My views on foreign policy tend to diverge from mainstream libertarian doctrine. Take American hegemony. Many people are predicting (usually with glee) the demise of American power (see, for example, Ronald Dworkin).  Regardless of the accuracy of these predictions, I think libertarians have reasons to support American global hegemony.  Realistic alternatives to hegemony are the international state of nature, balance of power, and governance by an international institution such as the United Nations. The state of nature is undesirable for well-known Hobbesian reasons: defensive efforts would undermine productive cooperation.  Balance of power is inherently unstable; sooner or later will morph into hegemonic power.  And, at least in today’s world, governance by an international institution would be plagued by legitimacy deficits and agency costs that would surely threaten liberal values.  So, if we are going to have hegemony as the only arrangement capable of providing global public goods, the United States is the least bad because American institutions and culture embody liberal values.  Any likely competitor is certainly to be worse for those who cherish liberal values.  I believe history supports this, too: three times during the 20th century the United States saved liberal culture from onslaughts by illiberal forces.

Objections to hegemony are often condemnations of means rather than ends, and I certainly agree with those where applicable. Let us concede that the United States sometimes pursues moral ends (say, helping other nations achieve freedom) with immoral means (say, bringing about unjustified collateral harm). Citizens in liberal democracies must oppose the use of immoral means, even for a good cause. However, this kind of criticism cannot be a wholesale condemnation of hegemony, because there are world powers, such as the Soviet Union, who pursue immoral ends.  Surely these cannot be saved even when they use moral means (which they almost never do.) A government that pursues good ends while occasionally using bad means is less objectionable than one that pursues bad ends.

Another point worth noting is that domination has a different meaning when applied to states. It is wrong for me to dominate you, but it is not always wrong for the government of state A to coerce the government of state B. The latter may be oppressing its own citizens, so the coercion by state A is a hindrance to a hindrance to freedom (to use Kant’s terminology), and thus justified.

So liberals of all sorts, including libertarians, should be wary about a world dominated by a power other than the United States.  As states go, the United States is the least illiberal, which means that some of the values that libertarians cherish have a greater chance of surviving with the United States as the hegemon. Of course that a libertarian utopia would be better, but, as things stand, what we’ve had for the last 65 years or so may well be second best.  A topic for research: if the libertarian utopia is a regulative ideal, what kinds of changes in international institutions would bring the world closer to it?