INTRODUCTION

Few subjects are as potentially important for the study of international political theory in the twenty-first century as the ethical implications of the notion of preemptive war, and the putative distinction between preemption and prevention, and yet, in the post-9/11 environment, few subjects are as difficult to approach in a calm, rational manner. The reason for this strange state of affairs is, I suggest, clear. In most writer’s minds preemption is associated with two reference points; the US National Security Strategy of 2002 (hereafter NSS 2002), which appeared to legitimate a very strong, and perhaps indefensible, doctrine of preemption, and the Iraq war of 2003, which was partly justified in terms of preempting a threat from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which, in the event, proved not to exist, or at least not there and then. Because of these two commonly understood reference points, the issue of preemption has become indelibly associated with the foreign policy of the late administration of President George W. Bush, and the assumption is that to take any attitude to preemption which does not simply involve condemning the notion out of hand is morally equivalent to endorsing that foreign policy – a position which most writers on international ethics are very unwilling to adopt. I share this latter unwillingness, but it seems to me to be a mistake to take this to mean that the issue of preemption is out of bounds for all time. As the presidency of George W. Bush recedes into the past and at least some elements of his foreign policy have been reversed, it is to be hoped that the issue of preemption can be approached without the political baggage it carried up until January 2009. After all, indiscriminate attacks designed to kill Western civilians predate both 9/11 and the Bush administration and are continuing now that Bush has left office. Since one possible response to such attacks may involve the preemptive use of force against the terrorists and those who give them sanctuary, there is a need to develop an ethically acceptable approach to preemption, which is the aim of this chapter.