You. Welcome, everybody. My name is Cheney Ryan.
I'm a fellow of the Program on Ethics, Law and Conflict, as well as for the other part of the year, a professor of law at the University of Oregon.
It is our great privilege to have Professor Dean Chatterjee here today, who is a distinguished professor at the law school at the University of Utah,
and who, among his other accomplishments has just published a book on the ethics of preventive war.
I should say it's a special treat for me to introduce Dean.
I've known him for many years in America.
Some of us date things by relating to which country America had invaded most recently,
and I met Dean somewhere in between the invasion of Grenada and the invasion of Panama.
So that was quite a while ago. But Dean has always been someone who I've greatly admired as someone who not only works on war,
but works on a lot of other issues too, including global poverty, global justice, etc.
Dean will talk to us for 25 or 30 minutes.
And then David Roden, also from Iraq, will do some comments and then we will follow that with discussion from everybody.
DEAN Thank you, John, for this very kind introduction.
My voice is almost gone, but it's still audible.
I've been travelling a lot and the last leg of my flight had been a long one and that's when something must have happened.
But hopefully if I speak slowly, [INAUDIBLE] be able to hear me.
So that's why, based on David's suggestion, I made my draft much shorter.
I should not want to inquire non-stop boring reading with this voice,
but interruption with more informal chatting and more room for my David to respond to any to comment.
And of course, I'm eager to hear from you. My book, The Ethics of Preventive War, just came out,
got released in the United States last week and maybe here in this country two weeks before that.
And this is an important book on this current big controversy on the permissibility of preventive war.
Oh, of course not. The one that came out not that long ago is Henry.
Henry and David's book on prevention and prevention.
That's quite well known, of course. So here, of course, I'll be slighting Henry on something that you will get to see.
But basically what I am planning to do in a short focussed format is instead of going
through all the details of all the scholars and authors of what they have said,
oh, how they have been developing their ideas, where their flaws are and all that, that's going to be extremely boring and tedious.
And for that, of course, you can you can read the ideas either in this book, in my writing site and in any other place,
I've tried to give you my response as to where I would like to take this debate on preventive war in view of the current problems of international,
international law, ethics and issues are basically how I see it is this this idea of preventive war.
There has been some talk that due to the current nature of warfare in the 21st century,
there is obviously the blurring of the distinction between pre-emption and prevention,
and that made our attitude toward preventive war a bit more open, along with other things that I would mention.
There has also been the other side that is getting more and more prominent, and I'm part of that.
That side, which is that preventive war, it's permissibility are allows more war and less peace.
I don't want to make it just in sort of a crass utilitarian sense as to what's wrong with prevent war in case there is real.
Big need for preventive war. We have to see how in a rather ethical and constrained manner, perhaps we can leave some limited scope for that.
I would like to show that even if only we leave some limited scope for that, it can get out of control and out of hand very easily.
And so what is the way to go about it? I would like to show that we have to devise some other ways where instead of preventive intervention,
perhaps we should go for a different paradigm, which I have dubbed preventive on intervention, preventive non-intervention.
And what exactly is that? Part of the idea of this just peace theory, just peace theory, that this idea of starting from the just war paradigm,
if we start with the just peace paradigm, we would not get to this routine nor lead toward preventive intervention.
It would be somewhere where we find that preventive intervention is getting almost the need for that is almost redundant.
If we start with this just peace approach. What exactly is this approach?
I would like to develop it a little bit here. Of course, we had ideas on some of these issues for a long, long time, for the last 25, 30 years.
We know how in-depth the reactor his ideas are.
I David also is a critic of preventive war, and I have so much sympathy for his views.
So hopefully between our two views or two sides, something cohesive will emerge.
So I may have to sit down to take a look at this computer, but hopefully I'll be loud enough.
Loud enough that you get to understand me.
Okay. So and I'll be stopping from time to time, too,
to make myself more clear and discern the certainty factor, the certainty factor of an imminent danger.
Debated considerably in the just war tradition is now put to severe test.
In view of in view of the challenges of today's warfare.
This this most certainty factor of an imminent danger.
How do we measure it and when should do it?
