January 14, 2026
Avoiding war, as Rothbard has written, should be the objective of any libertarian, but once underway should be conducted in a manner consistent with the non-aggression axiom of using force only against those who have initiated it. History provides examples of how a libertarian approach achieves victory against militarily superior aggressors while avoiding undue casualties. Often referred to as asymmetric warfare, one tactic dates at least to the sixth century BCE, and as Muhammad Ali profoundly demonstrated, is not necessarily limited to military combat.
Carl von Clausewitz in his ten-volume unfinished work, On War, regarding Napoleon's invasion of Russia, wrote
When Buonaparte marched to Moscow in 1812, all depended upon whether the taking of the capital, and the events which preceded the capture, would force the Emperor Alexander to make peace...
But "the events which preceded the capture" had been devastating. Napoleon had amassed an army of 615,000 men on the border of the Russian empire ready to oppose a smaller army of 250,000 Russians that was dispersed into three regiments.
On 23-24 June 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen River; it was, in many ways, the Napoleonic equivalent of Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon. The first elements of the army set foot on Russian soil uncontested; the nearby Cossack cavalry fired only three shots before riding away.
On June 28 Napoleon arrived at the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, puzzled that there was no Russian army to fight, as he had hoped. On July 23, one of Napoleon's divisions fought a Russian army under commander Barclay de Tolly, who withdrew his troops to Smolensk rather than continue the battle. A month into the campaign Napoleon's army was already reeling from the Russian weather.
The scorching summer heat combined with torrential rains meant that many men fell sick; by the third week of July, over 80,000 men were either dead or seriously ill from diseases such as typhus and dysentery. Combined with the deserters, Napoleon had already lost 100,000 men... The French supply train became hindered by the lack of quality roads and, along with the Russians' scorched earth tactics, this led to rampant starvation and malnutrition. This was particularly true for the horses, who had nothing to eat but unripe rye and began dying en masse... As the Grande Armée continued its miserable trek into Russia, it left a trail of putrefying human and animal corpses in its wake.
When Napoleon reached Moscow on September 14 he was greeted with a shock. "Moscow governor Fedor Rostopchin had ordered the evacuation of the city's 250,000 inhabitants and had set fire to the supply depots." Since firefighting equipment had been destroyed or evacuated, the fires raged uninterrupted.
As the fires spread toward his suite at the Kremlin the horrified French Emperor exclaimed, "Such terrible tactics have no precedent in the history of civilizationTo burn one's own cities!A demon inspires these people ! What savage determination ! What a people!... They are Scythians!"
In 517 BCE, Scythians defended their land from the Persian invader Darius I by abandoning it and leaving behind poisoned wells. Napoleon, instead of acquiring Tsar Alexander's surrender, decided to retreat on October 18, 1812.
By early November, the onset of Russian winter hit the Grande Armée like a sledgehammer as temperatures dropped to -30°C. Soldiers suffered from snow blindness, their breath turning to icicles as it left their mouths. Many lost their way and froze to death, others merely collapsed and died where they lay.
Napoleon had been defeated by an inferior military opponent, through the resolve of the long-suffering Russian people to deny the invaders the means of sustaining an army.
An American experience
Two years after Napoleon abandoned Moscow in defeat, the commander of Fort McHenry in Baltimore's harbor, 34-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Armistead, faced a problem: The British were coming.
According to Armistead's official account of the enemy he faced,
On the night of Saturday [September 10, 1814] the British fleet, consisting of ships of the line, heavy frigates, and bomb vessels, amounting in the whole to 30 sail, appeared at the mouth of the river Patapsco, with every indication of an attempt on the city of Baltimore....
On Monday morning very early, it was perceived that the enemy was landing troops on the east side of the Patapsco, distant about ten miles. During the day and the ensuing night, he had brought sixteen ships (including five bomb ships) within about two miles and a half of this Fort.
