberalism and the liberalism of the democratic peace debate, again essentially following from different views of nature and the legitimate role of the state. The liberalism in the democratic peace debate is concerned with individuals and democratic principles in domestic politics, but relies, just like the other liberalisms in IR, also on a belief in human rationality, man’s capability of maintaining peace, the ability to overcome power politics, and the peace-enhancing effects of trade.

Invented Liberalisms

As referred to in chapter 1, besides these main theories, many different and new variants of liberalism were and are introduced in IR theory. Here they


are labeled “invented liberalisms,” because each of them may be linked to one or more liberal ideas, but they all suffer from a lack of sound grounding in liberal political theory. It is yet another example of the inaccurate treat-ment of liberalism in IR. Nevertheless, the invented liberalisms figure prom-inently in the literature82 and therefore need a brief discussion.

Doyle is a major inventor of liberal traditions. In an oft-cited article he contends that there are “three distinct traditions of liberalism, attributable to three theorists: Kant; Schumpeter, a brilliant explicator of . . . liberal paci-fism and Machiavelli, a classical republican whose glory is an imperialism we often practice.”83 He fails to provide evidence that these three are founders of distinct liberal traditions, although of course a Kantian tradition indeed exists. His commercial pacifism, by other writers referred to as commercial liberalism or trade liberalism, erroneously claims that the idea of a positive relation between free trade and peace is in important ways based on the work of Adam Smith. In his book that partly deals with liberalism in IR, he extends his argument and presents Locke and Bentham as founders of lib-eral institutionalism.84 Here he overlooks the realist elements in Bentham’s international relations,85 while Locke was rather Hobbesian is his interna-tional outlook.86

Some of the invented liberalisms are not more than alternative labels for existing liberal IR theories. Republican liberalism is such a term, but it does not differ much from the ideas behind democratic peace. Sociological liber-alism refers to transnational interaction and international integration87 and must therefore be seen as a new label for liberal institutionalism. The adjec-tive sociological is used to underline the importance attached to relations be-tween individuals, as opposed to relations between states. It is not clear why adding this adjective is an improvement, as these relations are among the founding liberal principles. The same applies to the term “interdependence liberalism,” which refers to neoliberal institutionalism and functionalism.88 All these terms attempt to clarify their position in IR theory, but at the same time overlook the regular meaning of liberalism in political theory. That is peculiar since the scholars who use these terms are mostly political scientists with presumably some previous exposure to the history of political ideas.

The common use of a tripartition between commercial liberalism, sociological liberalism, and republican liberalism owes a lot to Keohane. He justifies it with the erroneous claim that “liberalism does not purport to provide a complete account of international relations.” He traces all three variations to Kant and argues for a synthesis of commercial and repub-lican liberalism, which he then calls “sophisticated liberalism.” This term is meant to cover a combination of the idea of the alleged peace-promoting effects of trade and the need for an international political framework of


rules and institutions.89 In short, it is a rendition of liberal internationalism and liberal institutionalism, with all their faults, from a classical liberal perspective.

Zacher and Matthew wrote about three other liberal varieties. Military liberalism claims that the deadly power of new military technologies creates greater mutual interest in peace, international cooperation, and the facilita-tion of international economic cooperation. Cognitive liberalism is about rationality in the behavior of individual actors; it calls for increased levels of knowledge (especially about democracy) that will also promote international peace. Institutional liberalism takes the body of international institutions as an independent variable.90 Moravcsik’s divides of ideational liberalism, commercial liberalism, and republican liberalism largely overlap with the variants introduced above.91

There are a few exceptions to this general rule. Interestingly, Doyle not only invents liberalisms, but he also distinguishes between the foreign policy options of classical and social liberals in other writings. The former leans toward power politics and the latter attempts to construct pacifist global justice.92 Richardson righty claims that there have always been “contend-ing liberalisms” and that the differences between classical and social liber-alism apply to international affairs also.93 Yet, like Franceschet,94 he holds a very clear, but hardly substantiated bias against classical liberalism. In full accordance with the vocabulary of the opponents of classical liberalism, capitalism, and globalization (see chapter 2), he calls it “neoliberalism” and portrays it as the bulwark of the established order with legitimized privileges that uphold inequalities like structural unemployment and social depriva-tion, at the cost of the marginalized in the developing world. In contrast, social liberals are presented as a liberating force promoting the equality of rights.95

The explanatory power of this bewildering variety of liberalisms in IR is very limited. With classical liberalism they share a concern for individu-als and free international economics. But most liberal IR theories regard humans as rational beings, argue in favor of international governmental organizations, and almost uniformly regard liberalism as a peace theory. All the adjectives used are disentangled from liberal political theory and add to the liberal confusion in IR. Most theorists do not clarify the political philosophy foundations of their theory. At best, like Andrew Williams in Liberalism and War, some names of philosophers are mentioned and some highlights of their work sketched,96 but not from a political theory perspec-tive. This is an important reason for “the inflation” of the term liberalism in international political theory: if everything is called liberalism, liberalism becomes meaningless.


Conclusion

The classical liberal IR theory is a consistent application of the domestic classical liberal elements to the international realm. It has most in common with the pluralist Grotian tradition in English School theory. While all its separate elements need further analysis, it is clear that classical liberalism in IR theory is radically different from the existing forms of liberalism in that field. There are no other theories that combine a systematic concern for the enlargement of individual freedom, the recognition that international con-flict cannot be abolished, and the rejection of movements toward eternal peace, cosmopolitan society, or other utopias. It does not believe that trade leads to peace, although classical liberals recognize that trade is important for development and the general increase of world welfare. Governmental constructivism at the international level, either in the form international organizations or development aid, is refuted. The state remains the central actor in world politics and its participation in, and defense of, the institu-tions of international society are the best way to ensure a maximum possible degree of world order. This is the best way to guarantee individual liberty and its global expansion.

Because of their apparent lack of knowledge of the history of ideas, IR theorists have not realized that classical liberalism is an independent, com-prehensive liberal IR theory. The result is numerous, incomplete, and often erroneous accounts of liberalism in IR.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusions and Ways Forward

It is safe to conclude that IR scholars have ignored classical liberalism and largely misinterpreted or overlooked the international thought of Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek. The result is an unbalanced and to

an important extent ill-informed portrayal of liberalism in IR. The most important reasons for this omission and its implications for IR are the sub-ject of this concluding chapter. Along the way answers to the research ques-tions and themes set out in the introduction are provided. The chapter closes with some recommendations for future research.

Conclusions

The analysis leads to some important lessons concerning the relation between IR theory and political theory. Although only the writings of its most prominent thinkers could be studied, it is clear a classical liberal tra-dition exists in political theory. Its main features are the following: it is based on nonreligious natural law; it has a realistic view on human nature and related to this, it attaches prime importance to individualism, negative freedom, and natural rights; it holds a strong belief in spontaneous ordering processes; it is in favor of the rule of law and a limited state. The classical lib-eral plea for a limited state separates classical liberals from the social liberals, who have more faith in human reason and who favor a much bigger govern-mental role in the life of individuals, in the belief this will promote posi-tive freedom and social justice. Thus defined, thinkers like Hobbes, Kant, Bentham, and Mill are not classical liberals, although they may share one or two of the defining classical liberal elements.


All four thinkers analyzed firmly belong to the classical liberal tradition. Smith and Hume were among its founders, and they influenced each other. Mises and Hayek both made clear that they were indebted to the Scots. They thought of themselves as writing in the same tradition and also expressed the desire to further develop this line of thought. Some exceptions permitted, they all expressed similar views on the many timeless issues on international relations. It became evident that domestic and international classical liber-alism are about the same big question: how to protect and expand individual freedom.

The previous lack of knowledge about the international side of classical liberalism serves as additional evidence for the existence of a divide between scholars of political theory and IR theorists. Here focusing on IR, there are a number of reasons for this “liberal knowledge gap.” While the natural law tradition, and Grotius in particular, is an established part of IR theory, the ideas on international relations within the wider natural law tradition have been neglected. An oversight of classical liberalism is one of its results, which is related to the common error to narrow down the Enlightenment to Kant and Rousseau.

The dispersed way the four classical liberals wrote about international relations probably did not stimulate research by IR scholars. When read in a noncomprehensive way, some of their ideas might appear either very radical (no development aid) or conventional and time-bound (in favor of the bal-ance of power in the eighteenth century). For some academics this may have been enough reason not to pay much attention to these authors and their ideas, but this is a mistake nevertheless. This book attempts to show that only a fully fledged analysis provides a basis to judge and apply the thought of important thinkers in the history of ideas. The novelty of the classical liberal theory of international relations is based on such a comprehensive analysis.

Academic pigeonholing is another part of the explanation. Since Smith is mainly known for his economics, he is only referred to in the light of inter-national economic relations. On a smaller scale the same applies to Hayek, while Hume is almost exclusively referred to in discussions about balance of power politics. His essay on this topic may be said to be part of the IR canon, but his other writings are mostly ignored. The inaccurate way IR scholars deal with the history of ideas has found its way into IR text books, leading to the inaccurate teaching of students.

To be fair to the IR community, this development was also stimulated by scholars in other academic disciplines. For example, philosophers often just pick out the parts of writings they find most interesting, especially in the case of Hume. An overwhelming number of the scholars of classical

Conclusions and Ways Forward ● 153

liberalism are economist, which in practice means they mainly restrict themselves to the economic parts of the work of the four classical liberals.

However it must also be emphasized that not all erroneous classifications or interpretations of classical liberal thought are related to academic special-ization. It is hard to get around the impression that many IR authors rou-tinely refer to famous thinkers without sufficient knowledge of their ideas. The common habit of picking and choosing of quotes and thinkers in IR leads to inaccuracy and the endless copying of main stream opinion. This study shows that it is possible to avoid such mistakes, as long as one is pre-pared to analyze the written works of the thinkers in full.

International Relations Theory

Besides urging IR academics to reassess the scope of the liberal tradition, this book calls for a reappraisal of the views on the international relations of each individual classical liberal thinker, for a place for classical liberalism in IR theory and consequently for a general reappraisal of liberalism in IR.