What should we respond to it? Okay,
so this blurring of the blurring this blurring of the distinction between pre-emption and prevention in
matters of peace and security seems to have contributed to a more open attitude toward preventive war.
Scholars also point out that the permissive interpretation of preventive measures can be found
in the later just war tradition of gotchas and halts as part of reasonable self-defence,
and also in Chapter seven of the United Nations Charter pertaining to the Security Council in matters of international peace and security.
That's one side which seems to claim that sovereignty and non-intervention might be the accepted norms in international law,
but stipulated measures suggestive of preventive intervention are permissible with Security Council authorisation.
Thus. Making preventive war legal under current international law.
That's one side. In fact, even here, we have, of course, controversy.
For example, David Brody has very much to play.
Not even forget about preventive war.
Even when it comes to ending war, it's not that clear that international law allows into war even for get up and prevent war.
So that's, of course, okay.
But the other side that tends to question this idea of a more broader attitude, a more permissive attitude toward an not toward preventive war,
are leading to a broader type of military engagement in the name of self-defence and in rare
cases now for the so-called rescue rescue wars or the humanitarian military intervention.
Okay. The other side goes something like this,
that the provision of preventive war in self-defence can get unduly interventionist, making the world less secure.
The world needs a justice based approach that addresses the underlying causes of global tension and crisis.
Deprivation and humiliation. Deprivation and humiliation in our inequitable global order are the two chief reasons for tension and resentment.
Creating hostilities, confronting deprivation through economic development and responding to humiliation through political recognition
would go a long way toward mitigating tension and resentment and diminishing the global democracy deficit.
I'll comment on that a bit more, don't you?
Studies have shown that non-military measures can be more effective in confronting terrorism than military actions,
which may even prove to be counterproductive.
Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has famously observed that the ingredients of enduring
global security lie not necessarily in deploying a nation's military force for global safekeeping,
but more importantly in promoting just development and comprehensive human rights.
Well, look, this gets a bit off my view. I'm just coming to old ink so that I can get to the gist of it.
My view that countries should promote prevention in non-interventionist terms by relying on the soft power of diplomacy and collaboration.
This is the path toward just peace.
Just peace, which I promote as the antidote to preventive war.
If we do not place a principle premium on it, on a proactive and comprehensive,
non-interventionist policy of just peace, then the option of preventive war.
However, a constraint could gain undue legitimacy leading to more war, not less.
The idea of just peace relies on the global project of democratic governments collaborative global political order.
Let me just use one recent example, an application from New York Times.
As you put from New York Times, it was Yadlin, the former Amos Yadlin, the former chief of Israeli military intelligence,
via commenting on a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Now it's got. Mr. Obama will have to shift the Israeli defence establishment's thinking from a focus on the zone of immunity,
as he calls it, to a zone of trust, to a zone of trust, unquote.
However he can choose, however he constitutes the zone of trust in terms of preventive and military intervention.
He writes, quote, What is needed is an ironclad American assurance that that if Israel refrains from acting
in its own window of opportunity to justice in the interest of saving for passage,
you have to share it this way so that he can hopefully.
However, he constrains the open quote zone of trust, close quote, in terms of preventive military intervention.
He writes, open quote, What is needed is an ironclad American assurance that if Israel refrains from
acting in its own window of opportunity and all other options have failed,
Washington will act to prevent a nuclear Iran while it is still within its power to do so.
Close quote. In contrast to this expanded just war military approach, my idea of just peace would construe the,
quote zone of trust in terms of preventive non-intervention,
creating a zone of trust among nations through a collaborative, proactive approach with an emphasis on recognition,
syslog and assistance makes the need for preventive military measures obsolete.
The gradual move in this direction is the move towards just peace, which I have dubbed dubbed preventive non-intervention.
Unlike the principled anti-interventionist arguments of the pacifist, this stance is anti-interventionist in a contingent sense.
It is not necessarily against intervention per say.
As, for instance, when intervention is the only option for pre-emptive reasons, it is against the way it is usually.
It usually takes place or against its feasibility in a complicated and interdependent world.