Armistead had expected this. Less than a month earlier, on August 24, under direction of Major General Robert Ross, the British had entered Washington with a force of 4,500 'battle hardened men' under a flag of truce, but "American soldiers remaining in the city 'treacherously' opened fire, wounding Ross' horse and killing two of his men." Ross then ordered the White House and Capitol Building burned to the ground.
According to President James Madison's personal enslaved attendant, fifteen-year-old Paul Jennings, who remained as a witness to the invasion after the President and others had fled to Brookeville, Maryland, "When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, &c., that I had prepared for the President's party."
Invading Baltimore was next in line for the British.
Armistead had expanded his garrison to "approximately 1,000 defenders, incorporating artillery regiments, seamen, and local volunteers" while reinforcing the fort with bombproof magazines and protective barriers. In the event he and the fort should survive the onslaught, he had a special cheerio! in store for the attackers.
From Armistead's report:
On Tuesday morning [September 13] about sunrise, the enemy commenced the attack from his five bomb vessels, at the distance about two miles, when finding that his shells reached us, he anchored and kept an incessant and well directed bombardment. We immediately opened our batteries, and kept a brisk fire from our guns and mortars, but unfortunately our shot and shells all fell considerably short of him.
This was to me a most distressing circumstance, as it left us exposed to a constant and tremendous shower of shells, without the remote possibility of our doing him the slightest injury.
By early afternoon British confidence grew and three bomb ships came within striking distance of the fort. "I immediately ordered a fire to be opened, which was obeyed with alacrity through the whole garrison, and in a half an hour those intruders again sheltered themselves by withdrawing beyond our reach."
At 1 a.m, with rockets bursting overhead to provide light, the British "detached 1250 picket men with scaling ladders, for the purpose of storming this Fort. We once more had an opportunity of opening our batteries, and kept a continued blaze for nearly two hours which had the effect again to drive them off."
Armistead estimates that during the 25-hour bombardment, "from fifteen to eighteen hundred shells were thrown by the enemy. A few of these fell short. A large proportion burst over us, throwing their fragments among us, and threatening destruction. Many passed over, and about four hundred fell within the works." American casualties: four men killed, 24 wounded.
Armistead's defensive strategy kept Fort McHenry in American hands. But he couldn't resist a parting gesture. At 7 a.m. on September 14, after the bombing had ended, he ordered the shredded 15' x 25' "storm flag" taken down and the 30' x 40' "Garrison flag" hoisted in its place. He had commissioned the flags in 1813 to Mary Pickersgill, who along with helpers pieced them together with "loosely woven English wool bunting." He told her he wanted "a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance."
The garrison flag waved the British fleet goodbye and symbolized "home of the brave" in Key's poem.
Conclusion
Julian Simon urged us to engage our ultimate resource, what he called the human imagination coupled with the human spirit. Life-threatening situations such as war drive us to put it to unconventional use but so does any overpowering situation. Muhammad Ali cooked up a version in 1974 when he fought champion George Forman in Zaire, calling it his rope-a-dope strategy. As Sporting News described it, "Against an opponent with 37 knockouts in 40 straight wins, the challenger stood with his back to the ropes, feet planted, and subtly defused the lethal bombs coming his way."
With gloves high and appearing to be languishing against the ropes or in a corner, Ali would catch the majority of Foreman's concussive bombs on the guard and pick off pulverizing body shots on the elbows. When a shot did get through, Ali possessed the requisite recovery powers to survive and reset.
Frequently on the ropes from round two onward, Ali allowed Foreman to pound away with enormous blows to head and body. Timing his moments to fire back, the challenger counterpunched beautifully and nailed Foreman flush while whispering insults in his ear. In the eighth, Ali suddenly burst out of his own corner and released a multi-punch combination punctuated by a perfect right hand that put an exhausted Foreman down for the count.
Clever strategies, not just quick feet and hands, characterized Ali's brilliant career. Surviving when you're overmatched ultimately depends on keeping the wheels upstairs turning.