Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Simple common sense also provides good reasons against striking preemptively. First, a war of defense should take place on your own soil, against the invading enemy. Second, our highly advanced intelligence capabilities should enable us to diffuse a threat long before it becomes imminent. Third, we should cultivate good relations with foreign countries and treat them justly so that they have no reasons to threaten us. Fourth, preemptive war can be used along with government secrecy as a deceptive cover for aggressive war, and many American citizens would not be able to tell the difference. This happened in 2003. Now that most Americans understand this trick, they are unwilling to engage in further preemptive wars, no matter how serious a foreign threat the Bush administration claims we are facing. Thus preemptive war by its very nature is offensive war--and offensive war is aggressive war.  

This brings us to another disturbing quality of preemptive war: it violates international law. According to the UN Charter, the sovereignty of each individual nation is to be respected, and no nation is allowed to violate the sovereignty of another nation by any method, including armed invasion. The Catholic Church teaches in Paragraph 2313 of the Catechism that international law must be respected: "Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes." On the other hand, wars of national liberation are justified when a nation has groaned under a persistent, criminally tyrannical regime, when all other peaceful means of removing the despotism have failed, when war would stand a good chance of success, and when a war would not cause greater evils than the regime itself is causing. The Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War of 1991 were all justified wars of national liberation, two of which were officially sanctioned by the United Nations. Preemptive warfare may don the colors of national liberation, yet it remains illegal.  

Furthermore, the concept of preemptive war is a slippery slope, both morally and economically. Dictators and corrupt politicians can use foreign threats to justify their own aggressive behavior. In addition, if the US has the right to attack any country deemed to pose a serious threat, then do not all other nations have that right as well? France could invade Syria or Indonesia, Germany could attack Russia, England could launch a war against Ireland, or a coalition of Muslim nations could even pounce on the US under the pretext of eliminating a serious threat. I consider preemptive war as always unnecessary and unjust, regardless of the threat--which itself may be invented to justify what would otherwise be seen as naked aggression.

The neoconservative doctrine of preemptive war is based on a presumption in favor of, rather than against, the use of force. Thus at its heart it is opposed to the Catholic doctrine of just war. Are our terrorist enemies so monolithic as to require us to abandon traditional norms? Are we so gravely threatened that we cannot defend our own country on our own soil? Finally, the whole concept of preemptive war is based on the fallacious idea that the United States has the right and the obligation to do whatever is "necessary"--to invade whichever countries "necessary", destroy whichever mosques and hospitals "necessary", torture whomever "necessary", and kill whomever "necessary"--to protect its national security. National security has become the chief god America worships. No, in its quest for security the United States must not abandon civil laws and moral guidelines.

The ultimate underlying problem I have with preemptive war is that the small circle of neocon individuals in our country who are championing it most vigorously are doing so not to protect our national security, but to advance their personal, unlimited mega-corporate interests. That is seriously wrong, as the Catechism says in Paragraph 2316: "The short-term pursuit of private or collective undertakings cannot legitimate activities that promote violence and conflict among nations and compromise the international juridical order."  

However, it is important to make a distinction between preemptive war and other forms of preemptive action in the face of a real threat. For instance, if a clear aggressor is pointing a gun at you and is ready to use it, you have a right to shoot him in order to protect yourself. Let us extend this analogy to a hypothetical attack on the US.  

Say the CIA or DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) uncovers a plot by the notorious dictator of North Korea to declare war on America within one year by raining conventional missiles on dozens of US military bases. Assuming the intelligence is clear, unambiguous, and unmistakable, the next step is candid negotiation. Leaders in charge of national security must do all in their power to prevent war, including sincere negotiations with the enemy to find out why the aggressor wants to attack us in the first place and what we might have done to stir up his aggression. In the event that misunderstandings and disagreement persist, we could rally international pressure against the regime of Kim Jung Il to deter him from attacking us. If even that failed, two basic options would be available. First, we could neutralize the threat of war before it actually materializes. I would send special agents into North Korea to arrest Il on charges of conspiring to attack the US and deliver him up to trial on the International Criminal Court. If that course were not feasible, the last option would be to safely intercept and destroy the missiles in our airspace, before they reach their targets (our military bases). This would be essential preemptive action to protect America, not preemptive war, and as such would be totally justified. We have the intelligence and military capabilities to do this.

When America is confronted with the threat of war, this would be a proper and sensible course of action to undertake. It would also honor the memory of our ancestors, who faced total nuclear annihilation by the Soviet Union without resorting to preemptive warfare. Did we pound Russia with nuclear bombs? No. Did we overthrow the Soviet regime and establish a republic? No! Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Nixon dealt wisely and tactfully with this imposing threat. Their strength deserves admiration, for they did not succumb to fear, thinking war was the only option. Instead, they became experts in using nuclear deterrence, non-nuclear forms of superiority, and shrewd diplomacy to build mutual trust and cooperation. These policies succeeded in bringing down the mighty Soviet Union without a single American shot (or nuke) being fired. Let this be a lesson to today's preemptive war advocates, who enjoy freedom from the menace of Communist Russia thanks to the patience and wisdom of their forbears.

The blind acceptance of the preemptive war concept has gone so far that people like me who solidly reject it based on moral principles are regarded as wacky lunatics. But preemptive war is a slippery slope fraught with unimaginable dangers.