But this limited provision for pre-emption, when construed on the premise of just peace but not just war as argued above,
would not provide the moral mandate and the slippery transition to preventive military measures in the name of peace and security.
In other words, a just peace approach sanctifies the traditional Augustinian just will ban on
anticipatory military measures in a way that the premise of just war cannot.
A just peace initiative allows measured military response if needed,
as the only option for self-defence or humanitarian reasons, either after an attack has occurred or when an attack is imminent.
In the strictest sense of imminence require an interception when the offence is evidently erected.
Arab irrevocable. I share Kant's critique of Grootes and Vettel's doctrine of just war, and the doctrines provide the pretext for justifying wars.
My idea of global democracy as the Foundation for Peace is quite similar to Kant's
vision of global of a global federation of Democratic or Republican states,
like a universal civil society held together for peace and collective security,
where each state retains all its sovereign rights except in the right to wage war.
In such a justice based global democracy that strides towards inclusion, participation and empowerment.
No member state would be considered an outlaw state. Hence, there would be no rogue states that can be targeted for preventive military strikes.
This democratic global order would vastly increase the prospect of internal democratic reform within states in a peaceful manner a peaceful,
sorry and peaceful manner with initiatives generated by the states themselves
because of the privilege of recognition and membership in the global body.
They would not like to compromise this position through failure, granting democratic rights to citizens.
For inept states, they would be held from a common pool of funds for development assistance and building stable
institutions without coercive conditions attached in such a collaborative global order.
The rhetoric of military intervention for imposing democracy from without would ring hollow also.
The idea of military strike against a group of subversive non-state actors in remote
areas who are about to be shipping lethal virus for rape for release in populated areas.
Alan Buchanan's hypothetical scenario for justifying preventive intervention would be an empty argument.
If the actors are domestic terrorists, then the question of intervention in a sovereign state does not arise.
And if they had known foreign terrorists. Then in a collaborative global order, the idea of intervention goes against the thrust of collaboration.
There are numerous collaborative avenues for responding to such distant threats.
A few comments. Just. Just passage.
To not let becoming bitter about some of the ideas that we find in some of these authors.
I did mention the idea for Rogue State. That's David Luban and David Luban.
He has been writing important stuff on preventive war.
He's very much against the idea in general of preventive intervention.
But he makes a rather small.
So he calls it small exception of intervention.
Action in the case of a so-called rogue state, when there is imminent or obvious danger coming from that lawless state.
Okay. Now, the problem is this. The global order is so tilted and so inequitable.
It's very easy, as we know quite often, that powerful states or coalition of powerful states can easily, for the sake of global heads.
They can target weaker states to try to find ways to intervene there, to control them, which has been happening quite often.
It can never happen the other way round, even though we know that it's not the case that no type of threat happens from the point of view,
from the sight of two powerful states to the involvement of the states.
But it's always the case that the powerful states to target development states often in the name of the rhetoric of rogue states.
Now it is this way, even when it comes to terrorism.
Think about it. That's also a political rhetoric and propaganda district.
Political rhetoric. Why so? Well, think about it.
When just a few powerful states control the rest of the world through their military power for the sake of getting global resources,
moving in their direction, uninterrupted on their terms.
And they would like to maintain that status and privilege.
By even using military means if needed, and without the United Nations Security Council approval,
if they find it necessary, then the whole idea of who the terrorist states are and who are the who the rogue states are,
that gets to be rather vague as we know or seems like it's a form of global terrorism
that often the vulnerable states are held hostage by the power of the powerful states.
Given this theme, then the question is not if Luban, David Luban leaves open the provision of the rogue state,
that doesn't end up being a very small exception, as you like to put it.
It could open up the room for all types of excuses for intervention.
The way I want to show it here, that we have this idea of preventive non-intervention and down the road,
I explained that a little bit more in the sense of just peace in a collaborative global order of inclusion,
discourse, understanding and health, mutual help.
Then, by definition, the idea of a rogue state is not that it's not just act.
I mean, using or naturally rogue states happened when, as I mentioned at the beginning of this little essay, when there is deprivation,
humiliation, neglect, all that once powerful and resourceful states tend to overcome some of these global inequity.