The analysis showed that it is no anachronism to regard Hume as an early representative of the international society tradition; he had far more subtle views on world politics than his routine labeling as a realist warrants. Smith had more to say about international relations than just about the issue of free trade, although he is often misinterpreted even on that point. He was far more belligerent than most IR scholars think and a much stronger supporter of international society than has been previously argued. Mises’ thought went a long way beyond economics. While he did not always analyze international affairs in a sufficiently broad scope, his ideas on this topic were much richer and less directed against war than is often taken for granted. Hayek wrote about international affairs throughout his career and he was consistently federalist. Like Smith, he had keen insight into the importance of international order for individual freedom. He valued balance of power politics and emphasized the importance of defense by the state, sometimes even in an outright hawkish fashion. In terms of the English School, Hume and Smith were not realists and perhaps more surprising is the fact that none of the four thinkers was a Kantian. Instead they must be seen as Grotians, mostly of a pluralist persuasion.

The book presents the first ever outline of a classical liberal IR theory. In it, all politics is seen as purposeful individual behavior, just like other forms of human action. This means that its view on human nature is crucial. The realistic assessment of man as both rational and under the spell of emo-tions leads to three preliminary insights with direct influence on the classi-cal liberal ideas about international relations. The first is the impossibility


to rule out violence and conflict between humans. The second is that it is impossible for humans to gather and process enough information to construct or plan for some ideal social order. And the third concerns the individual attachment to the nation. These three combined ensure that the state remains the prime actor in international relations and that the occur-rence of inter national violence is inevitable. Further these inform the belief that a maximum degree of spontaneous order is preferable to expanded state action. The main concern of the classical liberal IR theory is identical to its domestic variant: to enlarge individual freedom.

A safe and stable order is a necessary precondition to attain greater indi-vidual liberty. Leaders of states have to provide the largest degree of order possible in the anarchical international society, where the prime societal elements are diplomacy and international law. In another deviation from common ideas about liberalism, classical liberals think the preservation of international society depends as much on the balance of power as on war sometimes. Following its natural law roots, classical liberal IR theory accepts and even endorses war when fought on just grounds and in a just way. The classical liberal demand for a limited state finds its expression at the international level through the rejection of imperialism, development aid, most intergovernmental organizations, and positive international law. Contrary to the perceived wisdom about liberalism, classical liberalism does not believe that trade promotes peace; sometimes the opposite is just as likely. The principle of state sovereignty is important, but not of absolute value. If a society of states somehow does not emerge spontaneously, for example, owing to ethnic strife, religious conflict, or nationalist sentiments, federalization may be the ultimate solution, as in the case of Europe. This leads to support for the development of a European federation, which may include classical state tasks such as foreign policy or defense. An important precondition is that this federation may only have a limited number of tasks, just like the state in domestic politics.

The classical liberal IR theory differs substantially from the other lib-eralisms in IR, which are commonly associated with idealism, utopianism, cosmopolitanism, a world society, or Kantianism. Classical liberals do not think that international politics is limited to either power- motivated actions within a states system, or that it must be directed toward the formation of a world society, comprising the whole of humanity. For them the latter is not attainable, but also not attractive because of the imminent danger it poses to individual freedom. A world society lacks a solid foundation in the human emotions and in political terms it may actually lead to a scramble for power at the transnational level. The state is an imperfect, but never-theless acceptable form of political organization. Generally it is capable of


protecting fundamental liberties, although classical liberals recognize that states also pose the greatest danger to liberty. Transnational organization or a world government would be a bigger danger still.

There are a number of invented liberalisms in IR theory which may be evidence of the creativity of some IR scholars, but generally lack explanatory power. These theories are mostly concerned with the expansion of interna-tional governmental organization, the alleged peace enhancing effects of trade, and the extension of the realm of positive international law. Their philosophical inspiration originates in combination of the (alleged) thought of thinkers of a mainly social liberals persuasion, such as Kant, Bentham, Cobden, and Wilson, sometimes complemented by Mill’s embrace of empire and nationalism. The overwhelming presence in IR of the social liberal var-iant is perhaps not surprising, given its dominance in U.S. political theory combined with the fact that IR theory is dominated by the large number of American scholars. Yet this liberalism is only one part of the liberal story. In order to provide a more balanced view, this study therefore seeks to “intro-duce the classics.”

English School theorists may take several new insights from this book; the foremost of them is the new idea of the relation between classical lib-eralism and the Grotian tradition. Within this perspective Hume, Smith, and Hayek were firmly and Mises predominantly on the pluralist side. This strengthens the pluralist perspective, which has become a minority position in the past decades. Many current English School theorists aim to advance the solidarist and Kantian perspectives. The relation between the classical liberal and Grotian traditions also makes it clear that the position of the individual in English School IR is more complicated than often thought. One cannot simply say that individualism is limited to the Kantian tradi-tion, because the latter tradition regards the world as a community of indi-viduals. At best this is one element in the relation between individualism and world politics. Classical liberalism therefore “rescues” the individual from the Kantian community of humankind.

Concerning underdeveloped areas in English School theory, the most obvious classical liberal supplement is its emphasis on the valuable role of capitalism. The twin ideas of spontaneous order and free market eco-nomics led to a number of proposals for radical change. Not surprisingly this includes an argument for an extended role of free trade, which will lead to greater welfare and increased cultural exchange. In this case, more capitalism means less international economic governance. Classical liberals reject most forms of governmental interference and development aid. For them the current state of international affairs is still largely characterized by mercantilism, constructivism, and state expansion beyond the justified


limited number of tasks. For Grotians in the English School, these positions pose questions about the role and justice of state action in international rela-tions, restrictions on positivist international law, and limits on international governmental organization.

The idea of a limited federation is a classical liberal feature that may add to the discussion on European integration within the English School. It means that questions about the future of European integration cannot be exclusively seen in terms of a debate between realists versus Grotian solidarists and Kantians. There is a possible via media role for pluralist Grotians. The classical liberal call for a limited number of tasks before the possible establishment of a federation also adds fresh ideas about the future of the EU.

The neglect of political theory among IR theorists extends to the English School. This book shows that if more attention is paid to this field, new areas of research or new evidence for older ideas may be found. For a school priding itself on a historical approach, it is certainly surprising that there has not been more emphasis on the history of ideas. Here it is indicated that English School theory and liberalism in IR are more closely connected than previously understood.

Last but not least, this book strengthens the evidence for the existence of a Grotian tradition as such. In IR, research on the influence of Grotius and the natural law tradition has hardly ever followed the path leading to the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment and beyond. Therefore its influence has largely remained uncovered. Study of thinkers outside the IR canon thus counters claims that traditions are invented. In IR research it is both possible and useful to make use of traditions.

Ways Forward

Despite these encouraging findings, there is still a need for further inquiry. More research on the views on international relations of a larger number of classical liberal thinkers is a first suggestion. This will widen the basis of the classical liberal tradition in IR theory.

Many of the separate elements of the classical liberal IR theory require more work. This concerns questions about the precise relation of classical liberalism and the just war tradition, the role and limits of humanitarian and military intervention, general rules for limiting the number of interna-tional governmental organizations, and criteria for the maximum number of tasks of the European Union.

Some of the results of this research will come as a surprise to people who consider themselves classical liberals or libertarians. It may lead to further


discuss the differences in opinion, and there surely remains work to be done on the relationship between the classical liberal IR theory and the liber-tarian positions.

The English School must “move beyond Scotland and Austria,” to find more thinkers, in more countries, whose writings warrant closer scrutiny to trace and further fill the three traditions with material from the history of political ideas. The relations between the English School and individualism, capitalism, and European integration are other pressing issues for further research.

This said, the book would have achieved its main goal if the reader acknowledges that there is far more to liberalism in international rela-tions than hitherto thought. Hopefully, the book gives enough reason for additional research and the rewriting of current accounts of liberalism. Liberalism, both as a political theory and an IR theory, is much too impor-tant to not make the effort.

Notes

1 Introduction

1. Following the convention, throughout the text, the study of international rela-tions as an academic endeavor will be referred to as IR, in capitals, while the object under study is named either international relations, international affairs, international politics, or world politics, in small letters. International relations theory is sometimes abbreviated as IR theory.

2. See for an overview Zacher, Mark W., and Richard A. Matthew. “Liberal International Theory: Common Threads, Divergent Strands.” In Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge. Edited by C.W. Kegley Jr. New York: St. Martin’s. 1995. pp. 107–150.

3. Manent, Pierre. An Intellectual History of Liberalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1995. p. xv.

4. Minogue, Kenneth. “Theorising Liberalism and Liberalising Theory.” In Traditions of Liberalism. Edited by K. Haakonssen. St. Leonards: Centre for Independent Studies. 1988. pp. 185–198.

5. Gray, John. Liberalism. Buckingham: Open University Press. 1995. pp. xi–xiii.6. Long, David. Towards a New Liberal Internationalism: The International Theory

of J.A. Hobson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996. p. 176; also Walker, Thomas C. “Two Faces of Liberalism: Kant, Paine, and the Question of Intervention.” International Studies Quarterly 52 (3):449–468. 2008. pp. 449–451.

7. Sally, Razeen. Classical Liberalism and International Economic Order: Studies in Theory and Intellectual History. London: Routledge. 1998. pp. 4, 35–63; for example Barry, Norman P. On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism. New York: St. Martin’s. 1987.

8. N.J. Rengger. “Political Theory and International Relations: Promised Land or Exit from Eden? International Affairs 76 (4):755–770. 2000. pp. 757–758.

9. Clark, Ian, and Iver B. Neumann. “Conclusion.” In Classical Theories of International Relations. Edited by I. Clark and I.B. Neumann. Houndmills, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. 1996. pp. 258–259.

160 ● Notes

10. Brown, Chris, Terry Nardin, and N.J. Rengger, eds. International Relations in Political Thought. Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. pp. 1–15.

11. Ibid., p. 1.12. Jackson, Robert H. “Is There a Classical International Theory?” In International

Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Edited by S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996. pp. 203–204.

