America was born in war. The American Revolution and subsequent constitution of the newly-formed United States reflected some of the key ideas of liberalism—natural rights, government by consent, and limits on state power. The Revolution, however, was just the beginning of war as part of the American identity. Between 1798 and 2023, the United States engaged in 469 acknowledged military interventions—or 2.08 military interventions per year on average.

The U.S. government’s subsequent military adventures, however, are fundamentally different from the initial revolutionary effort to gain independence. These conflicts did not represent efforts to throw off the rule of a foreign king, but instead involved the projection of state military power to shape and influence the world—often in the name of spreading or safeguarding liberty. The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence provides an opportunity to reflect on the risks that war poses to the liberal principles at the foundation of the American project.

The dangers of war were emphasized by leading figures from America’s earliest days. Writing in 1795, James Madison noted:

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

A year later, in his 1796 farewell address, President George Washington cautioned against “overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

What Madison and Washington recognized was that warmaking posed a threat to the very things that the American revolutionaries had fought to secure. These warnings have been largely forgotten or ignored, even by many classical liberals.

Complete Essay by Christopher Coyne, Abigail R. Hall @ Economic Library https://www.econlib.org/econlog/war-the-dreaded-enemy-of-liberty