Preemptive or Preventive War: A Discussion of Legal and Moral Standards

摘要

Common in today's discourse about U.S. foreign policy are the terms preemptive and preventive war. An enormous problem with the use of these terms is that there has been little attempt to clarify their specific meanings, much less initiate a discussion over their ethical and legal implications. This problem has resulted in an environment of ambiguity for determining and discussing a standard for when the United States is to engage in war. The objective of this essay is to raise the level of understanding of the important distinctions between these two terms by examining their legal, moral, and current uses. Through this investigation, I hope to achieve a clearer understanding of the war-making policies of our nation and all others. First, it is necessary to discuss the significant intersection between the concepts of ethics and international law. At this point in history, one might describe international law as a system of largely unenforceable norms that nations share to better predict and evaluate behavior between states. What comprises these customs tends to emerge out of a concerted effort to search through historical precedent to find—and, when possible, to codify—normative interaction. There is no official body entrusted with this task, and it therefore might be explained as an accepted inter-subjectivity. One might even say that, often times, these norms or laws arise from each state's choice to refrain from a particular behavior since it would not like to see this specific action visited upon itself. I suggest that this is the same process that allows one to arrive at similar ethical determinations. Inter-subjectivity, or understanding of a shared reality, seems to be the critical building block for establishing a code of ethics or norms for a law of nations.