13. Broadie, A. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. Edited by A. Broadie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. p. 6.

14. Barry. Classical Liberalism. pp. 22–35; Gray. Liberalism. pp. 4–25.15. Keene, Edward. International Political Thought: A Historical Introduction.

Cambridge: Polity. 2005. pp. 135–137.16. Ashworth, Lucian M. Creating International Studies: Angell, Mitrany and the

Liberal Tradition. Aldershot: Ashgate. 1999. p. 4.17. Van de Haar, Edwin R. “David Hume and International Political Theory: A

Reappraisal.” Review of International Studies 34 (2):225–242. 2008.18. For an introduction, see Callahan, Gene. Economics for Real People: An

Introduction to the Austrian School. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2004.

19. Cited in Ebenstein, Alan. Friedrich Hayek: A Biography. New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave. 2001. p. 267.

20. Feser, Edward. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hayek. Edited by E. Feser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 2.

21. Ashworth. Creating International Studies. pp. 2–3.22. See for example, Hammarlund, Per A. Liberal Internationalism and the Decline

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148. Van Dun. Human Dignity. p. 15.149. Gray. Liberalism. pp. 9–10.150. See also Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of

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156. Franceschet, Antonio. Kant and Liberal Internationalism: Sover eignty, Justice and Global Reform. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2002. pp. 10–53, 67–68; Williams, Howard, and Ken Booth. “Kant: Theorist beyond Limits.” In Classical Theories of International Relations. Edited by I. Clark and I.B. Neumann. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan. 1996. p. 78.

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3 David Hume and International Society

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6. Hume. THN. pp. 188–189. 7. Ibid., p. 200. 8. Hume. E. p. 288. 9. Hume. THN. p. 5. 10. Ibid., p. 183. 11. Ibid., p. 79. 12. Hume, David. The Letters of David Hume. Oxford: Clarendon. 1932.

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73. Hume. L. number 510.74. Ibid., number 514.75. Ibid., numbers 511, 512.76. Pocock. Virtue, Commerce, History. pp. 137–139.77. Werner, J.M. “David Hume and America.” Journal of the History of Ideas 33

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84. Hume. E. pp. 308–309.85. Ibid., pp. 328–330.

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4 Adam Smith, War, and Commerce

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5. Smith. TMS. pp. 204, 208–209. 6. Skinner, Andrew S. A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith.

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1987. p. 108. 9. Smith. TMS. p. 229. 10. Smith, Graig. Adam Smith. p. 38. 11. Smith. TMS. pp. 235–237. 12. Smith. LJA. p. 7. 13. Smith. TMS. p. 155; LJA. p. 200. 14. Smith. TMS. pp. 341–342. 15. Smith. LJB. pp. 399, 545. 16. Smith. TMS. pp. 154, 228. 17. Fleischacker, Samuel. On Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical

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178 ● Notes

23. Smith. LJB. pp. 552–553.24. Smith. TMS. pp. 230–231.25. Smith. WN. pp. 135–159.26. Ibid., p. 591.27. Ibid., pp. 529–539.28. Smith. TMS. p. 36.29. Ibid., p. 229.30. Smith. WN. pp. 494–496.31. Smith. TMS. pp. 229–230.32. Winch, Donald. Adam Smith’s Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1978. p. 105.33. Haakonssen. Coherence. p. 6.34. Smith. LJB. pp. 545–547.35. Ibid., p. 407.36. Smith. LJA. p. 326.37. Smith. LJB. pp. 547–548.38. Haakonssen. Coherence. pp. 13–14.39. Smith. LJB. pp. 548–550.40. Smith. WN. pp. 821, 345.41. Ibid., pp. 909–910, 920, 926.42. Ibid., p. 406.43. Smith. LJA. pp. 238–239; LJB. p. 411.44. West, Edwin. Adam Smith into the Twenty-First Century. Cheltenham and

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105. Mizuta, Hiroshi. Adam Smith’s Library: A Catalogue. Oxford: Clarendon. 2000. pp. xvii, 108–110, 207.

106. Jeffery. Hugo Grotius. p. 71.107. Long. Adam Smith’s Politics. p. 315.108. Ebeling, Richard M. “Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-First Century:

War and Peace.” In Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism. Edited by R.M. Ebeling and J.G. Hornberger. Fairfax: Future of Freedom Foundation. 2003. p. 174.

5 Ludwig von Mises, Capitalism, and Peace

1. For more on Mises’ life, see Hülsmann. Mises; Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik. The Cultural Background of Ludwig von Mises. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 1999; Ebeling, Richard M. Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar. 2003. pp. 61–100; Butler. Mises; Von Mises, Margit. My Years with Ludwig von Mises. Cedar Falls: Center for Futures Education. 1984; Von Mises, Ludwig. Notes and Recollections. Spring Mills: Libertarian. 1978; Kirzner, Israel M. Ludwig von Mises: The Man and His Economics. Wilmington: ISI Books. 2001.

2. Von Mises, Ludwig. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 1990.

3. Boettke, Peter J., ed. The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. 1994. Kirzner, Israel M. The Meaning of Market Process: Essays in the Development of Modern Austrian Economics. London: Routledge. 1992.

4. Mises. Notes and Recollections. pp. 93–100. 5. Delgaudio, Julian J. Refugee Economist in America: Ludwig von Mises and

American Social and Political Thought 1940–1986. University of California: Irvine. 1987.

6. The Mont Pelerin Society. Tribute to Mises, 1881–1973: The Session of the Mont Pelerin Society at Brussels on 13th September 1974, Devoted to the Memory of Ludwig von Mises. Chislehurst: Quadrangle Publications

182 ● Notes

and the Mont Pelerin Society. 1974; Andrews, John K., ed. Homage to Mises: The First Hundred Years. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press. 1981. pp. 10–13, 19–27.

7. See, for example, Rothbard, Murray N. The Essential Von Mises. Grove City: Libertarian. 1980; Kirzner, Israel M. ed. Method, Process, and Austrian Economics: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises. Lexington and Toronto: Lexington Books. 1982; Steele. From Marx to Mises. pp. 95–122; Moss, Laurence S., ed. The Economics of Ludwig von Mises: Toward a Critical Appraisal. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward. 1976.

8. Harper, F.A., ed. Toward Liberty: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises on Occasion of His 90th Birthday, September 29, 1971. Menlo Park: Institute for Humane Studies. 1971.

9. Ebeling, Richard M, ed. Human Action: A 50-Year Tribute. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press. 2000.

10. Sennholz, Mary, ed. On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises. Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education. 1994.

11. Mises. HA. p. 43.12. Von Mises, Ludwig. Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and

History of Our Time. New York and London: Institute for Humane Studies & New York University Press. 1983. pp. 39–40.

13. Butler. Mises. p. 17; Hülsmann. Mises. p. 317.14. Mises. NSE. pp. 9–14.15. Ibid., pp. 16–21.16. Mises. OG. pp. 82–85.17. Ibid., pp. 241–243.18. Smith, Anthony D. Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford

University Press. 1999. pp. 97–123.19. Von Mises, Ludwig. Money, Method, and the Market Process. Norwell &

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic & Praxeology Press of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 1990. pp. 156–157.

20. Gellner. Nationalism. pp. 50–58.21. Mises. OG. p. 85.22. Mises. NSE. pp. 31–56.23. Gordon, David. “Ludwig von Mises and the Philosophy of History.” In The

Meaning of Ludwig von Mises: Contributions in Economics, Epistemology, Sociology, and Political Philosophy. Edited by J.M. Herbener. Norwell and Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers & Praxeology Press of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 1993. p. 133; Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 316–324.

24. Mises. OG. pp. 93–94; NSE. p. 39.25. Ebeling, Richard M. “Introduction.” In Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises,

volume 3: The Political Economy of International Reform and Reconstruction. Indianapolis: Liberty. 2000. p. xxxv.

26. Mises. NSE. p. 82.

Notes ● 183

27. Baumgarth, William. “Ludwig von Mises and the Justification of the Liberal Order.” In The Economics of Ludwig von Mises: Toward a Critical Appraisal. Edited by L.S. Moss. Kansas City: Sheed and Ward. 1976. pp. 79–99. p. 93.

28. Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 1026–1029.29. Raico, Ralph. “Mises on Fascism, Democracy and Other Questions.” Journal of

Libertarian Studies 12 (1):1–27. 1996. pp. 24–25.30. Mises. MMM. pp. 151–152.31. Mises. HA. p. 686.32. Mises. NSE. p. 38.33. Bien Greaves, Bettina. Interview with Doctor Frederick Engel-Janosi.

Washington (?), March 8, 1958; also Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 257–298.34. Bien Greaves, Bettina. Interview with Professor F.A. Hayek. Chicago,

January 25. 1958.35. Bien Greaves, Bettina. An interview with Mrs. Ludwig von Mises. New York,

March 21, 1977.36. Von Mises, Ludwig. Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of

Articles and Essays. Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education.1990. p. 136.

37. Rappard, William E. “On Reading von Mises.” In On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises. Edited by M. Sennholz. Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education. 1994. p. 23.

38. Mises. NSE. pp. 213–214.39. Mises. HA. p. 650; Critique of Interventionism. p. 77.40. Mises. NSE. pp.152–158; OG. p. 109; HA. p. 179; Von Mises, Ludwig.

Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1981. p. 109.

41. Mises. S. pp. 287, 311–313.42. Mises. MMM. pp. 158–159.43. Mises. L. pp. 106–107.44. Ibid., pp. 23–25.45. Mises. HA. pp. 684–687; S. p. 109; Von Mises, Ludwig. Marxism Unmasked:

From Delusion to Destruction. Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation For Economic Education. 2006. pp. 44–45.

46. Ebeling. “Introduction.” p. xvii.47. Mises. NSE. p. 86.48. Mises. S. p. 62; HA. pp. 822–823; L. p. 108.49. Mises. Notes and Recollections. p. 115.50. Herbener, Jeffrey M. Mises on War and Peace in Human Action. Available from

www.mises.org. 1999. (Access date: November 28, 2006)51. Von Mises, Ludwig. “Autarkie Bedeutet Untergang der Kultur!” Berliner

Tageblatt, March 31, 1932.52. Mises. HA. pp. 825–828.53. Mises. L. p. 111.54. Mises. NSE. pp. 85–90.

