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The Slippery Slope to Preventive War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Neta C. Crawford
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Extract

The Bush administration's arguments in favor of a preemptive doctrine rest on the view that warfare has been transformed. As Colin Powell argues, “It's a different world … it's a new kind of threat.” And in several important respects, war has changed along the lines the administration suggests, although that transformation has been under way for at least the last ten to fifteen years. Unconventional adversaries prepared to wage unconventional war can conceal their movements, weapons, and immediate intentions and conduct devastating surprise attacks. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, though not widely dispersed, are more readily available than they were in the recent past. And the everyday infrastructure of the United States can be turned against it as were the planes the terrorists hijacked on September 11, 2001. Further, the administration argues that we face enemies who “reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.” Although vulnerability could certainly be reduced in many ways, it is impossible to achieve complete invulnerability.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 30 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2003

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References

1 Powell, Colin, “Perspectives: Powell Defends a First Strike as Iraq Option,” interview, New York Times, September 8, 2002, sec. 1, p. 18Google Scholar.

2 For more on the nature of this transformation, see Crawford, Neta C., “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War,” Perspectives on Politics 1(March 2003), forthcomingCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America September 2002,” p. 14; available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.

4 Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Remarks at Stakeout Outside ABC TV Studio,” October 28, 2001; available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/t10292001_t1028sd3.html.

5 “National Security Strategy,” p. 5.

6 Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 30, 2001), pp. 2, 30, 62Google Scholar.

7 “National Security Strategy,” pp. i, 31.

8 Betts, Richard K., (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1982), p. 14–43Google Scholar.

9 Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review,” pp. 30,62; and “Remarks by President George W. Bush at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York,” June 1, 2002; available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html.

10 Quoted in Craig, Gordon A., The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), P. 255Google Scholar.