Voluntaryism and War
While war is a difficult topic as it involves gross violence and mass harm, the root Voluntaryist principle as applies to war is relatively simple to state: there is no moral difference for action when the violence is considered “war.”
War, unlike a simple act of violence like mugging or robbery turned murder, usually involves large groups of actors engaging in violence for a unified purpose, most often, under the auspices of a state engaging in conquest.
War is distinguishable in terminology in that there is an ideological drive behind the violence that is greater than a small personal satisfaction of material wants.
War is waged typically to expand the rule of a ruler across a broader geography or to extinguish and plunder from another demographic viewed as inferior or as a threat.
The initiation of war is inherently unethical as it is the initiation of violence by use of troops or militias to invade private zones with the intent of killing and/or plundering those invaded.
These property rights violations issues are obvious and don’t require much explanation as they fall under traditional labels of murder, theft, and aggravated battery.
What gets murky for Voluntaryism, and for anyone else, is to what extent defensive measures can be levied to either protect against or end a war without becoming an aggressor oneself.
For Voluntaryists, the analysis of what behavior is proper is an analysis that would apply to any person, regardless of what status they take as private person or soldier of a government.
The actions are judged uniformly, and each person can only act in accordance with Voluntaryist values else, they become a violator.
That said, Voluntaryism also does not force individuals to become perpetual victims either.
Voluntaryism is not pacifism, nor does it enable violent actors to use human shields or others’ property rights to shield their ongoing violations.
Rather, a balance is struck by assigning harm to perpetrators so long as the defensive or rescue measures are narrowly tailored to the initiator.
To help develop this idea, we will draw on a few examples.
The first is a non-war, self-defense situation. In this minimalist situation, a home invader breaks into the home of a homeowner in the middle of the night with the intention of robbing and using deadly force if needed.
The homeowner, hearing the break-in, grabs a pistol, draws on the home invader, and fires 6 shots.
The homeowner’s aim is very good considering the time of night, but one bullet grazes the top of the home invader’s shoulder, passes through, and hits his neighbor’s home through his open door.
Is the homeowner responsible for this bullet’s trespass?
No.
The homeowner’s use of narrowly tailored means to take down the home invader transfer the responsibility onto the home invader.
The reason why is that it is unreasonable under Voluntaryist norms to punish those trying to defend themselves from harm whose means of defense are generally expected to only affect the perpetrator, and the perpetrator’s position requires swift action to stop his further action.
Even if the bullet passed through and hit the neighbor himself, the perpetrator would be considered liable, not the homeowner.
This is to both protect the property rights of the homeowner and to avoid giving those who would do harm an escape from the burden of the harm they cause.
This narrow example is relatively easy to see, but what happens when we move from the private home defense context to greater threats, such as with gangs, mafias, and military action?
Like the home invader example, it is appropriate to use narrowly tailored means to take down threats from gang members or invading armies.
What would not be acceptable is to escalate the violence to the point that one is doing more harm than the perpetrator would.
Image for example that there is a gang of criminals in a city who hide out in an apartment complex.
The gang of criminals is responsible for over 200 criminal acts within the city each year, including 10 murders.
It would be wildly inappropriate to set off a nuclear bomb in the city, killing over 500,000 people, just to take out the gang of criminals.
Not only does this kill far more people than the criminals threaten, but it would be so egregious that it would make those dropping the bomb far worse than the gang by ten thousandfold.
So, if dropping a nuclear bomb to take out the gang is inappropriate, the question left is: At what level of force is it permissible to take them out?
The appropriate level of force is that which is necessary to take out the murderous gang with means that are unlikely to make the actors apprehending them worse than the gang.
In simple ideal, this could be a special operation where private defense or state police, if still around, would stake out the complex and make a swift entry for arrests through S.W.A.T.-like tactics.
Even if the building is owned by a third party or the room is owned by a third party, it would be permissible to use these tactics so long as the gang members are truly there.
Any property harms stemming from the breach would be assigned to the gang members.
Of course, if the building owner was willing to assist, or the apartment room owner(s) were willing, without tipping off the gang members, then getting their permission and assistance would be ideal.
But it would not be ethically necessary if doing so would lead to the gang members either being able to escape or, worse, being able to mount a defense that would cause further property damage or death because they become armed and ready to fight.
