For the past seven decades, U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea, ready to pick up where the fight stopped if the South is in danger. After the Singapore summit involving President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, this may no longer be the case.
The Cold War-like situation North and South Koreas lived through kept the North on edge. One could even argue it pushed its dynasty to continue carrying its threats and developing its nuclear powers. After all, the United States doesn’t have the best of records when it comes to bringing down strongmen and leaving entire countries at risk of falling into complete chaos.
Now that the North and South have opened the line of communication and that the U.S. has extended its hand by agreeing to sign a peace treaty, the chances of war are slim. As such, the chances of millions of people dying in a nuclear war are also very slim.
As Reason’s Jesse Walker wrote, the de-escalation we are seeing beats anything that resembles a war – and for that, we can be thankful.
If there’s something all libertarians should agree on is that allowing people to exchange freely will always be preferable to using deadly force or the threat of it to prevent people from exchanging freely. And as we all know, keeping war or the threat of war alive is how the state expands its power.
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