The whole idea of rogue states where they could be viewed as possible dangerous doesn't that doesn't quite arise in that sense.
So that's David you know I let it become is oh well this way if I get down and we can I'd like to also mention Michael Doyle and Michael Laughlin.
Michael Walzer, early on in his classic restatement of the just war doctrine,
has rather blurred the idea of imminence in what is or what could be an imminent danger.
So much so that often people say that that's an example, perhaps, of intervention rather than pre-emption.
And yet, Michael Walzer is extremely reluctant to call his idea interventionist.
You'd like to use the word pre-emption. All true. So you might do that.
But he has opened that way.
And he, of course, has got to and others to show that he has his total support when it comes to his understanding of the last for doctrine.
But Michael Doyle, in his so-called jurisprudence, Jewish jurisprudence of prevention,
a very carefully articulated doctrine of of of of those rare cases when we may really need to think of prevention because we just can't wait.
And how could you do it so that something like the fiasco of the Iraq war, in the guise of the so-called Bush doctrine would not happen.
He lays down quite a few procedure issues.
He calls them both substantive and procedural.
And it lists several wonderful lawyers about the the the extent of real danger of international law, of United Nations Security Council and all that.
But it leaves room for unilateralism if needed.
But that also has to be, in his judgement, based on what he calls the jurisprudence of prevention, meaning the carefully construed need.
Do you really present it to the rest of the world that was needed?
That's why the country is going in that direction based on this imminence immediate danger
to its national security or a massacre of some sort in a country where people are helpless.
Now, the point is this the moment goes in that direction.
We understand his concern,
and that's the concern of some of these extremely well-meaning international just folks here as contemporary industrial theorists like Michael Doyle,
David Luban. And I'm getting to other countries shortly where we see that they're caught in this conundrum, in this conflict.
On the one hand, we know that we can not simply promote war mongering and making provision for
preventive war has invariably the inevitable direction of going in that direction.
At the same time, that could be those occasions when unless we act, the consequences could be so catastrophic that it would be a disaster.
In fact, Michael was the early on talks about, in the case of a civil civilizational challenge to our community,
if we let something of this sort, like the Nazi danger to the allied forces happen, we have to respond.
What do we need to know? Let problem is this with Michael Doyle.
When he talks about assessing the severity of danger or finding that it truly passes the test of necessity and all that,
who decides those things if there is a go alone provision in it?
Because as Michael Walzer himself famously said, when it comes to existential threat, there is no such thing as legality.
So it's a matter of, again, subject to an individual assessment.
So a powerful nation, just as we are found all through, especially in recent times with the Bush Doctrine,
even before that and even after George Bush term of practice is still continuing that what is happening is that all countries can,
in the name of the global mandate, need it for its own national security, can claim a global mandate for its policies.
And once we move in that direction, then we get back to where we have been.
And Michael died. And in fact, I've had a conversation back and forth with him on that.
And he is the one who wrote a wonderful endorsement of the book, and he nonetheless mentioned that, I understand you a fair go at everything.
But the reason I tried to construe this jurisprudence of prevention is seriously because of this conundrum that we have to do something.
Otherwise things might get out of hand, but we have to do it in such a careful fashion that it would be extremely limited.
But he says that you are not the first one.
I've been routinely hearing that this has this lead to the potential for something much more drastic, as we have found in the Bush Doctrine,
even though it's the Bush doctrine that he has in mind to make sure that never happens again like that, like the Iraq war.
And that direction is going on with a little bit. It's interesting.
He is coming from the perspective of global justice, not from the perspective of.
Sovereign equality. Sovereign equality that you find in Michael Walzer that you find in, but that you find not all.
Michael Doyle Sovereign equality is a statist approach, statist approach.
It's not a globalist approach. It's not cosmopolitan.
And there is a state order that dictates the global policies.
And we know that it's a very unique, inequitable order in statist order.
Unfortunately, that's how things are in current international law.
But kind of gets into the deeper issues of global unrest.
And there he brings in the ideas of human rights violations.
He brings in the ideas of deprivation, inequity, all that.