184 ● Notes

55. Mises. OG. p. 108.56. Mises. HA. p. 832; S. p. 207.57. Mises. Bureaucracy. pp. 27–28.58. Kirzner. Mises. pp. 167, 183.59. Quoted in Hülsmann. Mises. p. 810; Mises. L. pp. 24–25.60. Mises. S. pp. 58–59.61. Mises. HA. p. 149; EF. p. 57.62. Mises. HA. pp. 169–170.63. Mises. OG. pp. 248–249.64. Mises. L. p. 148; NSE. p. 90; S. p. 36.65. Mises. NSE. pp. 32, 80–85.66. Mises. Selected Writings 3. p. 19.67. Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 805, 908.68. Mises. L. pp. 151–154.69. Mises. MMM. pp. 153–154.70. Mises. L. pp. 130–136.71. Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 525–526; Mises. S. p. 268; Von Mises, Ludwig. “Vom

Ziel der Handelspolitik.” Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 42:561–585. 1916; Von Mises, Ludwig. “Die Theorieen der Handelspolitik und die Handelspolitische Krisis.” Prager Breffe, November 17, 1925.

72. Conway. Defence of the Realm. pp. 87–94.73. Also Hülsmann. Mises. p. 642.74. Mises. NSE. pp. 90–91; Notes and Recollections. p. 137.75. Von Mises, Ludwig. “The Freedom to Move as an International Problem.” In

The Clash of Group Interests and Other Essays. Edited by R.M. Ebeling. New York: Center for Libertarian Studies. 1978. pp. 19–22.

76. Mises. L. pp. 147–151.77. Von Mises, Ludwig. “Amerika und der Wiederaufbau der europäischen

Wirtschaft.” Neue Freie Presse, December 18, 1926.78. Von Mises, Ludwig. Selected Writings, volume 2: Between the Two World

Wars: Monetary Disorder, Interventionism, Socialism and the Great Depression. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 2002. pp. 309–313.

79. Mises. OG. pp. 292–294; HA. pp. 687–688.80. Mises. HA. p. 825.81. Mises. MMM. pp. 161–162.82. Mises. OG. pp. 250–253.83. Mises. L. pp. 104–154.84. Ibid., pp. 142–147.85. Mises. OG. pp. 278–282.86. Mises. MMM. pp. 162–163.87. Mises. Historical Setting. pp. 54–55, 84–85.88. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard. Letter to Ludwig von Mises. Greenwood.

May 2, 1944.89. Mises. OG. pp. 276–278.90. Mises. Selected Writings 3. pp. 43–49.

Notes ● 185

91. Von Mises, Ludwig. Letter to F.A. Hayek. New York City. July 18, 1943 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 38, folder 24).

92. Mises. Selected Writings 3. pp. 15–19, 29. 93. Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 877–878; Mises. EF. p. 64. 94. See, for example, Dinan, Desmond. Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to the

European Community. Houndmills, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. 1994. pp. 16–21.

95. Mises. EF. pp. 145–146. 96. Gillingham, John. European Integration, 1950–2003: Superstate or New

Market Economy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. p. 18. 97. Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 869–881. 98. Ibid., pp. 723–725, 804–805, 816–821; Ebeling, Richard M. “Introduction.”

In Mises. Selected Writings 2. pp. viii–lii. 99. Mises. Selected Writings 2. p. 316.100. Mises. OG. pp. 282–290.101. Mises. Selected Writings 3. pp. 169–201.102. Simons, Henry C. “Review of Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government:

The Rise of the Total State and Total War.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 26:192–193. 1944.

103. Mises. Selected Writings 3. p. 171.104. Mises. S. p. 207.105. Mises. OG. p. 102.106. Mises. NSE. pp. 77–78.107. Mises. OG. pp. 100–101.108. Mises. L. pp. 121–130.109. Mises. HA. pp. 670–672.110. Mises. OG. p. 256.111. Mises. EF. pp. 34, 242–243.112. Mises. MMM. pp. 166–173; OG. pp. 290–292.113. Raico. Mises on Fascism. p. 27.114. Also Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 303–304.115. Mises. NSE. p. 3.116. Mises. OG. pp. 147, 295.117. Winch. Adam Smith’s Politics. p. 104.118. Hoogensen. Bentham and International Relations. pp. 8–9, 40–54.119. Howard. War and Liberal Conscience. p. 35.120. Mises. NSE. p. 86.121. Hoogensen. Bentham and International Relations. pp. 12, 86–89, 194–195.122. Pitts. Turn to Empire. pp. 103–122.123. Winch. Riches and Poverty. pp. 409–416.124. Taylor, Overton H. A History of Economic Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill.

1960. pp. 172–186.125. Cited in Zacher and Matthew. Liberal International Theory. p. 114.126. Irwin. Against the Tide. pp. 93–94.127. Hülsmann. Mises. p. 737.

186 ● Notes

128. Mises. OG. p. 10.129. Grammp, William D. The Manchester School of Economics. Stanford and

London: Stanford University Press & Oxford University Press. 1960. pp. 1–6, 16–38, 46–47, 114.

130. Spall, Richard F. Reform Ideas of the Anti-Corn Leaguers. PhD thesis, University of Illinois. Urbana-Champaign. 1985. pp. 237–251.

131. For more details, see Howe, Anthony. “Introduction.” In Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays. Edited by A. Howe and S. Morgan. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. pp. 1–19.

132. Dawson, William Hartbutt. Richard Cobden and Foreign Policy: A Critical Exposition, with Special Reference to Our Day and Its Problems. London: George Allen & Unwin. 1926. pp. 80–82.

133. Cobden, Richard. “International Arbitration.” In Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Groce. Edited by E.K. Bramsted and K.J. Melhuish. London and New York: Longman. 1978. pp. 374–378; Cobden, Richard. The Political Writings of Richard Cobden. London: William Ridgway. 1878.

134. Rogers, James E.T. Cobden and Modern Political Opinion. London: Macmillan. 1873. pp. 109–110; Hirst, Francis W., ed. Free Trade and Other Fundamental Doctrines of the Manchester School. New York: Augustus M. Kelley. 1968. pp. ix–xix.

135. Mises. S. p. 207.136. Cobden, Richard. “Commerce Is the Grand Panacea.” In Western Liberalism:

A History in Documents from Locke to Groce. Edited by E.K. Bramsted and K.J. Melhuish. London and New York: Longman. 1978. pp. 354–357.

137. Cobden. International Arbitration. pp. 374–375; also Howard. War and Liberal Conscience. p. 42.

138. Caedel, Martin. “Cobden and Peace.” In Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays. Edited by A. Howe and S. Morgan. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. pp. 189–207.

139. Morley, John. The Life of Richard Cobden. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1903. pp. 309–311.

140. Russell, Dean. Frederic Bastiat: Ideas and Influence. Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education. 1969. pp. 17–29, 42, 73, 114.

141. Bastiat, Frédéric. The Bastiat Collection. Volume II. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2007. pp. 523–529.

142. Cited in Grammp. Manchester School. pp. 100–105.143. Von Mises, Ludwig. The Causes of the Economic Crisis: And Other Essays be-

fore and after the Great Depression. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2006. p. 34.

144. Grammp. Manchester School. p. 24.145. Hammarlund. Liberal Internationalism. p. 91.146. Magnusson, Lars. The Tradition of Free Trade. London and New York:

Routledge. 2004. pp. 4, 46–69; Ashworth. Creating International Studies. pp. 27–30.

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147. Trentmann, Frank. “The Resurrection and Decomposition of Cobden in Britain and the West: An Essay in the Politics of Reputation.” In Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays. Edited by A. Howe and S. Morgan. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. pp. 272–276.

148. Mises. Selected Writings 3. pp. 4–5.149. Mayall, James. Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. 1990. p. 159.150. Jackson, Robert H. Sovereignty: Evolution of an Idea. Cambridge: Polity. 2007.

pp. 63–64.151. Mises. MMM. p. 158.152. Von Mises. Marxism Unmasked. p. 32.153. Hülsmann. Mises. p. 42.154. Mises. S. pp. 388–389.155. Von Mises, Ludwig. The Theory of Money and Credit. Indianapolis: Liberty

Fund. 1981. p. 433.156. Mises. OG. pp. 5–6.157. Miller, J.D.B. “Norman Angell and Rationality in International Relations.” In

Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed. Edited by D. Long and P. Wilson. Oxford: Clarendon. 1995. p. 101.

158. Mises. MMM. p. 160.159. Miller. Angell. pp. 103–121.160. Mises. HA. pp. 821–822.161. Mises. Selected Writings 3. p. 183.162. Buzan, Barry. “International Political Economy and Globalization.” In

International Society and Its Critics. Edited by A.J. Bellamy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. pp. 115–133.

6 Friedrich Hayek, International Order, and Federalism

1. Cubitt, C.E. A Life of Friedrich August von Hayek. Gamlingay: Authors Online. 2006. pp. 47–48.

2. Hayek, Friedrich A. Denationalisation of Money—The Argument Refined: An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. 1990. p. 17.

3. See for more biographical details, Leube, Kurt R. “Friedrich August von Hayek: A Biographical Introduction.” In The Essence of Hayek. Edited by K.R. Leube and C. Nishiyama. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1984. pp. xvii–xxxvi; Cubitt. A Life; Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek; Caldwell. Hayek’s Challenge; Ebenstein. Hayek’s Journey; Butler, Eamonn. Hayek: His Contribution to the Political and Economic Thought of Our Time. New York: Universe Books. 1985; Nishiyama, Chiaki. “Introduction.” In The Essence of Hayek. Edited by K.R. Leube and C. Nishiyama. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1984. pp. xxxvii–lxviii.

