by Max Boot
Strategika
The issue of “preemptive” war is more in the news now than at any time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The impetus, of course, is the rapid development of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, which will soon give Pyongyang the capability to hit any American city with a nuclear-tipped ICBM. President Trump has been threatening “fire and fury” in response, and warning that the United States is “locked and loaded” for war. His national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, has said that North Korea may not be deterrable and that, therefore, a preemptive strike may be justified.
In truth, the use of “preemptive” in this context is a misnomer. In international law, a “preemptive” strike is one undertaken just before an enemy attack. There are few examples of such conflicts beyond the 1967 Six Day War. The use of force in such an instance is labeled “anticipatory self-defense” and is clearly legal and logical. If Washington were to acquire intelligence that North Korea was about to attack the United States—or even U.S. allies such as South Korea and Japan—there is no doubt that a preemptive strike would be warranted.
But that is not the situation the U.S. faces at the moment. If it were to attack North Korea today, it would be launching a preventive, rather than a preemptive, war—a war intended to address a future, rather than imminent, threat. The strategic and legal rationale for such a move is far shakier. There are a few instances where preventive strikes were undoubtedly wise—e.g., Israel’s attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007)—even if not strictly sanctioned under international law. There are also widely cited examples of when a preventive war would have made sense—for example, against the growing power of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. (It may, however, be argued that such a conflict would not have been truly preventive because it would have occurred after Hitler had already provided a casus belli by violating the Treaty of Versailles.)
But history is also littered with preventive wars that are widely considered a mistake and sometimes a crime. These include the German attack on France and Belgium in 1914 (motivated by fear of rising Russian power—in order to strike at Russia the German General Staff decided to first defeat Russia’s ally, France); the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 (motivated, again, by fear of its rising power); the Israeli attack on the Sinai in 1956 (designed to avert an Egyptian threat, it led to a humiliating climb-down by Israel in the face of American pressure); and of course the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was based on a faulty premise (Iraq’s WMD program was not nearly as far advanced as U.S. intelligence feared) and plagued by faulty execution.
In addition, the U.S. was lucky to avoid a preventive conflict with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. If John F. Kennedy had given in to the advice of his more hawkish advisers and launched a military attack on Cuba, the result would likely have been a catastrophe; the Kennedy administration did not realize that the Soviets had already activated tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba and given their commanders discretion to use them.
The track record of preventive conflict makes clear that such a use of force should be approached with great caution—more caution, certainly, than displayed in the Bush administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy, which declared: “Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries’ choice of weapons, do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.”
Preemptive strikes make sense against terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or Islamic State that are plotting attacks against the U.S. or our allies. But it is a different matter when it comes to a preventive war against North Korea, which is armed not only with nuclear weapons but also chemical and biological weapons and 10,000 artillery tubes in close proximity to Seoul. Any conflict with Pyongyang should be approached with considerable caution given the large-scale loss of life that would be likely.
Such risks are not justified even by North Korea’s growing capacity to attack the American homeland. Kim Jong-un may be an unusually cruel ruler, but there is no evidence that he is suicidal, undeterrable, or bent on aggression. His aim in acquiring nuclear weapons is defensive—to allow his criminal regime to survive. North Korea has possessed formidable conventional, chemical, and biological capabilities for decades without using them, for the simple reason that its rulers realize that any large-scale conflict would result in the destruction of their regime and their personal demise. Even if North Korea acquires a few dozen nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States, it can still be deterred, just as Russia and China were (and are), by the thousands of nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. It is simply not worth rolling the dice on a preventive war under such difficult circumstances.
