The difference between preventive war and pre-emptive war is a wide one that’s been well blurred by recent attempts. Iraq was preventive, not pre-emptive. Now pre-emption has become newspeak for preventive.
If Iraq had been an imminent threat to the US then the war was not an agressive war. It is part of a long sanctioned tradition of "preemption “Upon detecting evidence that an opponent is about to attack, one beats the opponent to the punch and attacks first to blunt the impending strike.”
As we all know, “For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.”
The case can be made that the need to “adapt the concept of imminent threat” as laid out in the National Security Strategy Chapter V*, led to the actual adaptation the “concept of imminent threat,” in the national security strategy of the USA to include the threat presented by “rogue states and terrorists” and thus a change in what qualifies as preemption.
If Iraq was not an imminent threat to the US then the war was an example of a “preventive war”. Preventive war is based on the concept that war is inevitable and that it is better to fight now while the costs are low rather than later when the costs are high. It is a deliberate decision to begin a war."
And yet I’m relatively confident regular law doesn’t recognize a right to preventative self-defence.
The legal concept of self-defence doesn’t necessarily warrant your attacker to actually take a swing or a shot before you get to act to stop them, but they still gotta be actively threatening you (or someone else) right just this minute. Not tomorrow, not if things get ugly, not predictably, now. AFAIK you can’t even argue self-defence on a mere verbal death threat (all other things being equal).
I think that’s what **PatriotX **is arguing: that you can absolutely launch the missiles if Russia is fueling its silos and you have worthwhile reasons to believe they’re launching on your ass (or on the ass of someone you give a shit about), but you can’t launch just because Russia *has *silos.
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Well, not if they don’t believe you’d use them, and if they don’t in any case have hostages to fortune that can be hit with nukes, i.e. a country with cities. Evidently, Al-Qaeda wasn’t too concerned that a vengeance-minded America would toast… I dunno… Kandahar? Cairo? Riyadh? Mecca? Medina?
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Was Saddam part of Al Qaeda, now ? That escalated quickly
I’m not trying to blur the lines between a preventive war and a pre-emptive war. However, the fact that nations have highly sophisticated and destructive weapons make such a distinction almost useless. For instance if Israel got a new shipment of nuclear arms from the U.S., wouldn’t that be a sufficient reason for Iran to speed up their nuclear arms development plants.
The idea that you must wait for an opponent to attack you is absurd. I cannot conceive of how this would be beneficial to anyone. I have never heard any principle, whether military or civilian, that believes it is morally required for an attack to commence before defending yourself.
Intelligence analysts spend hours poring over things called “Indicators and warnings.” There are a set of necessary preconditions that a military must achieve before an attack can be launched (positioning troops, supplies, etc). The better a force can disguise these clues, the better their surprise attack will be.
Whoever attacks first can achieve a profound advantage, especially if the opponent is caught unprepared. It is not just negligent but disturbingly immoral that a nation would permit its people to die and be placed at a military disadvantage before taking action. And yes, centuries of military experience have proven that the best defense really is a good offense… especially true now that we have a dynamic battlefield where fixed fortifications are a liability rather than an asset.
So yes, you can defend yourself by attacking. If the enemy is militarily incapable of mounting an offensive campaign, then you have successfully defended your people. It is not warped morality, it is obvious pragmatism in conflicts where human lives are on the line.
Your OP makes the case that the distinction is quite meaningful, afaict. To further illustrate…
If my neighbor owns powerful firearms it is not self-defense for me to kill him.
If my neighbor is about to shoot me with a firearm, powerful or no, then it is self defense for me to kill him.
Owning “highly sophisticated and destructive weapons” is not at all the same thing as being about to use those weapons.
As the OP points out, merely having the capacity to wage ware is insufficient grounds for waging a war for practical reasons.
You’re discussing preventive war. It’s not very controversial to object to preventive war.
Approving of pre-meptive war is not that controversial either.
“speed[ing] up their nuclear arms development plants” is not the same as waging war.
So on the face of it, we’re not talking about preventive nor pre-emptive war.
Acquiring weapons, no mater how powerful, is not the same thing as being about to use those weapons.
To the best of my knowledge, no nation has ever exported a nuke. They’ve deployed them abroad, but always under the command and control of their own troops.
You are drawing distinctions that are virtually meaningless in real life.
For instance, 200 years ago it might take a country a year to arm themselves for a war. But in the 21st century, with the right weapons it could take a country like Israel 24 hours to start a nuclear war.
So if you are a surrounding neighbor, you need to be on high alert at all times. If there’s a purchase of highly destructive nuclear weapons by Israel, a decision needs to be made quickly as to the appropriate response.
Again, check self-defence in civilian law. You don’t get to shoot your neighbour even if he has a stockpile of assault weapons, and he’s made threats, and he’s a big buff motherfucker, AND he’s looking at you funny. You actually have to be in immediate danger before your self-defence legal defence for shooting him in his big fat head sticks.
So… you’re actually advancing “if we can’t see anything, it must be because they’re very good at hiding from us” as a rationale for action ? Seriously ?
