You can't make the world safe for freedom and growth by destroying it from the top down.
I got Chris Coyne's new book, In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and Paths to Peace, early this year. In the book, Dr. Coyne, an economics professor at George Mason University, tries to answer the basic question of whether or not the idea of a liberal state makes sense.
By "liberal," Dr. Coyne is referring to what is usually called "classic liberalism." FEE Founder Leonard Read's support for "anything that's peaceful" is a great way to sum up "classic liberalism." So "liberalism" here does not mean "leftism" or "progressivism" as we know them today.
The question is simple, but it has important answers. Can freedom and democracy be spread by putting all of the power in one place?
For as long as I can remember, the answer to this question from U.S. foreign policy leaders has been a simple "yes." From the war of Afghanistan to the recent delivery of cluster bombs to be used against Russia, U.S. policymakers think they can make the world safe for freedom by using force from the top down.
Dr. Coyne, on the other hand, gives strong evidence that the answer is no. From what I've read, I think he has two major problems with the idea of liberal power.
Empire Means Tyranny at Home
Dr. Coyne starts off by saying that the goal of liberal empire has the seeds of liberal destruction at home. He gives several reasons why an empire can't work with freedom at home.
First, Coyne uses the ideas of Frederich Hayek and Frank Knight to show that when countries try to spread liberty through undemocratic means, the politicians and bureaucrats who rise to the top will be the ones who are most willing to use undemocratic means. So, trying to build a liberal kingdom will tend to get rid of liberals in government.
But that's not the end. To build a kingdom, the state needs to have the legal and financial power to do so. People can try to limit this power, but there are a number of things that make this hard to do. Because of changes in how rules are interpreted, changes in the situation, and more centralization, imperialism will have to lower these limits.
Worryingly, the skills and technology used to build an empire also hurt liberals at home. Dr. Coyne shows this by showing how Ralph Van Deman, who was one of the first people to build the domestic surveillance state, learned how to spy during the Philippine-American War.
The "Stingray" device, which is used to stealthily get information from private cell phones, was used a lot in the war on terror and is now in use in the United States. In the same way, a lot of US police forces now have military equipment that was used in the war on terror.
Lastly, Dr. Coyne talks about how the large amounts of money spent on war hurt American democracy. His analysis of the different kinds of cronyism and his list of cases are enough to make you want to buy the book. In one important case, he talks about how the F-35 plane made by Lockheed Martin was made in 45 of the 50 states. This made it hard for leaders to say no to the plane, since doing so would mean fewer jobs for people in almost every state.
Empire Means Tyranny Abroad
Trying to build a liberal kingdom leads to illiberal outcomes at home, but that's not the end of the problems. Also, the liberal power fails to spread freedom abroad. Dr. Coyne gives two good reasons for this.
First, people who support building nations abroad believe they know what it takes to do it well. But in reality, central leaders can only have so much information. There aren't any of the things that make liberals work. They probably change based on culture, geography, and time.
You can't spread democracy or freedom by forcing a group of foreign politicians to write something that sounds like the U.S. Constitution. Instead, there must be the right conditions for a liberal government to come into power.
In the same way, even if military experts knew what was needed for democracy to happen, they might not know how to make it happen. Central leaders don't have enough of the important local knowledge they need to understand what's going on in other countries.
There are many problems with knowledge, which are made worse by the second reason liberal countries fail to spread freedom abroad: problems with incentives.
It's not realistic to think that leaders will have the best interests of foreign people in mind when putting nation-building plans into action. Instead, it's more likely that lawmakers are influenced by a wide range of special interests when they make policy. In the same way, bureaucrats have reasons to compete with and sometimes hurt other bureaucracies in order to get the most out of their spending and growth.
There are also problems with incentives in the country being attacked. Dr. Coyne points out that the new government of Afghanistan has a lot of corruption problems that make people doubt its authority.
Dr. Coyne looks in depth at two cases to show how information and incentives are both problems. First, he looks at Afghanistan's War on Drugs. His analysis shows that the U.S. attempt to stop the production of opium failed because the production of opium went through the roof. It also led to the Taliban taking more and more control of the opium business. Dr. Coyne does a great job of pointing out the problems with information and motivation that are at the heart of the failure.
By trying to stop people from making opium, the U.S. government made it more expensive to be in the drug business. The large producers were the ones who could handle these prices the best. Small makers went out of business. Even worse, local officials had little reason to go after the bigger producers, so they helped the U.S. government by going after the smaller ones instead.
As the industry became controlled by fewer big companies, these companies asked the Taliban for help going against U.S. policy. Dr. Coyne says, "The Taliban started to protect farmers in exchange for a share of their crops or income." By doing all of these things, the Taliban became the most powerful and dangerous gang in the area.
Second, Dr. Coyne shows that using drones in the war on terror is counterproductive, which you can read for yourself.
Instead of establishing liberalism in a way that works, U.S. nation building leads to destruction and failed governments, turning many people against liberalism.
Resisting the Siren Song of Empire
Only a small part of In Search of Monsters to Destroy is shown above. I didn't talk about a lot of Dr. Coyne's great analysis, and I didn't talk about what he said about how the American state came to be. I can't say enough good things about the book, and I'm sure that Dr. Coyne has one of the most important study programs of any economist in the world today.
Dr. Coyne gives a solution and a warning at the end of the book. He says that the way forward is to understand what he calls "polycentric defense." We don't have to believe that the government is the only source of safety and security in our lives. Instead, we can understand the power that people have in their everyday interactions. A strong case can be made that the polycentric approach is both more realistic and more effective than the monocentric method.
Dr. Coyne ends by telling people not to give in to the siren call of power. It seems like every time the United States turns around, another problem is just around the corner that needs their help. The problem, though, is that this way of thinking, called "empire thinking," just thinks that if the United States gets involved, things will get better.
In Search of Monsters to Destroy shows us why this is a bad idea. You can't make the world safe for freedom and growth by destroying it from the top down. In the words of Dr. Coyne, "perpetual liberal war for perpetual liberal peace fails because of internal contradictions, eroding liberal values and making enemies in the process."
People who want to keep going to war would like us to think that "this time it's different." In the end, though, it seems like liberal war has never been able to make liberal peace. This is true throughout our past.
