CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

occurred and therefore attacks on them and those who harbour them are not pre-emptive
at all but retaliatory. It is interesting to note that pre-emption is usually only really
debated as an issue of jus ad bellum and not also one of jus in bello. Once conflict has
been joined, soldiers are not required to demonstrate imminence of threat to justify
killing enemy troops: enemy troops are legitimate targets on their way to (or, indeed,
from) the combat zone, when eating, sleeping or otherwise engaged in unthreatening
activity; from a military perspective it would be ludicrous to argue otherwise. (An
exception to this, perhaps, was the controversy surrounding the sinking of the Argentine
battleship Belgrano at the outset of the Falklands conflict). On the other hand, in
peacekeeping a different ethic is used – more akin, we have seen argued, to that of the
policeman; in such cases last resort is something required to be determined by soldiers
before each and every act of violence. Along the spectrum of conflict the situation is
less clear. Yet, much of the debate about targeted-killing or about RoE in insurgency
would have rather less substance if asymmetric war were recognised first and foremost
as war. Then issues of pre-emption no longer feature in the jus ad bellum; battle has
been joined. They need only be considered as part of the jus in bello and here it is
proportionality and discrimination that are the criteria of legitimacy, not last resort. So
long as the response meets the jus in bello requirements of proportionality and
discrimination it is then acceptable in just war terms. (The following chapter will
consider in more depth jus in bello issues associated with so-called asymmetric war).
This is fine so far as it goes. The difficulty is that this same rationale then seems to be
transferred by some, as indeed in the US National Security Strategy of 2002, to a
justification for the US action against Iraq. Vice-President Dick Cheney, for instance,
argued that 203 :
… the President and I never for a moment forget our number one responsibility:
to protect the American people against further attack, and to win the war that
began last September 11th.
… ….
In the days of the Cold War, we were able to manage the threat with strategies of
deterrence and containment. But it's a lot tougher to deter enemies who have no
country to defend. And containment is not possible when dictators obtain
weapons of mass destruction, and are prepared to share them with terrorists who
intend to inflict catastrophic casualties on the United States.
… …
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