http://www.hoover.org/research/calculating-risk-preventive-war
Discussion (7)
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I don't question your point in this essay, just one example you gave of a preventive war. I would not include Germany's attack on the Soviet Union as a preventive war, launched out of fear of the USSR's growing power. It was an aggressive war to conquer territory for a "Greater German Reich", and I would say that rather than fear Soviet power, the Germans underestimated it badly, blinded by their own racist ideology. Best regards,
Mr. Hanson, Thank you for another terrific piece and providing some consequential insight as to what many are discussing, preventative war, particularly with North Korea. I concur with all, minus the Bush Administration's 2002 actions with Iraq for the following reasons. After the attacks of September 11, the Intelligence and National Security professionals had to ask and than answer two questions. First, what is the enemy's next most likely course of action? That would have been another plane into a building, hence the reason for the TSA. Secondly, what is the enemy's most dangerous course of action? That would be a WMD in the hands of a Violent Islamic Fundamentalists (the most accurate term for those who carried out 9-11 and Jihad across the globe, in my opinion). To address that issue, Bush asked to send our weapons inspectors back into Iraq which had been kicked out by Sadam in 1998. This means that for three years, our intelligence on what Sadam was doing with his nuclear program was uncertain at best. We know that after Desert Storm, in 1991, Iraq was less than two years away from becoming a nuclear capable country and was the reason we left the UN Weapons Inspectors in Iraq to begin with after the war in 1991. We also know that he was dealing with certain nefarious groups that were a concern for us. After negotiating for over a year, Bush put before the House and Senate a vote for the US to use force if Sadam continued to refuse access of the UN weapons inspectors. The House and Senate overwhelmingly voted for the use of force to include the likes of Pelosi, Kerry, Biden, Reid, essentially, all those that politicized the military action once it hit a speed bump. I would add that if it was not Sadam then, it would have been Sadam later. Lastly, In 2008, the success in Iraq was so good in that it was governing itself through a form of Democracy, it was producing more oil than under Sadam and it was moving in the right direction ... a western Democratic government in the heart of the Middle East. In fact it was so good that the new administration in 2009, Obama and Biden said so and that they were going to pull everyone out, against the desires of everyone in the National Security world and Military. The biggest mistake made in Iraq was not going in, but coming out the way that we did. Obama stated, we did not have a SOFA so had to leave ... however, the same agreements Obama had in Iraq are the same ones we have today, and today, we have several thousand troops in Iraq and we are getting ready to push more. Thank you for your brilliance and all you do.
Your last paragraph leads me to believe that you, as with our politicians and most Americans, do not understand the inscrutable Chinese and Korean mind.
Nice commentary. I do not agree with your premise that the NORKS are not capable or not planning preemptive strikes or preventive strikes of their own. I also do not agree that the Chinese would not use NORKs as a proxy to attack the US, Japan or South Korea in a heartbeat at a time and place of their choosing. I do not think we have any good options because of other things you describe. However, MAD, strategic patience and reliance on the rational nature of the NORKs and Chinese is not a good plan..
We will allow North Korean to build nuclear armed missiles capable of reaching the continental US. Thanks to the potency of anti-Americanism (including self-loathing anti-Americanism) we would have to wait for North Korea to nuke some of our cities and/or South Korea before we can react militarily (hopefully that never happens). The world will continue to expect the US to protect them while condemning us for it. Unless North Korea completely attacks 100% without provocation we will get blamed when they do (some will still blame us but they will be marginalized extremists). Even then, years later the Left and Islamists will ultimately figure out a way they can blame us for it. Misleading anti-American propaganda is easy in an echo chamber...
Your argument rests on the premise that North Korea's rulers realize that any large-scale conflict would result in the destruction of their regime and their personal demise. That would seem to be a dangerous assumption. Certainly the face they show the world suggests that they (to borrow a phrase from our own recent Dear Leader) "believe their own bulls***." Kim Jong Un at least appears to think he really can defeat the United States in an all-out war. Maybe some of the people around him know, and are brave enough to tell him, that it isn't so, but can we count on that in deciding only to try to deter him? If we strike first, we will surely destroy a large part -- though obviously not nearly all -- of North Korea's nuclear and conventional weapons. A war with North Korea that we start would be a horror. A war with North Korea that they start and we react to after the fact would be an even bigger horror. It isn't an obvious choice which course is less dangerous.
You wrote, "Even if North Korea acquires a few dozen nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States, it can still be deterred, just as Russia and China were (and are), by the thousands of nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. It is simply not worth rolling the dice on a preventive war under such difficult circumstances." We warred with N. Korea (We are at truce.) and we might again be engaged in a non-nuclear war. In that event, if N. Korea were faced with defeat, would it go nuclear (against the south, Japan, and the US)? Can we take this gamble? We should not. Call it preemptive or preventive, it is still war; we have a right, and a duty to our peoples, to eliminate the possibility of millions of deaths from N. Korean nuclear strikes. We should eliminate N. Korea as a threat with a preemptive-preventative tactical nuclear strike. Give China a generous buffer border, and assure them a stable and growing trade position. Russia-Iran-Syria will take note and act constructively.