And he says that those things need to be addressed to come up with what he calls a theory of global justice.
Now, what's the difference between sovereign equality and global justice?
Basically, this, as I just mentioned a little bit already.
Even when we have a word of sovereign equality,
there could be inequity and human rights violations within states and a lot of resentment and all that, too, within states.
Whereas in a world where global justice is operative along the line of peace, just peace is a highly idealised theory, of course, and presenting.
And I would contrast that with the other side, the show where it's maybe idealised and maybe hard to really implement fully.
But the other side is even harder to implement. And it just has it has had a track record, a proven disastrous failure, because given that,
can't we do better, which is also a lot less costly and more effective?
So that's the direction I'm going. So I wouldn't be cutting it.
Even though he goes in the direction of just peace by promoting the idea of global justice.
He does bring in this idea of a limited portion of provision for preventive intervention.
The problem is this, and that's where I tend to show, he says,
that it doesn't have to be intervention necessarily to attack country, but to intervene in some other sovereign places.
But suppose in those cases, we find those non-state actors, rogue actors,
about to ship the lethal virus into some populated area for their misguided ideas.
What can we do?
Well, my idea was that in a collaborative global governance, if we know there are known terrorists, and if they happen to be in our own country,
then the question of preventive intervention by definition doesn't arise because we are not going to go any other countries.
But if it's in some other country and if they're known terrorist activity, that's this idea that we know that they're about to do that.
That in a collaborative global order,
there are there are numerous opportunities to respond to that in a fashion where it's just a one sided flexing of muscles is not needed.
That's the direction I'm going. So I'll make more comment on that.
So where do you think the gradual emergence of the global human rights culture in the last 50 years is achieved?
A certain level of international recognition for justice when there is an egregious violation of negative human rights
with severe poverty and radical inequality in the socio economic arena are still not recognised as urgent human,
urgent human rights concerns. This quote unquote holocaust of neglect perpetuates the issues.
Demonstrating this holocaust of neglect perpetuates deprivation, destabilisation and violence, creating the presumed need for preventive intervention,
whereas prevented non-intervention and practised as a systematic antidote to the inequity and neglect in the world,
can take us beyond the need for preventive use of force effective non-military alternatives in the case of terrorism, policing,
surveillance, diplomacy, education, international cooperation, recognising and meeting genuine grievances in the case of government.
Persecution of its citizens. Diplomatic pressure.
Non-violence. Coercive measures, including carefully developed sanctions aimed at the rulers rather than the ruled.
Economic and financial measures aimed at dictators and legal sanctions against powerful perpetrators.
These methods, though likely to be effective, are not guaranteed to fully succeed and are not easy to implement in practice.
But the same is even more true with preventive war. Understanding the idea.
This is the concluding notion. Understanding the idea of just peace can help us understand the seeming paradox of
indifference leading to intervention and proactive engagement leading to non-intervention.
What I'm sorry, I was I was suggesting to that we that we go on to David's comments and then we can have a discussion.
And I know he has more things to add, but actually it's probably best to be moved on.
Okay, David, thanks very much. And thanks so much, Dean, for coming along and for heroically persevering,
despite the best effects of of of agents, biological agents to to intervene.
I should also just mention that this event, as well as being hosted by ELAC,
is also hosted by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York,
and particularly by the Global Ethics Network, of which the three of us, Dean, Cheney, myself, are members.
This event is also a part of the Global Ethics Network, a set of other events and initiatives.
So very, very briefly, I maybe just will make a couple of comments before handing over to Charlie and then go to discussion.
And I wanted to, rather than commenting specifically on, on Dean's proposals, because I'm very,
very much in in support of the idea of moving towards some conception of just war.
And I think it's very interesting what this is. Sorry, I've just piece I think it's very interesting that this is one of a number of context
in which scholars are in many different ways trying to move beyond just war paradigms.
So rather than responding specifically to that,
I thought I would just try and situate very briefly the debate about pre-emption in the context of a broader
debate about how we understand human rights and particularly the conditions for forfeiture of human rights.