4. Margit von Mises. My Years. p. 41.

188 ● Notes

5. Hayek. Hayek on Hayek. p. 68. 6. Hülsmann. Mises. pp. 700–701, 707. 7. Skousen, Mark. Vienna & Chicago, Friends of Foes? A Tale of Two Schools of Free-

Market Economics. Washington DC: Regnery. 2005. 8. Hayek. Hayek on Hayek. p. 48. 9. Hayek. LLL (III). p. 149; Hayek, Friedrich A. The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays

on Austrian Economics and the Ideal of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1992. p. 239.

10. Feulner, Edwin J. Intellectual Pilgrims: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Mont Pelerin Society. Washington: Edwin J. Feulner. 1999; Hartwell, R.M. A History of the Mont Pelerin Society. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1995.

11. See Gellner. Nationalism. p. 1.12. Hayek. IEO. p. 264.13. Hayek. CL. p. 84.14. Hayek. LLL (II). p. 12.15. Caldwell, Bruce. “Introduction.” In The Road to Serfdom: Texts and

Documents—The Definitive Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2007. pp. 9–15.

16. Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge. 1997. pp. 5, 9–10.

17. Hayek. Fortunes of Liberalism. pp. 219–236.18. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. pp. 294, 390.19. Cubitt. A Life. pp. 23–24.20. Hayek. Studies. p. 143.21. Hayek. IEO. p. 28; CL. pp. 14–15.22. Hayek. IEO. p. 270, especially note 9; LLL. II. p. 134.23. Hayek, Friedrich A. Socialism and War: Essays, Documents, Reviews. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press. 1997. p. 218.24. Hayek. RS. pp. 106–107.25. Hayek. CL. pp. 405–406.26. Ibid., p. 105.27. Curzon Price, Victoria. “What Do Liberals Have to Say about the Future of

International and Inter-Ethnic Relations?” In Libertarians and Liberalism: Essays in Honour of Gerard Radnitzky. Edited by H. Bouillon. Aldershot: Ashgate. 1996. p. 315.

28. Hayek. RS. p. 9.29. Hayek. IEO. p. 270.30. Ibid., pp. 270–272; CL. p. 217; LLL (III). p. 124.31. Butler. Hayek. p. 107.32. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. p. 225.33. Hayek. SW. p. 161.34. Hayek. LLL (III). p. 132.35. Hayek. SW. pp. 151–160, 164–172; RS. pp. 153, 155.36. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. pp. 300–301.

Notes ● 189

37. Hennecke, Hans Jörg. Friedrich August von Hayek. Die Tradition der Freiheit. Düsseldorf: Wirtschaft und Finanzen. 2000. p. 350.

38. Quoted in Ibid., p. 342.39. Quoted in Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. p. 300.40. Cubitt. A Life. pp. 47, 204.41. Hennecke. Tradition. p. 347.42. Shenfield, Arthur A. “Law.” In Agenda for a Free Society: Essays on Hayek’s “The

Constitution of Liberty.” Edited by A. Seldon. London: Institute of Economic Affairs and Hutchinson. 1961. p. 54.

43. Hayek. RS. p. 163.44. Hayek. SW. pp. 161–164.45. Hayek. RS. p. 176.46. Hayek. IEO. pp. 269–271, 255.47. Ibid., pp. 256–268.48. Hayek. RS. pp. 164–167.49. Ibid., pp. 172, 173.50. Jennings, Ivor W. A Federation for Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. 1940.51. Hennecke. Tradition. p. 346.52. Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to Menachem Begin. January 18, 1980 (Hoover

Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 11, folder 45). 1978; Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to Menachem Begin. May 2, 1980 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 11, folder 45).

53. Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to Teddy Kolek. Undated, most likely June or July, 1982 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 31, folder 16).

54. Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to Moshe Dayan. October 11, 1981 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 16, folder 59).

55. Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to the editor of The Times. April 21, 1985 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 111, folder 13).

56. Hayek. IEO. pp. 269–271.57. Shearmur, Jeremy. Hayek and After: Hayekian Liberalism as a Research Programme.

London and New York: Routledge. 1996. pp. 53–60.58. Hayek. RS. pp. 174–175.59. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. p. 391, note 16.60. Hayek. RS. pp. 166, note 2, 172–173.61. Skidelsky, Robert. “Hayek versus Keynes.” In The Cambridge Companion to

Hayek. Edited by E. Feser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 100.

62. Hayek. RS. p. 176.63. Hayek, Friedrich A. “A Self-Generating Order for Society.” In Towards World

Community. Edited by J. Nef. The Hague: Dr. W. Junk N.V. 1968. pp. 41–42.64. Hayek. LLL (II). pp. 104–106.65. Hayek, Friedrich A. “The Misconception of Human Rights as Positive Claims.”

Farmand II (12):32–35 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 108,

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folder 12). 1966; Hoy, Calvin M. A Philosophy of Individual Freedom: The Political Thought of F.A. Hayek. Westport and London: Greenwood. 1984. p. 49.

66. Hayek. LLL (II). p. 105.67. Hall. Martin Wight. pp. 127–129.68. Hayek. Misconception of Human Rights.69. Hayek. LLL (III). p. 149.70. Hayek. LLL (II). p. 61.71. Hayek. CL. pp. 262–263.72. Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to President Reagan. Freiburg. February 11, 1981

(Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 45, folder 15).73. Ebeling, Richard M. 1977. “Interview with F.A. Hayek.” Libertarian Review.

September 1977 (Hoover Institution Archives. Hayek Papers, box 109, folder 14). p. 12.

74. Hayek, Friedrich A. “Internationaler Rufmord. Eine persönliche Stellungnahme.” Politische Studien:42–43 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 109, folder 18). 1977.

75. Hayek, Friedrich A. “Schärfster Protest.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. January 6, 1982 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 63, folder 8).

76. Cubitt. A Life. p. 19.77. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1978. “Letter to the Editor.” The Times, July 27, 1978

(Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 109, folder 24).78. Also Hennecke. Tradition. pp. 348–351.79. Cubitt. A Life. pp. 19, 200.80. Hayek. IEO. p. 269; RS. p. 166, note 1.81. See, for example, Bauer, Peter T., and B.S. Yamey. The Economics of Under-

Developed Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1957.82. Bauer, Peter T. Dissent on Development: Studies and Debates in Development

Economics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1971. pp. 17, 31–146.83. Blundell, John. A Tribute to Peter Bauer. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

2002. pp. 27–29.84. Hayek. CL. pp. 3, 48–53, 322, 366–367.85. Curzon Price. What Do Liberals. p. 304.86. Hayek. LLL (III). p. 133.87. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1981. “The Flaws of the Brandt Report.” The Times.

January 9, 1981 (Hoover Institution Archives, Hayek Papers, box 110, folder 3).88. Baron, Stefan. 1981. “Ungleichheit ist Nötig. Interview mit F.A. Hayek”.

Wirtschaftswoche. March 6, 1981 (Hoover Institution Archives. Hayek Papers, box 109, folder 46).

89. Ebenstein. Hayek’s Journey. p. 221.90. Hayek, Friedrich A. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press. 1991. pp. 120–134.91. Simon, Julian L. The Ultimate Resource 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1996. pp. 614–615.92. Curzon Price. What Do Liberals. pp. 308–311.

Notes ● 191

93. See Bauer, Peter T. The Development Frontier: Essays in Applied Economics. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1991. pp. 38–55; Lal, Deepak. The Poverty of “Development Economics.” London: Institute of Economic Affairs. 2002.

94. Hayek. Hayek on Hayek. p. 115. 95. Hayek. Fatal Conceit. pp. 38–47. 96. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. p. 98. 97. Hayek. New Studies. pp. 106, 131; Kotterman-van de Vosse, Inez. De Visie van

Hayek. Een Pleidooi voor Persoonlijke Vrijheid. Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink. 1994. p. 94.

98. Hayek. RS. pp. 163–167. 99. Hayek. IEO. p. 257; LLL (II). p. 90.100. Hayek, Friedrich A. Good Money, Part II: The Standard. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press. 1999. pp. 37–105.101. Desai, Meghnad. “Hayek and Marx.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hayek.

Edited by E. Feser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 72.102. Hayek. New Studies. p. 225.103. Hayek. Denationalisation of Money. pp. 23–24.104. Thatcher, Margaret. The Downing Street Years. London: HarperCollins. 1993.

p. 716.105. Hayek. Hayek on Hayek. p. 151.106. Hayek. Denationalisation of Money. p. 24.107. Hayek. “Letter to the Editor.” The Times. February 11, 1978.108. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1978. “Origins of Racialism.” The Times. March 1,

1978.109. Hayek, Friedrich A. 1978. “Integrating Immigrants.” The Times. March 9,

1978.110. Butler. Hayek. p. 97.111. Gissurarson, Hannes H. “The Only Truly Progressive Policy. . . .” In Hayek’s

Serfdom Revisited. Edited by N.P. Barry. St. Leonards: Centre for Independent Studies. 1985. p. 12.

112. Hayek. Studies. p. 168.113. Ibid., pp. 163–165.114. Hayek. LLL (II). p. 3.115. Smith, Graig. Adam Smith. p. 132.116. Hayek. LLL (II). pp. 90–91, 148, 151–152.117. Hayek. LLL (III). pp. 130–131.118. See, for example, Williams, Andrew. Liberalism and War: The Victors and the

Vanquished. London and New York: Routledge. 2006. pp. 58, 118.119. Easley, Eric S. The War over Perpetual Peace: An Exploration into the History of

a Foundational International Relations Text. New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. p. 136.

120. Young, Oran R. International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1989. pp. 84–85.

192 ● Notes

121. Richardson. Contending Liberalisms. pp. 43–44, 82–83, 155, 161.122. Ashworth. Creating International Studies. pp. 86–88.123. Curzon Price. What Do Liberals. pp. 299, 308.124. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. pp. 300–305.125. Hennecke. Tradition. pp. 341–359.126. Hayek. New Studies. p. 129.127. Hayek. IEO. p. 28.128. Hill, Roland. Lord Acton. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

2000. p. 415; Acton, J.E.E. Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality: Selected Writings of Lord Acton. Volume III. Edited by J. Rufus Fears. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1985. p. 559.

