The collapse of the American-backed state in Afghanistan brings home the wisdom of Murray Rothbard’s essay “The Death of a State,” written in July 1975. The lessons that Rothbard drew from the fall of South Vietnam apply equally to the present crisis. Among these were the importance of guerilla warfare, the dependence of all states on majority support, and the blow to US imperialism with its false doctrine that “the United States has the moral duty, and the permanent power, to install, prop up, and rule governments and peoples throughout the world. We are being forced into a policy of ‘neo-isolationism,’ unfortunately not through the adoption of moral principle, but through the concrete realization that imperialism is no longer realistically viable.” We should follow Rothbard’s advice and end all American overseas military commitments.
