Pre-emption vs. Prevention

So today the Bush administration released a new national security report. Many discussions of the report--and, apparently, the report itself--contain the same confusion we spent a lot of time discussing around these parts before the invasion of Iraq.

Now hear this: everyone recognizes that pre-emptive strikes are justified. It is explicitly permitted according to all the versions of Just War Theory with which I'm familiar. A pre-emptive strike is a strike that country A makes against country B in order to prevent an imminent attack by B against A. The principle is the same as the following common-sense moral principle: if I see you hauling back to punch me, I am entitled to punch you first in order to stop the attack.

But it is not pre-emption that is at issue, and our attack against Iraq was not a pre-emptive one. What is at issue is preventive attacks, preventive war. A preventive war is a war instigated in order to eliminate a non-imminent threat. Pre-emptive attacks are attacks that aim to thwart attacks that are very likely to happen very soon. Preventive attacks are attacks that aim to thwart attacks that might happen some time or other in the future. To use an analogy concerning individuals again: I attack you preventively if I punch you because I suspect that you might possibly decide to take a swing at me some day.

To summarize: Pre-emptive attacks are obviously justified. Preventive attacks probably are not. Our attack against Iraq was preventive attack at best. Bush's doctrine does not assert that pre-emptive attacks are justified, because everyone already acknowledges that. Bush's doctrine asserts that preventive attacks are justified--if we are the attacker, that is. This is probably false.