Of course, by that rationale attacking *everyone *first until the entire world is subjugated and zero threat would be the best policy. In fact, attacking one’s allies at the earliest would be the bestest - they’re the least prepared.
There is no requirement to wait for an opponent to attack you. There is, however, a very sane and sensible requirement to wait until an opponent has taken offensive action against you. An attack is, of course, an offensive action, but it’s possible for an action to be offensive before the actual attack occurs. The textbook example of this would be massing troops just across the border; I’m sure you can think of others.
In any event, with Iraq, the administration claimed that such a situation existed, and launched a war based on it, when in fact it did not. This made us exactly what we claimed Saddam to be, and was absolutely reprehensible.
I argue that the OP makes the case as to why the distinction is meaningful and relevant.
No country can go to war with every country which could start a war with it. As the OP mentions, that’s absurd.
Therefore there have to be criteria used to decide which countries a nation should go to war with.
Going to war out of self defense is still a meaningful criteria to be used when determining if a nation should wage war.
The difference between waging war with all nations capable of waging war and only waging war against nations which are likely to attack soon seems to be a meaningful distinction “in real life.”
I agree that technology has changed over the past two centuries.
Doesn’t have much impact on the absurdity of not using the imminence of an attack as a criterion for determining which nations to wage war against.
No matter how I look at it, an imminent attack is an important and meaningful factor to be considered in regard to waging war.
Sure.
This example doesn’t involve anyone waging war either.
Making decisions is not the same thing was waging war.
The decision about waging war includes the likelihood of a nation conducting an attack in the foreseeable future.
Well…you’ve nailed the problem. If we say that a right to a pre-emptive war exists and we know it is a big advantage to attack first. Then let’s say we say there are 10 indicators that are needed before you would strike. Why even wait for all 10 indicators, why not just wait for 8 indicators to occur and then strike…why would you wait further and risk the possibility that the other nation would strike first.
Sorry. I forgot to add “… according to foreign publications.”
(That’s what the the Israeli press says when they publish military secrets - first they leak the info to the Sunday Times or something, then they quote them with a “disclaimer”).
That’s basically what happened in 1967 with the Six Day War. Israel and Egypt fought a war in 1956, which ended with a ceasefire according to which Egypt would prevent entering heavy military equipment into the Sinai Peninsula, and allow Israeli shipping free passage through the Straits of Tiran (meaning access to the Red Sea). In June 1967 Egypt closed the Straits and moved several armored divisions into the Sinai; Israel attacked in response.
The way Israel saw things, its preemptive military strike may have started the fighting, but by violating the cease fire in the first place, Egypt started the war.
But why should there be ? Why even wait for an indication at all ?
If we go with the notion the the best defence is a good offence, then surely the bestest of all defences must be unchecked aggression. It is undeniable that an entirely subjugated world would only present minor, non-existential risk, correct ?
And it is impossible to predict what a given foreign country will or will not do next, even if they’re nominally allies, correct ? I mean, I’m French and I like America all right, but I don’t think my country would hesitate a second to stab y’all in the nuts if there was a definite and sizeable profit to be gained from it (at least more sizeable than remaining on good terms). From a realpolitik standpoint, everyone is an enemy, strictly speaking. They’re only managed by a mesh of current, mutual interests. Certainly we cannot posit that a given country is not and will never be a threat at some point in the future.
From these two principles, we can only draw one conclusion: attack, attack, attack, until Martin Dempsey weeps because there’s nothing left to conquer.
Of course, that conclusion is rabidly insane. Which must mean that something in our premise must be flawed.
I’m not sure, but possibly Adam Smith did us a disservice when he wrote Wealth of Nations. He was one of the first to posit that individuals acted based upon their own self interest. Somehow this notion was extended to nations dealing with other on the same basis. So now we have warring nations staring across borders looking out for their own self-interests. Basically, they are looking for their neighbor to make a wrong move and then…
Meh. Strictly speaking, my neighbour is an existential threat and an enemy too. We’re conceptually competing for resources and space and definitely competing on allowable noise rights past 11 pm. Rassum frassum can’t play Rock Band drums at night…
It’s just that the predictable consequences of biting his throat off and using his testicles as part of a novelty Newton’s cradle outweigh the enjoyment I could derive from said cradle. As a above, so below. Or, in this case: as below, so above.
We don’t have a governing body that can or will effectively deal with the US if the US wants to start a preemptive war. That’s probably true of a number of other countries, too. So you can argue all day long about whether or not the US had “the right” to invade Iraq, but it doesn’t mean shit in the real world. We did and that was that.
Nations had been going to war with each other long before Adam Smith was a gleam in his father’s eye; he had nothing to do with the concepts of preemptive or preventative war. As others have said, Iraq was in no way, shape or form a preemptive war; Iraq was not about to attack the US. The 1967 war on the other hand was very clearly a preemptive war; Israel’s neighbors were planning on going to war with Israel and Israel chose to strike first rather than wait to be hit. Even more than that, from Encyclopedia of Military History from 3500 BC to the Present:
