«The war is a racket!» The emergence of the libertarian discourse about world war I in the United States

Abstract

"It is not a coincidence that the century of war coincided with the century of central banking,” wrote Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate "sensation" for the presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, in the book End the Fed. This discussion explores in short, the powerful pamphlet by Major General Smedley Butler, "War is a Racket", demonstrating, specifically, who profited economically and who, in turn, bore the weight and violence of WW1, assuming that a war is never fought with the acquiescence of the population. However, this monograph goes further, looking for a reinterpretation of the official American history of the First World War through the lens of libertarian discourse. The aim is thus to understand, from another perspective, the fundamental cause of the paradigm shift from nonintervention to intervention taking place during this war, linking it to the project which led to the creation of the League of Nations and the growing importance of the US in the world. Finally, a fundamental connection will be established, exploring the theories argued in the book A Foreign Policy of Freedom, between the policies of Woodrow Wilson and the foreign policy of the United States throughout the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.