Ron Paul on Military Interventionism in Ukraine

Excerpt from Ron Paul's conversation with RPI Director Daniel McAdams about Dr. Paul's recent speech at the International Students for Liberty conference in Washington, D.C. Dr. Paul discusses the great importance of non-interventionism even as some European guests at the conference disagreed on the need for US involvement in Ukraine. Source: RonPaulInstitute YouTube channel. To find out more, visit the Ron Paul Institute website. Translated by Jadranko Brkic.

Transcript:

Ron Paul:

Other parts of the meeting in Washington, the convention, foreign policy did come up a lot. And that's where maybe there are some subtle, but not outrageous, disagreements between some people, but that is, how much intervention there should be? And of course I took my usual position. But some, sort of, you know, used the argument of the humanitarian instincts, that maybe a lot of people are getting killed, don't you thing there's a time that we have to do this? And instead of me arguing a purely moral reason or purely Constitutional reason why we shouldn't get involved, which should be enough, I used the practical argument. I said, you know, what good does it do? Take a look at the last 25 years, why can't the last 25 years be a strong defense of our position? Where have we intervened for humanitarian reasons? Which is always an excuse for the military industrial complex and for others. But whether you go to Libya or Egypt, or Afghanistan or now Ukraine, there were few people over there who were sort of sympathetic. You gotta go in there and help the good guys in there, and they wanted to just use this as an example, instead of me becoming not pro one side, because I wouldn't defend their position, I said, oh, that means you'd have to be pro-Russia and pro-Putin. Because, I think you saw my answer to that, you know.

Daniel McAdams:

Pro facts.

Ron Paul:

Pro facts. I'm neither pro-Russia, and that's what our policy should be. It's sort of non-interventionism is a quite a bit different.

Daniel McAdams:

And it's really critical to libertarianism. I mean, there is a small strain in libertarianism that says we have to export liberty by hook or crook, you know, by whatever means. And it really it's the impulse toward interventionism that's the problem, because it presumes that you know what's best for other people. And that's the slippery slope, you start going down and it always will end up in conflict and war. I think it's really such a, and you always talked about this, it is such a critical component of freedom, liberty, and libertarianism, is to not intervene, regardless of how strong that impulse is.

Ron Paul:
Yea. It may start of well-intended, we're going to do good, and then it morphs into something else, because that violates the basic principle. And you used the right word, they want to do this through force. So once you are using force to do good then it gets out of control, and I remember one of the individuals, writers, authors, that came to our office for a session for the Liberty Committee was Claus Rehn. And the Claus was an expert on French Revolution and the Jacobins, you know. And he has the term Neo-Jacobins. Even if the leaders of our intervention in the Middle East had sinister motives I think the majority of the people, even those that want to go to Ukraine, they have believed the propaganda, they are going in for the good reasons, but then, of course, Rehn's argument was look at what happened in France. You know, hardly a good example for justifying the use of force.

Daniel McAdams:

The other thing is that the people that argue in places like Ukraine, they argue for foreigners to get out, but they never argue for the US to get out, and that's a point you made at the conference. You said that “I agree that all of these foreign militaries should get out, but that includes the US too.

Ron Paul:

Isn't the recent token effort at a peace agreement between the two sides, right now it is, that's one of their planks. It's get the foreign governments out. But, they are not including the United States.

Daniel McAdams:

President has a plan next month to send 600 paratroopers, US active military, into Ukraine to start training the military. And as I read the agreement, that was point 10 of the agreement, that all foreign troops need to leave. And that seems, to me at least, to be in the spirit of agreement violation to send US troops in.

Ron Paul:

One other question that came up was, what example would you have to set a standard for the type of government we have? Realizing that not too-many people would jump up and down and say, well, we immediately have to follow this country, but I like to use the presidency of Switzerland, which they don't have. They essentially don't have a president. And yet they have defense. The individuals are defended, and they say, oh yea, but that makes you vulnerable. How vulnerable were they in World War One and World War Two? They don't send troops around the world. So, maybe we can learn a lesson from that.