This talk was delivered at the Ron Paul Institute’s Conference on Breaking Washington’s Addiction to War.Murray Rothbard was the creator of the modern libertarian movement and a close friend of both Ron Paul and me. His legacy was a great one, and at the Mises Institute I try every day to live up to his hopes for us. One issue was the most important to him, of all the many issues that concerned him. This was the issue of war and peace. Because of his support for a peaceful, noninterventionist...

The recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton have re-ignited efforts to pass “Red Flag” laws, which allow the government to take away a person’s guns without due process, and expanded background checks on those wishing to purchase a gun. Some supporters of these measures acknowledge they would not have prevented the Dayton and El Paso shootings, but they think the government must “do something,“ even if that something only makes it more difficult for average Americans to exercise their...

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson is worried. He thinks that maybe — just maybe — the US government is not spending enough on defense. In a column entitled, “Here’s Why We Could Be Under-Spending on Defense,” Samuelson has come up with a complicated formula that has caused him to fear that China and Russia might actually be spending more money on their militaries than the United States. Bringing to mind the famous missile-gap controversy during the Cold War, Samuelson wrote, “Our...

Last week, German lawmakers sent a stark message to Washington. The argument escalated following a series of flippant comments made by US ambassador Richard Grenell who had demanded Germany increase its defense spending, claiming it was “really insulting to expect the US taxpayer to keep paying for over 50,000 Americans” stationed in Germany, and that the US would do well to move all of its military assets from Germany, and relocate eastward to Poland. Lawmakers in Berlin reacted by welcoming...

The US President Donald Trump’s remarks at the Oval Office in the White House on August 20 regarding the Afghan peace talks and related issues exuded an overall sense of satisfaction that the “endless war” is finally ending —although issues still remain to be sorted out before the deal is closed. This was also Trump’s first public assessment of the meeting he took last week with top officials, including the secretaries of state and defence, CIA director and US special representative on...

Two world wars began because of unconditional pledges made by one country to come to assistance of another. On July 5, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany pledged his country’s complete support for whatever response Austria-Hungary would choose to make against Serbia after the June 28th assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist during an official visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia. This fatal error went down in history as Germany’s carte blanche or “blank check,”...

Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese Diplomat who reportedly told George Papadopoulos that Russia had Hillary's emails, was a British intelligence asset. But the Brits did not keep Mifsud for themselves. They offered him to the CIA and the FBI, and those two US agencies, in a coordinated effort, relied on Mifsud to entrap Papadopoulos and to manufacture a Russian collusion case against the Trump Campaign. Mifsud's job was simple - dangle the possibility of getting Hillary's emails from the Russians,...

Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are calling on the US Congress to reevaluate US foreign aid to the Israeli government. Their reason? Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denied entry into Israel for the two of them, owing to their public support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a global protest against the Israeli government’s longtime mistreatment of Palestinians. Omar stated: We give Israel more than $3 [billion] in aid every year. This is...

The Saudis just learned that some moments in history show their significance as they unfold. Iran shooting down a US Global Hawk stealth drone and President Trump refusing his war-hawk cabinet in retaliating militarily is one of them. I said then and still maintain that this was a turning point in the history of the world. Any retaliation by the US would be catastrophic for the world economy. It would unleash a regional conflict on multiple fronts which would not be any kind of controlled...

President Donald Trump tweeted on August 13 that he “can’t imagine why” the United States has been blamed for the chaotic protests that have gripped Hong Kong. Trump’s befuddlement might be understandable considering the carefully managed narrative of the US government and its unofficial media apparatus, which have portrayed the protests as an organic “pro-democracy” expression of grassroots youth. However, a look beneath the surface of this oversimplified, made-for-television script reveals...

Stocks fell last week following news that the yield curve on Treasury notes had inverted. This means that a short-term Treasury note was paying higher interest rates than long-term Treasury note. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a sign of an impending recession.Some economic commentators reacted to the inverted yield curve by parroting the Keynesian propaganda that recessions are an inevitable feature of a free-market economy, whose negative effects can only be mitigated by the...

After days of ridiculous, hysterical garment rending by mass media talking heads in response to Senator Bernie Sanders’ utterly undeniable assertion that The Washington Post has displayed unfair bias against his campaign, people with extensive experience in the mainstream press who are fed up with the lies are beginning to push back. Hard. Former MSNBC producer Jeff Cohen has published an article in Salon titled “Memo to mainstream journalists: Can the phony outrage; Bernie is right about...

On Thursday, the state of Israel banned two United States congresswomen from visiting the country, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Israel cited the congresswomen’s support for a boycott against Israel. Israel passed a domestically controversial law in March 2017 which allows the country to bar entry to anyone who supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions on Israel movement. It is, of course, Israel's business as to who they allow into the country and who they ban, and for debate amongst...

Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton commenced bombing Serbia in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance. Approximately 1,500 Serb civilians were killed by NATO bombing in one of the biggest sham morality plays of the modern era. As British professor Philip Hammond recently noted, the 78-day bombing campaign “was not a purely military operation: NATO also destroyed what it called ‘dual-use’ targets, such as factories, city bridges, and even the main television building in...

Sanctions are economic warfare, pure and simple. As an alternative to a direct military attack on a country that is deemed to be misbehaving they are certainly preferable, but no one should be under any illusions regarding what they actually represent. They are war by other means and they are also illegal unless authorized by a supra-national authority like the United Nations Security Council, which was set up after World War II to create a framework that inter alia would enable putting...

The riots in Hong Kong are about to end. The protests, as originally started in June, were against a law that would have allowed criminal extraditions to Taiwan, Macao and mainland China. The law was retracted and the large protests have since died down. What is left are a few thousand students who, as advertised in a New York Times op-ed, intentionally seek to provoke the police with "marginal violence": Such actions are a way to make noise and gain attention. And if they prompt the police to...