Preventive war - Misplaced Pages

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Preventive war is war launched in anticipation of a future loss of security or strategic advantage. Preventive war is sharply distinct from preemptive war, or anticipatory self-defense. Preventive war is only claimed to prevent a hypothetical attack which might occur in the future; for example, a war launched to prevent an adversary acquiring more powerful weapons. In international law, preventive war has no recognized status as distinct from a war of aggression. Many, if not most wars have been characterised as "preventive" in nature, often by both sides of the conflict.

Examples

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World War II

Both Axis and Allies in the Second World War invaded neutral countries on grounds of prevention. In 1940, Germany occupied Denmark and Norway, arguing that Britain might have used them as launching points for an attack, or prevented supply of strategic materials to Germany. In 1941, the British and Soviets invaded Iran to secure a supply corridor into Russia. The Iranian Shah appealed to President Roosevelt for help, but was rebuffed on the grounds that "movements of conquest by Germany will continue and will extend beyond Europe to Asia, Africa, and even to the Americas, unless they are stopped by military force".

The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) was motivated by the knowledge that American military power was rapidly increasing, while American policy towards Japan was becoming more adversarial. America was moving battleships and strategic bombers into the Asian theatre, an action which was construed as a long-term potential threat but was not a real or anticipated attack.

1967 Arab-Israeli War

A dispute over territorial waters led Egypt to mobilize its military forces against Israel. Israel could not maintain a comparable level of mobilization due to its smaller population, and so decided to strike first. This has been described as a preemptive war, but in the absence of an imminently anticipated armed attack, more closely fits the definition of a preventive war..

2003 Iraq War

The 2003 Invasion of Iraq was justified in part as a preventive war, on the grounds that an Iraqi weapons buildup might threaten America and Britain in the future and/or possible alliances with international Islamic terrorist groups that share a common hatred of Western countries.

Views of Preventive war

Legal scholars generally agree that preventive war is not legally distinct from aggression, "the supreme crime" in international law. Commentators as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower and Noam Chomsky have argued that accepting one preventive war would open the floodgates to all preventive wars, reducing the world to "the law of the jungle". Others, especially Western neo-conservatives, have argued that preventive war is a useful and necessary tool in an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and that international law favours order and national soverignty over more important factors such as preventing genocide or liberating oppressed peoples.

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