In honor of the film Black Panther [1], I've been recently reflecting on isolationism, foreign aid, and libertarianism. On the Christian worldview it is certainly not evil to share resources with less fortunate regions, yet there are legitimate and illegitimate manners of doing this. The only philosophically valid ethics system (epistemologically and metaphysically) is theonomy, and a form of libertarianism inevitably follows from Christian theonomy [2]. So what would the Christian libertarian means of handling foreign aid be? If the only objective purposes of government are to protect citizen's rights, administer criminal/civil justice, and defend from foreign militaries (when needed), do isolationist policies result when governments act strictly in accordance with their purpose?
I want to clarify quickly that isolationism, a political stance of refusal to interfere with events in other countries, can ironically end up severely hurting a country that relies on it to stay out of trouble--for example, if a country stayed out of a major war long enough to allow a tyrant to take more power then that tyrant could destroy that land's people more easily. Not only is isolationism sometimes outright self-destructive, as in the hypothetical war scenario above (or when a land cuts itself off from the advances of other regions), it is also simply not what follows from libertarianism.
Libertarians (or consistent libertarians) are not nationalists, since they recognize that all people, irrespective of geography or ethnic-national background, have natural rights, and that governments have no legitimate purpose beyond protecting these rights through just means. Thus they will by default reject any nationalistic arguments for isolationism that some might use. Since libertarianism by its nature is contrary to nationalistic pride, a thoroughly libertarian state would never use nationalism as an excuse for isolationism (though nationalism could also lead to imperialism as well). Libertarians would view people from elsewhere as fellow holders of natural rights and as people free trade could be conducted with.
So, how then could a libertarian government give foreign aid without deviating from the fundamental tenets of libertarianism? Foreign aid is not a part of the mandate for a government to protect the natural rights of its citizens; since it involves the citizens of other countries/regions, it goes outside of the only legitimate activities of a government--unless foreign aid is administered in very specific ways. A libertarian country could still give foreign monetary aid without actually having a budget for foreign aid, and there are a couple of ways that this could happen.
First, the government could collect voluntary one-time donations from the citizens, which no one is morally obligated to give and which the government has no right to demand, and could send the totality of these offerings to a nation or nations in need. Second, the people themselves could give money or other resources without government involvement at all. This is effectually the same as the first option but with the government removed, relying totally on the citizens of the country and not the politicians. Raising money for foreign aid through involuntary taxation does contradict the role of government outlined in Scripture by illicitly demanding that citizens yield private property and resources that belong to them.
Isolationism certainly does not follow from libertarianism, yet governments can still interact with other nations, even in matters of foreign aid, without contradicting libertarian ideas. They just better be damn careful to make sure that they are not coercing nonconsensual redistribution of resources!
[1]. For information on some of the relevant plot points, see here:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/movie-review-black-panther.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/secular-and-christian-libertarianism.html
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