It isn’t that these property rights issues aren’t an issue, it is a question of responsibility. In this case, the bad actors are assigned that responsibility.
While taking out a gang hideout in an apartment building might seem daunting, it still doesn’t rise to the difficulty level that many face with military-level threats.
A great example of this difficulty is the armed military of the Palestinians, Hamas.[i]
Hamas was a fighting force of about 25,000 men, a sizeable number.
Hamas built a tunnel network spanning hundreds of miles underneath a civilian population in one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
Hamas used these factors to their advantage to kidnap about 250 hostages on October 7th, 2023, while killing about 1,200 people.
They took the kidnapped into the tunnel network, underneath civilians, and launched attacks from inside and around hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure, with the hopes that any retaliation would draw mass casualty and international sympathy.
So how do Voluntaryists deal with a situation where a sizeable army with machine guns and rockets kidnaps innocent people and then uses a wide tunnel network to move hostages all the while continuing to launch attacks with civilian surface structure for human shielding?
There is no easy answer, but the Voluntaryist view is that the kidnappers should not be rewarded for using human shields by not assigning harms to them in the rescue.
The question of how much force is allowable should be narrowly tailored to the specifics of the situation.
If the kidnappers are holding someone hostage, the tactics used should be ones that minimize civilian casualty, such as direct operations for rescue with rescue teams on the ground.
Blowing up entire buildings for rescue, where it is known that many civilians would die, would be an expansion of the harm.
Conversely, it would not be appropriate to allow Hamas to send rockets to kill many but to not be able to respond with rockets back.
Rather, what should be done to minimize harm is to alert innocent people to get out and to tailor tactics to avoid destroying places where more people would certainly die.
If Hamas were to intentionally try to draw casualty, those deaths would be assignable to them.
It would not be appropriate to assign casualties to those trying to rescue where those doing the kidnapping are intentionally gathering other people around them to shield themselves.
This does not mean those rescuing should not use judicious aim, as their actions will always be judged by the tactics and whether the tactics are going far outside the zone of the perpetrator.
But taking out perpetrators who have the intention of continuing to kidnap and murder is an ethical goal that should not be shunned because the bad actors try to use human shields.
This is distinguishable from actions that are meant to take out wide areas of innocent people with no connection to military operations or attack planning.
For example, the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6th and 9th, 1945, were bombs dropped on civilian populations meant to wipe out entire cities regardless of any involvement of those persons in war or any military action locus.[ii]
These bombings were acts of violence that went far beyond stopping the Japanese from waging war.
Alternatively, had the bombs been dropped instead on military base zones, a better argument could be made that dropping these kinds of bombs to take out entire military bases would have been more appropriate to ending the war, such as with the Iwo Jima or Kadena Air bases.
While the Japanese example is more clear-cut, the difficulties of dealing with a fighting force that makes its bases among civilians is what makes situations like that with Hamas much harder to judge.
Those who use civilians as shields cannot be allowed to continue to wage war forever by using the cover of innocent people, less, more innocent people are continually murdered with the bad actors forever retreating behind the innocent.
This difficulty can be further complicated when non-soldiers choose to offer themselves as shields, such as when those with ideological alignment willingly offer to act as cover for soldiers or militants.
While those individuals may not be doing the acts of violence, they cannot rely on civilian status while aiding and abetting a kidnapper in the same way that a runaway kidnapper in a non-war context cannot be shielded by another person trying to hide the kidnapper from an arrest.
No matter the circumstances, a principled Voluntaryist approach is one that looks to deescalate violence by stopping bad actors while minimizing further harm from crossfire or explosive detonation.
Enabling bad actors to continue to wage war by allowing them to continually use human shields does not end violence.
It only prolongs it and inspires bad actors to do more harm because they believe they can get away with it.
Thus, Voluntaryism does not entirely shun casualties.
Rather, it assigns casualty responsibility to those who initiate harm so long as the casualties are narrow in context of either rescue or ending the war with tactics focused on stopping discrete actors engaged in war and their instrumentalities.
[i] Media, Unpacked. “What Happens Inside Gaza’s Secret Tunnels? | Unpacked.” YouTube, 5 Feb. 2025, youtu.be/cCK4qpIl6fw?si=S0Gy-d_RjVCDzh7H.
[ii] “Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki.
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