Anarchy and order in the new age of prevention

World Policy Journal

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 1-23

  Nichols, Thomas M ^a,b  

^a Department of Strategy and Policy ^*  (United States)

^b Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 29044437481     PISSN: 07402775     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/07402775-2005-4003     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. "Preemption," or acting first to spoil the attack of an enemy clearly preparing to strike, has long been an acceptable form of self-defense. "Prevention," on the other hand, involves striking an opponent who may not yet pose an obvious danger based on calculations about whether it will pose a threat in the future and whether future military circumstances will be as advantageous later.
2. Peter Dombrowski and Rodger A. Payne, "Preemptive War: Crafting a New Norm," paper presented at the International Studies Association Annual Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 1-5 2005, p. 14.
3. Paul Schroeder, "Iraq: The Case Against Preemptive War," American Conservative, October 2002, http://www.amconmag.corn/10_21/iraq.html.
4. Stephen Krasner, "The Day After," Foreign Policy, January/February 2005, pp. 68-69.
5. Interview with Maj. Gen. Peter Williams, UK Army Reserve, Moscow, April 7, 2005.
6. This and subsequent references to this speech are from Kofi Annan, speech to United Nations General Assembly, 54th session, September 20 1999 (A/54/PV.4), official record.
7. Francois Heisbourg, "A Work in Progress: The Bush Doctrine and Its Consequences," Washington Quarterly, vol. 26 (spring 2003), p. 81. But, as the legal scholar Michael Glennon later noted, these arguments about "exceptions" were more like wishful thinking. See
8. Michael J. Glennon, Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 185.
9. Gareth Evans, "The Responsibility to Protect: When It's Right to Fight," http://www.progressive-governance.net.
10. Some legal scholars go even further. In defending the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, Anthony D'Amato has argued that "human rights law" not only allows, but "demands intervention against tyranny" (emphasis added). See Anthony D'Amato, "The Invasion of Panama Was a Lawful Response to Tyranny," American Journal of International Law, vol. 84 (April 1990).
11. Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, "A Duty to Prevent," Foreign Affairs, vol. 83 (January/ February 2004), pp. 149-50.
12. Marc Trachtenberg, "Intervention in Historical Perspective," in Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention, ed. Laura W. Reed and Carl Kaysen (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), p. 15.
13. John M. Deutsch, "The New Nuclear Threat," Foreign Affairs, vol. 71 (fall 1992), p. 133.
14. Michael Mandelbaum, "Lessons of the Next Nuclear War," Foreign Affairs, vol. 74 (March/April 1995), pp. 24, 37.
15. The address was to the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on February 17, 1998 (emphasis added). Available at http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/ 17/transcripts/clinton.iraq.
16. George P. Shultz, "An Essential War," Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2004.
17. The CIA, for example, agreed that if a government had issued something akin to Osama bin Laden's fatwa against the United States, it would be a declaration of war, but since it was an individual, it was only propaganda. See Richard Schultz, Jr., "How Clinton Let al-Qaeda Go," Weekly Standard, January 19, 2004.
18. President Bush later recalled what he was thinking when told of the World Trade Center attack: "They had declared war on us, and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war," an instinct shared by many top U.S. leaders that day. See Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 15.
19. There were other unrelated incidents that sharpened public fears of terrorism as well, like the March 1995 nerve gas attack in the Japanese subway system and the Oklahoma City bombing a month later, which until 2001 held the record as the worst act of terrorism within the United States.
20. Shultz, "Essential War," p. 18.
21. Government of the United Kingdom, "Prime Minister Warns of Continuing Global Terror Threat," March 5, 2004, http://www.number-10. gov.uk/output/Page5461.asp.
22. Robert J. Lieber, "Foreign-Policy 'Realists' Are Unrealistic on Iraq," Chronicle of Higher Education online, October 18, 2002.
23. Dombrowski and Payne, "Preemptive War," p. 14.
24. Secretary of Defense William Perry warned almost a decade ago of "a future threat that a rogue state, that may be impossible to deter, will obtain ICBMs that can reach the United States." Quoted in Robert Litwak, "The New Calculus of Preemption," Survival, vol. 44 (winter 2002/03), p. 56.
25. Keith Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), p. 87.
26. See also William C. Martel, "Deterrence and Alternative Images of Nuclear Possession," in The Absolute Weapon Revisited: Nuclear Arms and the Emerging International Order, ed. T. V. Paul, Richard J. Harknett, and James J. Wirtz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
27. M. Elaine Bunn, "Preemptive Action: When, How, and to What Effect?" Strategic Forum, U.S. National Defense University, no. 200 (July 2003), pp. 2-3.
28. "Profile: Kim Jong-Il," BBC News World Edition online, July 31, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1907197.stm.
29. Dombrowski and Payne, "Preemptive War," p. 14.
30. Heisbourg, "Work in Progress," p. 83.
31. "The belief that pre-9/11 defense strategies do not correspond to new security threats - threats not only to the United States but also to Europe - is reflected in the national security documents of the key European states" (Tomas Valasek, "New Threats, New Rules: Revising the Law of War," World Policy Journal, vol. 20 [spring 2003], p. 20).
32. "Prime Minister Warns of Continuing Global Terror."
