In The Route de la Servitudehis best known work, Friedrich Hayek warned the states against the logic of total war. In the middle of the Second World War, he explained how liberal democracies were likely to be distorted by imitating without even realizing the enemy they were fighting. Total mobilization of national resources to end a totalitarian empire was likely to lead to an irreversible form of totalitarianization in the free world.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Bertrand de Jouvenel will say the same thing in Powera book that has become an instantly classic: “When the opponent, to better handle bodies, mobilizes thoughts and feelings, it must be imitated under penalty of suffering a disadvantage. Thus, the mimicry of the duel approaches totalitarianism the nations which fight it. »» Hayek as Jouvenel were liberals, worried that the legitimate crusade against the USSR does not embellish the free world spiritually and institutionally.
In some respects, the supporters of this crusade knew its risks, even if they imagined that it would be possible to have the state reflected afterwards, bringing it to its primary, much more modest function. The history of the XXe century has nevertheless followed its course, as could be expected, but the libertarian movement, overall, has remained fundamentally anti -warning – in English, we say antiwarthe formula may be more telling. I say anti -warning but not pacifist, because pacifism is stupid, and believes in the reconciliation of men and souls on this land.
Establish democracy … at the cost of our freedoms
The anti -war movement would like to be content to reduce the military function to national defense without putting it at the service of any external intervention whatsoever. Justus D. Doenecke told this movement in American history throughout the XXe century, recalling how those who refused the participation of the United States in the external wars, whether it be the first or the Second World War, or the Cold War, were persecuted and treated as parias. And we can disagree with them while recognizing with them that militarism always causes statism.
It is not betraying the Ukrainian resistance to note that the Russian danger is instrumentalized
Moreover, libertarianism according to the Cold War was the first tendency to warn against the chain wars of the new world order, supposed to bring everywhere democracy, as we saw with the first war of Iraq, then the second, without forgetting the intervention in the former Yugoslavia, in particular in Kosovo, considered by several as a form of general repetition illustrating what would mean a perpetual war for human rights Against insecurity today justifies a progressive but generalized suspension of freedoms.
And it is not betraying the Ukrainian resistance to Putinian imperialism to note that today, the Russian danger is instrumentalized in the West to justify the repression of the inner opposition, the logic of the future global confrontation making it possible to neutralize all the dissidents expressed in matters of domestic policy. The simple resistance to the globalization of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict now goes for moscoutaire collaborationism.
Is it exaggerated to consider that the extreme center has treated Ukraine’s invasion from the start as a wink of Providence, allowing it to maintain itself in power by now demanding the monopoly of patriotism, while it consents to immigration-submersion and the sacrifice of national sovereignty in globalist delirium. You can feel like it by reading Our war, crime and oblivion: for a strategic thought, From Nicolas Tenzer, a book strangely celebrated for his courage and lucidity. I saw the work of an illuminated convinced that the ultimate triumph of planetary democracy justifies global war, total war.
