Special Section: Energy and American Foreign Policy

We are facing a crisis in this country, a crisis brought on by government intervention in the economy and by an interventionist foreign policy working hand in hand. The results of these policies now threaten to wreck the American economy.

At the same time, our policymaking elites are beginning to reach a murderous consensus: that the way to solve the energy crisis is to increase government intervention in the energy industry, and to intervene more militantly in the Middle East and elsewhere to guarantee—by threat of war—American access to crude oil. The end result of these policies is going to be depression and war.

The unfortunate fact is that no ideological group in this nation is up to facing the challenge presented by this crisis. The Right wing has long been the war party in this country, and their views here have discredited their correct—but incomplete—advocacy of deregulation in the energy industry. At the same time, the Left wing has always been the party of government domination of the economy, and its genuine—although weak—tendency toward noninterventionism in foreign policy has been discredited by the fact that its solution to the energy crisis is more economic fascism: regulation, nationalization, central economic planning and, of course, taxes.

It is only libertarianism which can unravel this mess and provide policy recommendations which can save both freedom and peace from destruction. The systematic intervention of the American state in the American economy has led us to the present energy crisis, and its interventionist foreign policy is leading us to war. To follow the path of more government intervention in either area will only lead to disaster. Only by combining a move toward laissez-faire in energy and nonintervention in foreign policy can we solve our problems. It is our purpose here to make this case.