No Need to Meet With Dictators

by
Jacob G. Hornberger
My articles My booksMy videos
Follow on:

By now, most everyone knows about President Biden’s famous “fist bump” with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi dictator who has been accused of orchestrating the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi when he visited a Saudi consulate in Turkey. The fist bump took place during Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia to meet with bin Salman.

Biden supporters claim that meeting dictators is sometimes a necessary part of being president. Since Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s largest oil producers — one that could easily become friendly with Russia or China (who are labeled as America’s “adversaries” or “rivals”), they say — it is imperative that Biden travel to Saudi Arabia to play nice with its dictator.

In a libertarian world, such unsavory conduct would never happen. It’s only because of the U.S. war machine and interventionism, both foreign and domestic, that U.S. presidents feel the need to meet with foreign dictators and other foreign leaders.

In a libertarian world, there would be no more U.S. military bases in foreign lands. There would also be no more U.S. invasions, occupations, coups, state-sponsored assassinations, NATO, foreign alliances, foreign interventions, and foreign wars. There would be no more Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and massive military-industrial complex.

America’s governmental structure would be restored to its founding system of a limited-government republic, with a relatively small, basic military force designed to mobilize the citizenry in the unlikely event there was ever an invasion of the United States.

There would also be no more sanctions and embargoes targeting the people in foreign lands with death and impoverishment as a way to achieve regime change in their countries. There would be no more trade wars. The United States would have a policy of unilateral free trade — that is, the unilateral dropping of all trade restrictions — that is, without entering into trade treaties with other countries. Americans would now be free to travel wherever they wanted and trade with whomever they wanted.

There would also be open immigration, meaning the abolition of all restrictions and controls on the free movement of people into the United States. Foreigners could now be free to enter the United States and travel within the country as human beings rather than as animals. They would retain their citizenship, unless they decided to apply for U.S. citizenship. The U.S. immigration-control death toll would be zero and the U.S. immigration police state would be gone.

There would also no longer be a U.S. drug war, which continues to spawn massive violence,  corruption, and tyranny in different parts of the world.

Given a limited-government republic, a non-interventionist foreign policy, drug legalization, and open borders, why would a U.S. president have to meet with any foreign leader? Why would there have to be summits with foreign leaders? What possibly could be accomplished with such meetings?

One reason U.S. presidents feel the need to meet with foreign leaders today is to manage the crises that the Pentagon and the CIA are inciting and orchestrating around the world. Another reason is that the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA feel the need to manage the world and control and manipulate international events. They also feel the need to manage trade and production, such as with oil, especially given the massive amount of oil consumed by the Pentagon on a daily basis.

Long ago, the French came up with the term, “Laissez faire, laissez passer.” Let it be, let it happen. It’s a libertarian maxim that the U.S. government should have with respect to world affairs. Let the world be, let it happen. That’s the surefire way to restore a society here at home of liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world, in which case U.S. presidents would no longer feel the need to meet with brutal foreign dictators or, for that matter, any other foreign leader.