So the assumption that I'm going to make is that any kind of war, pre-emptive or not unilateral,
multilateral or U.N. authorised that a basic precondition for any justified war is going to be that the persons,
the enemy combatants that you use force against do not, in the relevant sense, have the right not to have force used against them.
So in the techniques that we say that they are liable to the use of force.
So one of the one of the ways of phrasing the question about pre-emption then, is to situate it in the context of a broader set of questions,
which is about how ideas of proximity effect our conception of the rights that
persons have and the conditions under which they lose or forfeit rights.
So we might think about the questions about pre-emption as being questions about temporal proximity, right?
So the distance in time that an agent is from an attack and we might want to look at this in the context of other
proximity relationships and the effect that they have on the response of rights and responsibilities of agents.
So we might want to think about three different contexts where these proximity questions arise.
So one of these would be in the context of what we might call social relational proximity.
So the idea here is that certain kinds of rights and responsibilities increase or have a greater stringency,
the closer social relationship to that agent, or as we're familiar with,
the idea that you can have greater responsibilities of care to our children than we do to strangers,
greater responsibilities of care to perhaps our friends,
colleagues occur nationals potentially than we do to strangers who do not share those relationships.
Another set of issues may have to do with the effect that spatial proximity has to our rights and responsibilities.
And again, there is some intuitive force to the idea that spatial proximity can indeed have
an effect on the rights and responsibilities that we bear towards other agencies.
This, of course,
was famously denied by Peter Singer and his and his paper on famine and affluence with the example of the child and the and the fountain.
And so the debate about pre-emption can be seen in the context of this as it as a debate, as also debate about the effects of proximity.
But here, what we're worried about is not social relational, relational proximity.
So spatial proximity, it's temporal proximity. But what's different about this context compared with the other two are a couple of different things.
The first one is that. It seems to relate to negative duties, duties not to harm in the way that relational proximity and spatial proximity,
to the extent that they are persuasive, seem to only relate to duties to assist.
Right. So we don't believe that we have any less of an obligation not to actively harm somebody a very, very long way away from us in another country,
someone who is not socially related to us, but arguably we do in terms of duties to assist the temporal.
The temporal proximity questions are interesting because they precisely relate to questions of duties not to harm.
They're also different in the sense that there are two dimensions to the temporal proximity question.
So we ask the question both about the temporal distance after a wrongful attack, and we ask questions about which is the.
And we ask questions, which is the pre-emptive question about the proximity prior to the attack.
Right. So so pre-emption, we ask, are we permitted to use defensive force a considerable period of time before the attack actually occurs?
But is a symmetrical set of questions, which is what are our permissions to use, as it were,
a defensive force against a person who is responsible for a past wrongful attack.
So you might think, for example, about the case of a person who wrongfully attacks me.
He tries to kill me, but he fails to kill me. That leaves me with a dangerous weather, with a wound.
And a year later, that wound becomes infected, flares up, and it threatens to kill me.
And the only way that I could save myself would be by killing the original aggressor, taking out his organ, and transplanting it into me.
So the question is, does the fact that this the temporal proximity is now a year later, does that make a difference to the defence of rights?
And intuitively, I think a lot of people think, yeah, it does make a difference if you if you can use force in that context.
At the very least, perhaps the force is less that you can use and maybe it's for different reasons as well.
So that's proximity after the effect. Pre-emption is different again, because we're asking about the the temporal proximity prior to the attack.
And one of the things that a number of people have said is that the proximity itself isn't doing any of the work.
What's really doing the work is conceptions of necessity or, as Dean put it, conceptions of certainty.
So it's something that Jeff McMahon has argued in a number of places. It's like that.
The length of time itself is irrelevant. The temporal proximity is just a proxy for whether it's necessary to engage in the defence of
force against the person who at some later point in time will in fact harm you ingesting.
No, I think that can't be right. And one way to see that is to think about examples like this one.
All right. So imagine that I'm looking at my nemesis through a high powered telescope,
and I can see that he's in my study and he's reading through a series of my papers.
And one of those papers is a letter written by May to his wife, proving that I've been unfaithful with his wife.
