Victor Davis Hanson, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Stephen Stedman–THE BEST DEFENSE: Preventive War–Videos
THE BEST DEFENSE: Preventive War
Ron Paul A Beacon of Truth 2010
Background Articles and Videos
Ron Paul asks Hillary Clinton if she supports Bush Doctrine 12/02/2009
MSNBC Rachel Maddow – Obama War President
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Preventive War
“…A preventive war or preventative war is a war initiated under the belief that future conflict is inevitable, though not imminent. Preventive war aims to forestall a shift in the balance of power[1] by strategically attacking before the balance of power has a chance to shift in the direction of the adversary. Preventive war is distinct from preemptive war, which is first strike when an attack is imminent.[1] Due to the speculative nature of preventive war, in which the adversary may or may not be a future threat, preventive war is considered an act of aggression in international law.[2] Some apologists for aggressive wars have argued them to be justified as Preventive. Arguments as to whether a war was a preemptive war or a preventive war, or a preventive war rather than an war of aggression can be very controversial as they are in effect arguments as to whether those wars were justified or not.
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“…Both Axis and Allies in World War II invaded neutral countries on grounds of prevention. In 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, arguing that Britain might have used them as launching points for an attack, or prevented supply of strategic materials to Germany.[citation needed] In 1941, the British and Soviets invaded Iran to secure a supply corridor into Russia. The Shah of Iran appealed to President Franklin D. 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”.[4]
Japan v USA 1941
Though normally considered an act of aggression by Japan, apologists for Imperial Japan have argued that this war was preventative.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was motivated by a desire to remove U.S. naval power from the Pacific to allow the Empire of Japan to advance with reduced opposition into the rich Southern Resource Area (the Dutch East Indies, the Malay peninsula, the Philippines, etc). In 1940, American policies and tension toward Japanese military actions and Japanese expansionism in the Far East increased. For example, in May 1940, the base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet that was stationed on the west coast of the United States was forwarded to an “advanced” position at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The move was opposed by some Navy officials, including their commander, Admiral James Otto Richardson, who was in consequence relieved by President Roosevelt.[5] [6] Even so, the Far East Fleet was not significantly reinforced. Another ineffective plan to reinforce the Pacific was a rather late relocation of fighter planes to bases located on the Pacific islands (e.g., Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines). For a long time, Japanese leaders, especially leaders of the Imperial Japanese Navy, had known that the large military strength and production capacity of the United States posed a long-term threat to Japan’s imperialist desires, especially if hostilities broke out in the Pacific.[citation needed] War games on both sides had long reflected these expectations. …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventive_war
Bush Doctrine
“…The Bush Doctrine is a phrase (used by some) to describe various related foreign policy principles of former United States president George W. Bush. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.[1]
Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate; a policy of spreading democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating terrorism; and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.[2][3][4] Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.[5]
National Security Strategy of the United States
The main elements of the Bush Doctrine were delineated in a document, the National Security Strategy of the United States, published on September 17, 2002.[6] This document is often cited as the definitive statement of the doctrine.[7][8][9] It was updated in 2006[10] and is stated as follows:[11]
| “ | The security environment confronting the United States today is radically different from what we have faced before. Yet the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD.
To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense. The United States will not resort to force in all cases to preempt emerging threats. Our preference is that nonmilitary actions succeed. And no country should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression. |
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Components
The Bush Doctrine has been formulated as a collection of strategy principles, practical policy decisions, and a set of rationales and ideas for guiding United States foreign policy.[12] Two main pillars are identified for the doctrine: preemptive strikes against potential enemies and promoting democratic regime change.[12][13]
The George W. Bush administration claimed that the United States is locked in a global war; a war of ideology, in which its enemies are bound together by a common ideology and a common hatred of democracy.[12][14][15][16][17][18]
Out of the National Security Strategy, four main points are highlighted as the core to the Bush Doctrine: Preemption, Military Primacy, New Multilateralism, and the Spread of Democracy.[19] The document emphasized preemption by stating: “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.” and required “defending the United States, the American people, and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders.”[20]
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in 2006 stated that: “If I were rating, I would say we probably deserve a D or D+ as a country as how well we’re doing in the battle of ideas that’s taking place. I’m not going to suggest that it’s easy, but we have not found the formula as a country.” [17]
Unilateralism
Unilateral elements of the Bush Doctrine were evident in the first months of Bush’s presidency. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer used the term, unilateralism, in February 2001 to refer to the president’s increased unilateralism in foreign policy, specifically regarding the president’s decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty.[21][22]
There is some evidence that Bush’s willingness for the United States to act unilaterally came even earlier. The International Journal of Peace Studies 2003 article The Bush administration’s image of Europe: From ambivalence to rigidity states:[23]
| “ | The Republican Party’s platform in the 2000 presidential elections set the administration’s tone on this issue. It called for a dramatic expansion of NATO not only in Eastern Europe (with the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania) but also, and most significantly, in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The purpose is to develop closer cooperation within NATO in dealing with geopolitical problems from the Middle East to Eurasia. The program therefore takes a broad and rather fuzzy view of Europe.It would be premature at this stage to say that the US administration has had a fundamental change of heart and shed its long-ingrained reflexes in dealing with Russia.
When it comes to the future of Europe, Americans and Europeans differ on key issues. The differences seem to point toward three fundamental values which underpin the Bush administration’s image of Europe. The first is unilateralism, of which the missile shield is a particularly telling example. The American position flies in the face of the European approach, which is based on ABM talks and multilateralism. An opposition is taking shape here between the leading European capitals, which want to deal with the matter by judicial means, and the Americans, who want to push ahead and create a fait accompli. |
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Attacking countries that harbor terrorists
The doctrine was developed more fully as an executive branch response in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The attacks presented a foreign-policy challenge, since it was not Afghanistan that had initiated the attacks, and there was no evidence that they had any foreknowledge of the attacks.[24] In an address to the nation on the evening of September 11, Bush stated his resolution of the issue by declaring that “we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”[25] President Bush made an even more aggressive restatement of this principle in his September 20, 2001 address to a Joint Session of Congress:[26]
| “ | We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. | ” |
Ari Fleischer, the Press Secretary to President Bush at the time, later wrote in an autobiographical account of that address, “In a speech hailed by the press and by Democrats, [the President] announced what became known as the ‘Bush Doctine'”.[27] The first published reference after the 9/11 attacks to the terror-fighting doctrine appeared September 30 in an op-ed by political scientist Neal Coates.[28]
This policy was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001,[1] and has since been applied to American military action against Al Qaeda camps in North-West Pakistan.[citation needed]
Preemptive strikes
President Bush addressed the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) on June 1, 2002, and made clear the role Preemptive war would play in the future of American foreign policy and national defense:[29]
| “ | We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long — Our security will require transforming the military you will lead — a military that must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. | ” |
Two distinct schools of thought arose in the Bush Administration regarding the question of how to handle countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea (“Axis of Evil”[30] states). Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as U.S. Department of State specialists, argued for what was essentially the continuation of existing U.S. foreign policy. These policies, developed after the Cold War, sought to establish a multilateral consensus for action (which would likely take the form of increasingly harsh sanctions against the problem states, summarized as the policy of containment). The opposing view, argued by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a number of influential Department of Defense policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, held that direct and unilateral action was both possible and justified and that America should embrace the opportunities for democracy and security offered by its position as sole remaining superpower. President Bush ultimately sided with the Department of Defense camp, and their recommendations. …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine
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