129. Hayek. RS. p. 163.130. Acton, J.E.E. Essays in the History of Liberty: Selected Writings of Lord Acton.

Volume I. Edited by J. Rufus Fears. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1985. p. 431.

131. Kukathas. Hayek and Liberalism. p. 198.132. Acton. Selected Writings III. p. 560.133. De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. London: David Campbell.

1994. p. 264.134. Clinton. Tocqueville. p. 17.135. Lively, Jack. The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. Oxford:

Clarendon. 1962. pp. 156–157.136. Boesche, Roger. The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville. Ithaca and

London: Cornell University Press. 1987. pp. 216–218.137. Clinton. Tocqueville. pp. 22–33.138. Hayek. RS. p. 174.139. Hayek. Fatal Conceit. p. 12.140. Gamble, Andrew. Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty. Cambridge: Polity. 1996.

pp. 90–91.141. Hayek. RS. pp. 138–141.142. Hayek. SW. pp. 251–253.143. See Gray. Hayek on Liberty; Shearmur. Hayek and After.144. Kukathas, Chandran. Hayek and Modern Liberalism. Oxford: Clarendon.

1989. pp. 20–45; Roos. Hayek’s Kantian Heritage.145. Hayek. Hayek on Hayek. pp. 139–140.146. Gissurarson. Hayek’s Conservative Liberalism. pp. 13–14.147. Kotterman-van de Vosse. Visie van Hayek. pp. 87–88.148. Hayek. RS. p. 169.149. Hayek. SW. p. 211.150. Hayek. Self Generating Order. p. 42.151. Ibid.152. Hayek. Fatal Conceit. p. 37.153. Hayek, Friedrich A. “An International Newspaper Page.” Vienna. (Hoover

Institution Archives. Hayek Papers, box 104, folder 28). Undated.

Notes ● 193

154. Hayek. RS. p. 166; LLL (II). p. 134.155. Compare Hayek. LLL (I). p. 21 and LLL (II). p. 53.156. Hayek. RS. p. 176.157. Ibid., p. 175.158. Hayek. Fortunes of Liberalism. p. 260.159. Hennecke. Tradition. pp. 342, 345.160. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek. pp. 319–320.161. Ibid., p. 393, note 2.

7 Liberalism and International Relations Theory

1. Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. “The Psychological Foundations of Culture.” In The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Edited by J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby. New York: Oxford University Press. 1992. pp. 19–139.

2. Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Penguin Books. 2002. pp. 56–58, 428–431.

3. Thayer, Bradley A. Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2004. pp. 263–270.

4. Rosen, Stephen Peter. War and Human Nature. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2005. p. 2.

5. Conway. Defense of Realm. pp. 1–2. 6. See Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso. 1996. 7. Jahn, Beate. “Classical Smoke, Classical Mirror: Kant and Mill in Liberal

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8. Wolfe, Christopher. Natural Law Liberalism. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 255.

9. Also see Lomasky, Loren E. “Liberalism beyond Borders.” Social Philosophy & Policy 24 (1):206–233. 2007.

10. See Fisher, David. “Humanitarian Intervention.” In The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by C. Reed and D. Ryall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. pp. 101–117; Rengger, N.J. “The Greatest Treason? On the Subtle Temptations of Preventive War.” International Affairs 84 (5):949–961. 2008; Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World. New York: Basic Books. 2003; Elshtain. Just War Theory; Rengger. On the Just War Tradition.

11. Higgs, Robert. Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society. Oakland: Independent Institute. 2004; Higgs, Robert. Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006.

194 ● Notes

12. Jackson. Global Covenant. p. vii.13. Hume. E. pp. 512–529.14. Smith. WN. pp. 529–539.15. Robbins, Lionel. Money, Trade and International Relations. London and

Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan. 1971. pp. 267–272; Robbins, Lionel. Economic Planning and International Order. London: Macmillan. 1937. pp. 242–268.

16. Bull. Anarchical Society. pp. 156–177.17. Hill, Christopher. The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy. Houndmills,

Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. pp. 138–143.18. Wight. Three Traditions. pp. 180–205.19. Also Röpke, Wilhelm. International Order and Economic Integration. Dordrecht:

D. Reidel. 1959. pp. 43–56.20. Bull. Anarchical Society. pp. 125–134.21. Wight. Three Traditions. pp. 233–258.22. Röpke. International Order. pp. 12–20.23. See Little, Richard. The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors,

Myths and Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007.24. Butterfield, Herbert. “The Balance of Power.” In Diplomatic Investigations.

Essays in the Theory of International Politics. Edited by H. Butterfield and M. Wight. London: George Allen & Unwin. 1966. pp. 132–148.

25. Wight. Power Politics. pp. 175–177, 184–185.26. Hume. E. p. 337.27. Little. Balance of Power. p. 9.28. Friedman. Capitalism and Freedom. pp. 7–21.29. See Trebilcock, Michael J., and Robert Howse. The Regulation of International

Trade. London and New York: Routledge. 2005.30. Lal, Deepak. Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in

the Twenty-First Century. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2006.

31. Bull. Anarchical Society. p. 25.32. Sally, Razeen. Whither the WTO? A Progress Report on the Doha Round.

Washington: Cato Institute. 2003; Sally, Razeen. Trade Policy, New Century: The WTO, FTAs and Asia Rising. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. 2008.

33. Röpke. International Order. p. 20.34. Howard. War and Liberal Conscience. pp. 13–51.35. Gillingham. European Integration. pp. 22–23.36. Barbieri, Katherine. The Liberal Illusion: Does Trade Promote Peace? Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press. 2005. pp. 121–137.37. Also see Margerum Harlen. A Reappraisal; Hont. Jealousy of Trade. pp. 6, 383;

Sally. Classical Liberalism. p. 57; Irwin Against the Tide. p. 76; Whelan. Hume and Machiavelli. p. 231; Manzer. Promise of Peace.

38. Linklater and Suganami. English School. pp. 223–258.39. Also Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1999.

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40. Lomasky. Liberalism beyond Borders. pp. 221–222.41. Jeffery. Hugo Grotius. p. 67.42. Rengger. Political Theory and International Relations. pp. 769–770.43. Rengger, N.J. “Seeing (Double) in the Darkness: The Moral Vision of the

Anarchical Society.” In The Anarchical Society in a Globalized World. Edited by R. Little and J. Williams. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2006. pp. 39, 45–49; Rengger. Tragedy or Scepticism.

44. Smith, Steve. “Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations Theory.” In International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity. Edited by T. Dunne, M. Kurki, and S. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. p. 4.

45. Zacher and Matthew. Liberal International Theory. pp. 109–110.46. Doyle. Ways. pp. 205–212.47. Dunne. Liberalism.48. Burchill. Liberalism.49. See, for example, Brown. Understanding International Relations. pp. 22–30,

153–157; Koch, K., R.B. Soetendorp, and A. Van Staden. Internationale Betrekkingen. Theorieën en Benaderingen. Utrecht: Aula/Het Spectrum. 1994; Viotti and Kauppi. Global Philosophers; Jackson, Robert H. and Georg Sørensen. Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003.

50. Smith, Michael Joseph. Liberalism and International Reform.51. See, for example, Freedman, Lawrence. “The Age of Liberal Wars.” Review of

International Studies 31:93–108. 2005; Panke and Risse. Liberalism; Williams. Liberalism and War.

52. Williams. Liberalism and War. p. 21.53. Dunne. Liberalism. p. 195.54. Ashworth. Creating International Studies. pp. 4, 22–42.55. Long, David. “Conclusion: Inter-War Idealism, Liberal Internationalism, and

Contemporary International Theory.” In Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed, Edited by D. Long and P. Wilson. Oxford: Clarendon. 1995. pp. 302–328.

56. Wilson, Woodrow. Speech to Congress, 8 January, 1918. Available from www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918/14points.html. (Access date: June 18, 2007)

57. Hill, Christopher. “1939: The Origins of Liberal Realism.” Review of Inter-national Studies 15:319–328. 1989.

58. Clark, Ian. The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. pp. 212–214.

59. Burchill. Liberalism. pp. 55–64.60. See Waltz. Man, the State, and War. pp. 97–123.61. Martin, Lisa L. “Neoliberalism.” In International Relations Theories: Discipline

and Diversity. Edited by T. Dunne, M. Kurki, and S. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. pp. 109–126.

62. Grieco, Joseph M. “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism.” In Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The

196 ● Notes

Contemporary Debate. Edited by D.A. Baldwin. New York: Columbia University Press. 1993. pp. 121–135.

63. Lamy, Stephen L. “Contemporary Mainstream Approaches: Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism.” In The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations. Edited by J. Baylis and S. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. p. 213.

64. Franceschet. Kant and Liberal Internationalism. pp. 75–76; Long. Inter-War Idealism. p. 317.

65. Ashworth. Creating International Studies. pp. 76–105.66. Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph N. Nye. Power and Interdependence. Cambridge,

MA: HarperCollins. 1989. pp. 24–25.67. Young. International Cooperation. pp. 11–13.68. Bernstein, Steven. “Power, Social Purposes, and Legitimacy in Global

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69. Ruggie, John Gerrard. “At Home Abroad, Abroad at Home: International Liberalization and Domestic Stability in the New World.” In The Globalization of Liberalism. Edited by E. Hovden and E. Keene. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 2002. pp. 99–122; Also Bernstein, Steven, and Louis W. Pauly, eds. Global Liberalism and Political Order: Toward a New Grand Compromise? Albany: State University of New York Press. 2007.

70. Sally. Classical Liberalism. pp. 195–203.71. Owen, John. M. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” In Debating

the Democratic Peace. Edited by M.E. Brown, S.M. Lynn-Jones and S.E. Miller. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1996. pp. 116–133.

72. Doyle, Michael W. “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs.” In Debating the Democratic Peace. Edited by M.E. Brown, S.M. Lynn-Jones and S. E. Miller. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1996. pp. 3–27.