And I know based on his character, that as soon as he sees that letter, he is almost 100% certain,
as soon as we can be to fly into a homicidal rage, in effect, to act upon that.
So I know that in a very short period of time, he will, in fact, form and act upon a murderous intention.
And I'm sitting there with my high powered rifle and I can shoot that person.
So the question is, is necessity in that case sufficient?
And most people would say, no, it's not necessity itself.
It's not all that's doing the work. There's something deeper there, which is about agency and responsibility.
So one of the thoughts that you might have is, well, the temporal condition is in part a requirement that there is a genuine act which is sufficient
to ground responsibility for the unjust harm in the agent against whom one uses defensive force.
Now, that's, again, in a way, a form of scepticism against the idea that it's proximity itself alone that's doing the work.
But I think it still gives a closer reading to that than the one that ties it, particularly to necessity.
And one of the worries that you might have, particularly about notions of pre-emptive preventive war in this case,
is that the agency and responsibility requirements, if that's what we think they are, seem very,
very marginally and problematically to be met in cases of pre-emptive, certainly preventive,
and I think even in many cases a pre-emptive war, because one might worry here about whether what you have is pre-emption against.
To put it crudely, the wrong moral agents. Right. So you have a state that is engaged in some forms of.
Active preparation for a wrongful aggression, let's say, against another body.
Now we ask the question, then, Will who amongst the agents within that state have taken the steps sufficient to assume
responsibility for a wrongful attack such that they might be appropriate objects of defensive force?
Well, it seems pretty clear that the agents that we're going to identify by asking that question
will be at the very most members of the government and members of the senior leadership.
The ordinary members of the the armed forces are doing what they always do.
They are training, preparing in a state of readiness.
But those if we think about it in the model of a criminal conspiracy, they don't seem to have taken that active step where they look like, in a sense,
the person reading through the letter,
we may have reasonable certainty that they will at some point in the future be actively involved in a wrongful attack.
But until they themselves have taken that step of agency, it seems very,
very hard to understand how they themselves could have that liability to defensive force.
Let me leave it there and maybe pick up on some of those things.
Well, we want to invite comments.
I'll begin with one or two of my own. I think that they're very interesting philosophical issues about pre-emption and prevention.
You run into almost all of them in domestic law in the United States, in the law of self-defence involving what's called the battered spouse issue.
And these are cases where women have good reason to believe that their life is in danger.
And how much can they act?
In particular, can they use lethal force against someone without an imminent threat, etcetera, etcetera, as preventive pre-emption?
So I think the issues that David is raising and those raised in the literature about the rights and liability to attack are fascinating issues.
I have to say, quite frankly, they have nothing to do with international affairs as far as I can see.
The problem that people who believe in preventive war or pre-emptive war is giving us many examples of where we can,
but in the most minimal sense agree that it was justified. Interestingly, when you study the battered spouse problem,
almost every case you read about that there's one where you're sympathetic to the spouse on some level that she had good reason after she did.
The problem is, is that the discussion of pre-emptive war and preventive war is now under the shadow of the invasion of Iraq.
And someone, it seems to me, to make a case for is going to have to show why this is not just something that we can imagine justified,
but can be justified in the real world, because the way the discussion often goes, as well as so that the President is not George W Bush,
but an enlightened, nice guy with only good intentions.
Assume that the U.S. military is not the institution that it is, but something that has only justice on its side.
Assume that we have perfect knowledge of the threat and assume that the sea has turned to lemonade, gas and Somalia stuck.
Okay, we have rules like this, like no prevention because we live in the real world.
We have rules about police not doing things because we live in the real world.
And I think that that's part of the debate here, is how much some of these domestic arguments map onto the international case.
I think Dean's suggestion is is just peace is great.
It seems to me that what he's basically suggesting is disconnecting sovereignty from armed violence.
The modern state system arose with the notion of what it meant to be a sovereign state, just was to be able to employ armed violence.
And it seems to me that we're moving actually not towards a world.
I think we still need sovereignty, along with moving towards as a world in which sovereignty is disconnected from our own violence.
And that's part of what I hear in the kind of federalist model that they suggest, and that seems to be very attractive.
So with that, I'll invite comments.