33. European Union, "Basic Principles for an EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction," June 16, 2003, http://europa-eu-un.org/articles/en/article_2478_en.htm.
34. Government of France, Ministry of Defense, "2003-2008 Military Program," http://www.defense.gouv.fr/english/files/d140.
35. Elizabeth Bryant, "Paris Denies Ending Deterrence Strategy," UPI wire, October 27, 2003.
36. John Allen, "Vatican Shifts on Preventive War," National Catholic Reporter, January 23, 2004, p. 7.
37. Robert Hill, "The UN Charter Is Outdated," International Herald Tribune online edition, December 2, 2002.
38. Bunn, "Preemptive Action," p. 6.
39. Gerard Henderson, "World Order - From the Old to the New," Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 57 (November 2003), p. 481.
40. See Bunn, "Preemptive Action," p. 6;
41. and "Japan 'Can Seek Pre-emptive Strike': Constitution Allows Action If Launch Imminent, Agency Chief Says," Japan Times, January 25, 2003, http://www. japantimes.com.
42. Quoted in Bunn, "Preemptive Action," p. 7.
43. "Japan Threatens Force against N Korea," BBC News online, February 14, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2757923.stm.
44. Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, "Japan's Dual Hedge," Foreign Affairs online author update, March 2003, http://www.foreignaffairs.org.
45. Rajan Menon, "The End of Alliances," World Policy Journal, vol. 20 (summer 2003), p. 13.
46. Sophie Lambroschini, "Russia: Moscow Struggles to Clarify Stance on Preemptive Force," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report, October 14, 2003.
47. Quoted in Pavel Felgenhauer, "Military Doctrine or Election Manifesto? The Ivanov Doctrine," Perspectives, vol. 14 (January-February 2004), p. 1.
48. Steve Gutterman, "Russia Threatens to Strike Terror Bases," Associated Press wire, September 8, 2004.
49. CNN online, "Russia Considers Terror Strikes," September 17, 2004, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/17/russia.putin.
50. Andrei Piontkovsky, "The Pillars of International Security: Traditions Challenged," "Yaderny Kontrol" Digest, vol. 8 (summer/fall 2003), p. 23.
51. Ivanov made this point explicitly in an interview in 2003. See Svetlana Babaeva, "Rossiia vpervye ob'iavila o vozmozhnosti primenenie voennoi sily protiv respublik byvshego Soiuza," Izvestia, October 12, 2003.
52. Quoted in Antoaneta Bezlova, "China's Iraq Stance Pleases US - For Now," Asia Times Online, October 10, 2002, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/ China/DJ10Ad06.html.
53. Bates Gill and James Reilly, "Sovereignty, Intervention, and Peacekeeping: The View from Beijing," Survival, vol. 42 (autumn 2000), p. 47.
54. Michael Glennon has pointed out that when Annan gave his 1999 speech in the wake of NATO's Kosovo operation in which he accepted a norm of humanitarian intervention, most proponents of the idea were found among the Western democracies, while the opponents were mostly Latin American, African, and Arab states. See Michael J. Glennon, "Why the Security Council Failed," Foreign Affairs, vol. 82 (May/June 2003).
55. Dombrowski and Payne, "Preemptive War," p. 8.
56. Irving Brecher, "In Defence of Preventive War: A Canadian's Perspective," International Journal, vol. 58 (summer 2003), pp. 258-59.
57. Piontkovsky, "Pillars of International Security," p. 24.
58. Robert Skidelsky, "The Just War Tradition," Prospect, December 2004, p. 31.
59. Stanley Hoffmann, World Disorders: Troubled Peace in the Post-Cold War Era (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), p. 185.
60. Evans, "Responsibility to Protect."
61. Anthony Clark Arend, "International Law and the Preemptive Use of Military Force," Washington Quarterly, vol. 26 (spring 2003), p. 101.
62. Hoffmann, World Disorders, p. 80.
63. Quoted in Robert McMahon, "Human Rights and U.N. Wrongs," Weekly Standard, May 23, 2005, p. 19. Criticisms of the human rights records of Zimbabwe and Belarus were also sabotaged.
64. Hoffmann, World Disorders, p. 79.
65. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Perennial, 2003), p. 369.
66. As Anne-Marie Slaughter rightly notes, "when {the United Nations} speaks in unison, it projects moral authority that no individual government can match" ("Mercy Killings," Foreign Policy, May/June 2003, p. 72).
67. Glennon, Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power, p. 167.
68. Trachtenberg, "Intervention in Historical Perspective," p. 30 (emphasis added).
69. Glennon, Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power, p. 151.
70. Brecher, "In Defense of Preventive War," p. 259.
71. Former U.N. Secretariat member James Sutterlin has argued for keeping the absolute veto, but limiting its use only to issues under Chapter VII of the charter or, in the case of peacekeeping, Chapter VII and anything involving military force. Since these are the questions on which preventive action would deadlock, I do not see where this solves the problem, but it is a least an argument for limiting the veto. See James Sutterlin, "The Past as Prologue," in The Once and Future Security Council, ed. Bruce Russett (New York: St. Martin's, 1997), p. 7.
72. German Marshall Fund, "Transatlantic Trends 2004," p. 15, http://www.transatlantictrends.org.
73. John M. Owen IV, "International Law and the 'Liberal Peace,'" in Democratic Governance and International Law, ed. Gregory H. Fox and Brad R. Roth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 382-83.
74. Shultz, "Essential War."
75. Tellingly, Washington warned the Yemenis that it would "take matters into its own hands" if Yemen was unwilling to take action against the terrorists there. See Phillip Smucker, "The Intrigue behind the Drone Strike," Christian Science Monitor online edition, November 12, 2002.
76. Slaughter, "Mercy Killings," pp. 72-73.
77. Power, Problem from Hell, p. 350.
78. Glennon, Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power, pp. 177-78.