73. See Jahn. “Classical Smoke.”74. For example, MacMillan, John. “Immanuel Kant and the Democratic Peace.”

In Classical Theory in International Relations. Edited by B. Jahn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. p. 52; Doyle. Ways. pp. 251–300; Oneal, John R., Bruce Russett, and Michael L. Berbaum. “Causes of Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992.” International Studies Quarterly 47:371–393. 2003.

75. Mousseau, Michael, Håvard Hegre, and John R. Oneal. “How the Wealth of Nations Conditions the Liberal Peace.” European Journal of International Relations 9 (2):277–314. 2003.

76. McDonald, Patrick J. “Peace through Trade or Free Trade?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (4):547–572. 2004.

77. Deudney, Daniel. “Publius before Kant: Federal-Republican Security and Democratic Peace.” European Journal of International Relations 10 (3):315–356. 2004.

Notes ● 197

78. MacMillan, John. “Liberalism and the Democratic Peace.” Review of International Studies 30 (2):179–200. 2004. p. 180.

79. MacMillan, John. On Liberal Peace: Democracy, War and the International Order. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. 1998. pp. 13–22.

80. Russett and Oneal. The Classical Liberals Were Right.81. Owen, John. M. Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International

Security. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1997. pp. 3, 19–20.82. See, for example, Moravcsik, Andrew. “Liberal International Relations Theory:

A Scientific Assessment.” In Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field. Edited by C. Elman and M.F. Elman. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. 2003. pp. 159–204.

83. Doyle, Michael W. “Liberalism and World Politics.” American Political Science Review 80 (4):1151–1169. 1986. pp. 1151–1152.

84. Doyle. Ways. pp. 205–311.85. See Hoogensen. Bentham and International Relations.86. Rapaczynski. Nature and Politics. p. 119; Feser. Locke. pp. 166–168.87. Baldwin. Neoliberalism. p. 4.88. Jackson and Sørensen. Introduction. pp. 109–116.89. Keohane, Robert O. “International Liberalism Reconsidered.” In The Economic

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90. Zacher and Matthew. Liberal International Theory. pp. 120–140.91. Moravcsik, Andrew. “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of

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pp. 1155–1157.93. Richardson, James L. “Contending Liberalisms: Past and Present.” European

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Index

Act of Union, 44Acton, Lord John, 120Africa, 59, 92, 114Algeria, 112America see United States of AmericaAmnesty International, 112Angell, Norman, 99, 106, 147Anti-Corn Law League see Manchester

SchoolArafat, Yasser, 108Ashworth, Lucian, 120Asia, 57, 59, 86, 92Australia, 89Austria, 4, 75–7, 87, 90, 101, 157Austrian School, 4, 18, 75–7,

101–02, 128

Bagehot, Walter, 71balance of power, 9–13, 46–7, 52–6, 62,

67, 72, 85–6, 98–100, 106, 119, 121–4, 136–7, 143, 146, 152–7

Bartelson, Jens, 8Bartley, William, 114Bastiat, Frédéric, 17, 71, 93, 96, 97Bauer, Peter, 113Begin, Menachem, 108Belgium, 77Bentham, Jeremy, 25–8, 35, 37, 38, 71,

93–4, 97, 143, 148, 151, 155Berlin, Isaiah, 23–4Bodin, Jean, 99Böhm, Franz, 18

Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von, 18, 22, 75Boucher, David, 52Bowring, John, 94Brandt Report, 114Bretton Woods system, 143Bright, John, 71, 96Britain see Great BritainBritish Broadcasting Corporation

(BBC), 103Brown, Chris, 71Buccleuch, Henry Campbell Scot,

Third Duke of, 57Buchanan, James, 5Bull, Hedley, 6–13, 54–6, 135, 137,

140, 147Burchill, Scott, 71Burke, Edmund, 39Butterfield, Herbert, 8Buzan, Barry, 100

Canada, 41, 77, 89capitalism, 19, 29–30, 75–100, 107,

113–6, 131, 138–9, 142, 145–6, 157

Carnegie, Andrew, 10Carr, Edward Hallett, 8, 71–2, 110,

121, 143Carter, Jimmy, 106Chicago School, 18, 102Chile, 112China, 43, 59, 96, 112Churchill, Winston, 106

226 ● Index

classical liberalism, 1–6, 17–40, 73, 76–7, 81, 87, 156–7

as IR theory, 44–56, 103, 124, 125–157

as tradition, 35, 124, 151–3core elements of, 19–40, 126–41,

151–7fringe classical liberals, 36–40, 151

Clausewitz, Carl von, 8Club of Rome, 114–15Cobden, Richard, 2, 71, 81, 93–8, 137,

138, 143, 147, 155collectivism, 33, 79–100, 113colonies, 69, 91

see also USA independencecolonialism see imperialismcommerce see tradecommunism, 10, 88Congo, 91consequentialism, 25conservatism, 19Constant, Benjamin, 17Constantinople, 61constructivism, 34, 90, 109–10, 122,

129, 130, 134–5, 145, 150, 155see also rationalism

cosmopolitanism, 4, 12, 51, 59–60, 72, 81, 129–30, 150, 154

Coudenhove-Kalergi, Count, 89Cubitt, Charlotte, 106Curzon-Price, Victoria, 120Czechoslovakia, 77

Danford, John, 48Dayan, Moshe, 108Denmark, 44, 77, 89development aid, 91–3, 113–5, 119, 123,

139, 152, 154, 155diplomacy, 9, 12–3, 45, 61–2, 66, 67,

73, 102, 132–3, 140, 141, 143, 154Doyle, Michael, 71–2, 141–2, 146, 148–9Dunne, Tim, 142

Easley, Eric, 119Ebeling, Richard, 74

Ebenstein, Alan, 39, 104–5, 114, 120, 123

Edinburgh University, 46Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 24empire see imperialismEngel-Janosi, F., 80Engels, Friedrich, 39England, 43, 62, 96, 106, 121

see also Great BritainEnglish School, 3, 6–15, 53–6, 72–4,

98–100, 121–4, 126, 129–41, 147, 150, 153–7

Enlightenment, 4, 35, 37, 53, 58, 83, 152

Scottish, 4, 17, 35, 51, 68, 140, 156Erhard, Ludwig, 18Eucken, Walter, 18Europe, 49–50, 57, 62, 68, 78, 85–93,

98–9, 104, 154European Economic Communities

(EEC) see European UnionEuropean integration, 62, 88–91,

106–9, 116, 132–5, 138–9, 144–5, 154–7

European Union (EU), 62, 89, 107, 115, 133–5, 138–9, 145, 156

fabianism, 92Falkland Islands, 48, 106, 130federation, 104–9, 119, 120, 132–4,

153–4see also European integration

Ferguson, Adam, 23, 99Fitzgibbons, Athol, 65Fleischacker, Samuel, 72Foreign aid see development aidFounding Fathers (of the USA),

17, 39, 147France, 41, 47–8, 57, 59, 63–4, 68–9,

77–8, 89, 103, 106, 138Franceschet, Antonio, 149Franklin, Benjamin, 50, 70Freedom, 19–40, 47, 58, 60, 62, 72, 80,

92, 104, 111, 126–7, 132–3, 136–7, 141, 143, 145, 150–7

Index ● 227

Free trade see tradeFriedman, Milton, 5, 101–2, 112functionalism, 144–5, 148

Gellner, Ernest, 78General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT), 115, 137Geneva, 57, 75Germany, 77–8, 82, 90, 98, 102–3, 106,

109, 138Gillingham, John, 138Gilpin, Robert, 72Gissurarson, Hannes, 117Gonce, Richard, 27Gray, John, 1Great Britain, 48–50, 59, 63, 68, 71,

77–8, 89, 91, 103, 107, 113See also England

Greaves, Bettina Bien, 76Green, Thomas Hill, 37, 71Greenleaf, William Howard, 7Grotian tradition, 6–15, 53–6, 72–4,

98–100, 121–4, 126, 129–57Grotius, Hugo, 8, 27, 46, 54, 60–1, 63,

73, 99, 123–4, 140, 152

Haberler, Gottfried, 76Hamilton, Alexander, 50Hammarlund, Per, 71Hall, Ian, 10Hayek, Friedrich, 2–6, 14, 74–100

and IR theory, 7, 13, 119–24and nation, 102–4, 128as classical liberal, 17–40ideas on international relations,

101–24, 129–41, 151–7Hennecke, Hans, 111, 120, 123Higgs, Robert, 131Hill, Christopher, 133Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 40Hirst, Francis, 97Hitler, Adolf, 82Hobbes, Thomas, 8, 36–7, 54,

72, 121, 151Hobbesian tradition see Realist tradition

Hobhouse, Leonard, 37Hobson, John, 97Holland see The NetherlandsHoppe, Hans, 19Howard, Michael, 71, 72, 141Hülsmann, Jörg Guido, 76human nature, 10, 20–40, 58, 73, 80,

83–4, 102–4, 118, 121–4, 126–7, 143, 151–7

human rights, 25–8, 110–1, 128–30, 142

Humboldt, Alexander von, 37Hume, David, 2–6, 14, 41–57, 74–6,

79, 80, 85–6, 91–3, 96, 99, 117, 120–1, 123


41–56, 129–41, 151–7Hurrell, Andrew, 13, 72Hutcheson, Francis, 64

impartial spectator, 31, 58imperialism, 9, 11, 49–50, 68–71, 80,

91–3, 98–100, 104, 113–5, 127–8, 154

India, 91, 103individualism, 19–23, 92, 120, 121, 151,

155, 157institutions (international), 11–4, 54,

61, 70, 73, 99, 122, 125–50international governmental

organization, 11, 87–91, 109–12, 122, 145–6, 150, 154, 156

International Labor Organization (ILO), 110, 135

international law, 9, 15, 45–6, 60–1, 72, 84–5, 95–6, 99, 107, 109–12, 118, 122–3, 135–7, 141–2, 145, 154–5

