CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

contrast, pre-emptive war is launched against an attack already substantially set in
motion, though not yet fully actualised.
Many wars of the 19 th and early 20 th Centuries can be perceived as preventive but as the
costs of war have increased so the counter-factual arguments on which the case for
preventive war must rest, have looked increasingly insufficient. However, in response
to the proliferation of WMD and a global terrorist threat, arguments for preventive
action have re-surfaced (though often mislabelled ‘pre-emptive’). Just war tenets of
proportionality and last resort are both invoked in the case against anticipatory war:
denying prevention and constraining pre-emption. Nevertheless, cases are rarely clear
cut and opinio juris suggests a spectrum of international permissiveness towards
anticipatory action.
The re-emergent case in favour of anticipatory action today rests on the changing nature
of the threat: WMD are seen as overriding the stay of imminence because imminence is
too late for effective response; terrorism – and especially suicide-terrorism – argues
against the alternative strategy of deterrence because the would be attackers are simply
non-susceptible to it. The standard rebuttal of a right to anticipatory action – that it
inclines all sides to perceive greater threat, thus increasing the likelihood of a pre-
emptive attack, in an unending vicious circle – is held not to apply in the case of a
terrorist threat. Terrorists – it is argued – are neither rational actors nor do their acts
depend upon ours. They are not acting in response to a threat from us but would attack
us whatever our stance, therefore anticipatory action does not increase the threat.
However, this argument is itself flawed. It treats terrorism as if it were an enemy and
not a tactic and ascribes a similar motivation to all those who would use terrorism
against us. A further significant problem with the currently emergent (and
predominantly US-led) doctrine of anticipatory action is that it seems to be confusing
pre-emptive and preventive action: using reasonable sounding arguments for the former
to justify the latter.
It will likely always be the case that when it comes to their own self-defence, nations
will act as they believe necessary, regardless of any international legal stay. However,
239