The National Interest: What the Libertarian Party Wants on Foreign Policy

From an article by Lauren Daugherty published in the National Interest on December 12:national-interest

“This year, record numbers of Americans voted for Libertarian candidates. The Libertarian presidential nominee, Gov. Gary Johnson, received over four million votes [4.5 million votes as of December 13], three times the previous record. For perspective, four million votes is about the voter turnout in a state the size of Virginia. He did this without the tremendous funding and free media attention that Clinton and Trump received.

“Notably, Johnson was very popular in multiple polls of active-duty military. One can reasonably theorize that this is because of Gov. Johnson’s stance on the use of military force. Gov. Johnson advocates limiting the use of our military by withdrawing from regional conflicts and focusing purely on defense.

“Indeed, after fifteen years of highly active involvement in the Middle East, many of our most devoted military personnel are tired and questioning the effectiveness of our continued involvement in these types of struggles. Fifteen years ago, American leaders thought that the U.S. military could topple a foreign government, clean things up, install new leadership and leave successfully. Our military is very powerful and capable of many things, but leaders overestimated the very complex challenge of nation building.

“Now that we have seen first-hand how challenging that truly is, American leadership should and must re-evaluate our military and foreign policy strategy and tactics.”

Click here to read the full article.