International Monetary Fund (IMF), 136, 145

International Political Theory (IPT), 3–4, 151–3

228 ● Index

International Relations (IR) Theory, 1–5, 18, 52–6, 93–100, 119–27

international society, 11, 44–6, 60–2, 67, 73, 119, 132–3, 137, 143

International society tradition see Grotian tradition

international system tradition see Realist tradition

interventionism, 11, 38, 85–6, 89, 130, 141–6, 156

Iran, 105–6, 111, 130Ireland, 67, 70Israel, 108, 111Italy, 64, 90

Jackson, Robert, 70, 98Japan, 83, 103Jasay, Anthony de, 18Jennings, Ivor, 108just war tradition, 12–3, 47–9, 53,

63–6, 72, 73, 84–5, 99, 128, 130–1, 140, 154, 156

Kames, Lord (Henry Home), 70Kant, Immanuel, 2–4, 8, 10, 36–8, 71,

98–100, 121, 123, 143, 146–8, 151–2, 155

Kantian tradition, 6–15, 54–6, 72–4, 98–100, 107, 109, 121–4, 129–57

Kennan, George, 8Keohane, Robert, 148Kinneging, Andreas, 37Kirzner, Israel, 76Kissinger, Henry, 8Knutsen, Torbjørn, 7, 73Kollek, Teddy, 108

Laski, Harold, 110Lassalle,Ferdinand, 39Law of Nations see international lawlaw, positive, 28, 30, 31, 38, 60–1, 93,

110–11, 135–6, 145, 154–5law, rule of, 20, 28, 30–40, 111, 118,

122, 123, 127, 135–6, 151

League of Nations, 8, 87–8, 90–1, 94, 99, 109

Lebanon, 108, 111Leiden University, 73Lenin, Vladimir, 99Levellers, 27Liberal internationalism, 72–4, 99,

142–5, 148liberalism, 1–4, 17–40, 55–6

embedded, 145–6in IR, 1–4, 53, 141–57invented, 147–9social, 17–40, 97, 107, 125,

147, 155libertarianism, 18–20, 79, 156–7liberty see freedomLibya, 106, 112Lilburne, John, 17Lisbon Treaty, 134Locke, John, 2, 28, 38, 148London School of Economics and

Political Science (LSE), 6, 101, 104, 106

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 8, 45, 48, 52–4, 78, 148

Machlup, Fritz, 76MacMillan, John, 147Madison, James, 30, 50Malthus, Thomas, 96Manchester School, 17, 35, 51, 82,

93–8, 120–1, 138Mandeville, Bernard, 17, 30, 35Marshall Plan, 89–90, 138Marx, Karl, 39, 99marxism, 10, 33, 71, 92, 110Matthew, Richard, 141, 149Mayall, James, 98Menger, Carl, 18, 22, 75mercantilism, 50–2, 66–8, 133, 155migration, 79, 86–7, 115–7, 140–1Mill, James, 36, 38, 71, 94Mill, John Stuart, 2, 3, 18, 21, 26,

36–40, 43, 68, 71, 94, 104, 128, 151, 155

Index ● 229

Mises, Ludwig von, 3–6, 14, 74, 101–24and IR theory, 7, 13, 93–100and nation, 77–9, 93–128as classical liberal, 17–40ideas on international relations,

75–100, 129–41, 151–7Mitrany, David, 122, 144–5Molinari, Gustave de, 18Monnet, Jean, 106Montesquieu, Charles, 43, 147Mont Pelerin Society (MPS),

18, 90, 101–2Moravcsik, Andrew, 149Morgenstern, Oskar, 76Morgenthau, Hans, 8, 53,

55–6, 143Müller-Armack, Alfred, 18

Nardin, Terry, 71nationalism, 31, 32, 39, 42–4, 58–61,

72, 77–9, 81–2, 87, 89–91, 93, 99, 102–4, 107, 108, 116, 120, 121, 127–9, 133, 155

national character, 42–4, 48, 54, 58–9, 77–8, 103, 120

natural law, 12–3, 17, 19–40, 45–6, 48, 55, 60, 72, 73, 84, 109, 123, 128–30, 135–7, 140, 151–2, 154, 156

natural rights see natural lawNazism, 10, 75–8, 85, 98, 121Nef, John, 122Nehru, Jawaharlal, 10Neimanis, G., 66neoliberalism, 19, 144, 149neoliberal institutionalism, 144–5, 148Netherlands, The, 33, 47, 50, 59, 68, 69,

89, 107, 111New York City, 75–6, 122New Zealand, 89Niebuhr, Reinhold, 8, 55–6North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO), 105, 139Norway, 77, 89Nozick, Robert, 2

Oneal, John, 71, 47Ordo-liberalism, 18Owen, John, 147

pacifism, 4, 6, 55, 62–3, 73, 78, 80–5, 93–9, 104, 107, 119, 141–2, 146–9

see also trade and peacePaine, Thomas, 50, 147Palmerston, Lord Henry, 96Pan-Europe see European integrationPanke, Diana, 71patriotism, 104, 128Peace Society, 95–6Physiocrats, 17Pitt, William (the younger), 70pluralism, 11–5, 54, 73–4, 100, 123–4,

136, 139, 140, 145, 150, 153, 155–6

Pocock, John, 49Poker Club, 65Poland, 75, 112Polanyi, Karl, 71Popper, Karl, 111, 118Portugal, 68, 89Pownall, Governor Thomas, 70praxeology, 35property rights, 12, 46, 87Pufendorf, Samuel, 27, 46, 54, 73

Quakers, 95

Raico, Ralph, 79, 92Rand, Ayn, 18rationalism, 8, 10, 20–3, 26, 28, 30,

37–8, 51, 55, 70, 103, 109, 126–7, 141, 144, 147, 151

Rawls, John, 2, 18Reagan, Ronald, 101, 105, 111realism see Realist traditionRealist tradition, 6–14, 52–6, 72–4,

98–100, 120–4, 129–57reason (human) see rationalismregimes, 145–6Rengger, Nicholas, 13, 54, 71, 140revolutionism, 6, 8, 10, 72–3

230 ● Index

Ricardo, David, 17, 27, 35, 93–4Richardson, James, 120, 149Risse, Thomas, 71Robbins, Lionel, 106Rockwell, Lew, 27Romania, 90Roosevelt, Franklin, 10Röpke, Wilhelm, 18Rothbard, Murray, 19, 27, 76Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 4, 26, 152Ruggie, John, 145–6Russett, Bruce, 71, 147Russia, 61, 85–6, 90, 96, 105,

110, 114, 138Rüstow, Alexander, 18

Sally, Razeen, 146Say, Jean Baptiste, 17Schmitt, Carl, 121Scholastics (Spanish), 17Schumpeter, Joseph, 147–8Scotland, 62, 65, 157Sennholz, Hans, 76, 89–90Shearmur, Jeremy, 108Simon, Julian, 115Simons, Henry, 90Singapore, 112Skidelsky, Robert, 109slavery, 24, 25, 33, 68, 91Smith, Adam, 2–6, 14, 51, 75–6,

79–80, 84–6, 91–4, 96–7, 99, 103, 105, 117–18, 120, 123, 147–8


57–74, 129–41, 151–7Smith, Craig, 17Smith, Michael, 70–1, 142socialism, 33, 35, 39, 75, 76, 88, 92, 99,

101–2, 104, 134solidarism, 10–15, 73–4, 88, 100, 119,

123–4, 139, 155, 156South Africa, 111–2

sovereignty, 12, 44, 63, 73, 78–9, 88, 89, 90, 98, 99, 104, 107, 108, 110, 113, 116, 130, 144, 145, 154

Soviet Union see RussiaSpain, 48, 68–9Spencer, Herbert, 2, 37Spontaneous order, 17, 19–40, 60,

62, 115, 118–9, 122–3, 126–7, 136–41, 143, 144, 151, 154, 155

St. Clair, General James, 41Stoics, 17, 22, 55, 59Strauss, Franz Josef, 101Streit, Clarence, 89, 106Sumner, William, 18Switzerland, 33, 77

Teichgraeber, Richard, 73Thatcher, Margaret, 101, 112, 116–7Thucydides, 8Tocqueville, Alexis de, 17, 39, 120Tories, 50totalitarianism, 35, 121trade, 50–2, 62, 66–8, 86–7, 92, 115–9,

145–6, 150and peace, 51, 66, 71–4, 87, 95–8,

117–9, 126, 137–9, 142–3, 148, 150, 154

traditions, 3, 6–15, 28, 35, 98–100, 104, 121–4, 127, 132, 148, 155–7

transnationalism, 145, 155Tucker, Jeffrey, 27Turgot, Anne, 50, 147

Uganda, 112United Kingdom see Great BritainUnited Nations, 88, 110, 112, 129,

135–6, 143, 145United States of America, 4, 57, 62, 67,

75, 77, 86–8, 90, 92, 98, 105–24, 138–9, 145–6

independence of, 49–50, 68–70, 128utilitarianism, 17, 26–8, 37–40, 95utopianism, 8, 68, 71–4, 83, 121–2,

140, 150, 154Utrecht, 64, 73

Index ● 231

Vattel, Emmerich de, 73Vaugh, Karen, 4Vienna, 4, 18, 41, 75–7, 106, 116Virginia School, 18

Walter, Andrew, 57, 72–4, 123Waltz, Kenneth, 8, 72, 142Walzer, Michael, 52war, 9–15, 47–9, 62–6, 72, 75, 80–4,

88, 93, 95, 98–100, 102, 104–7, 118, 122–3, 125–6, 131, 138, 141–3, 146–7

Webb, Beatrice and Sydney, 104Whelan, Frederick, 52–4, 123Whigs, 47, 50Wieser, Friedrich von, 18, 101Wight, Martin, 6–13, 52, 72, 110Williams, Andrew, 149

Wilson, Peter, 119Wilson, Woodrow, 10, 56, 87, 97–9,

130, 143, 155Wolfe, Christopher, 130World Bank, 136, 145world government, 10, 88, 107, 109,

118, 123, 132, 136, 142, 155

world society tradition see Kantian tradition

World Trade Organization (WTO), 137–8

Yeager, Leland, 27Young, Oran, 119Yugoslavia, 77

Zacher, Mark, 141, 149

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