Attacking a state that has not attacked is aggression, whatever it is called

The argument

Opponents argue that the moral character of preventive war is settled by what it actually involves: one state invading another that has not attacked it. The people killed in such a war have done nothing; the state attacked has violated nothing; and the attacker has initiated the violence. Calling this defence describes the attacker's motive rather than the act, and opponents hold that motives do not convert aggression into something else. The argument stresses what the prohibition accomplishes. A rule confining war to response against actual attack gives every state a clear and verifiable condition it can satisfy by not attacking anyone, and gives every other state the assurance that restraint will be reciprocated. Opponents argue that this is the foundation of whatever order exists between states. Once prevention is admitted, no state can make itself safe by peaceful conduct, because safety now depends on another government's reading of its intentions — and the rational response is to arm, which makes the feared conflict more likely. The doctrine thus produces the danger it claims to answer. Opponents add that the precedent cannot be confined to the state invoking it. A justification available to one is available to all, including to adversaries and to states with far weaker evidence and worse intentions. Any power claiming the right to strike first concedes the same right to everyone who feels threatened by it. Because preventive war is the initiation of violence against a state that has committed no attack, and admitting it destroys the only rule that makes peaceful conduct sufficient for safety, this argument concludes, it cannot be justified.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents reply that this definition would require a state to wait until an announced and visibly prepared attack lands, which under modern weapons may leave it with no capacity to defend itself at all. They argue that self-defence is a right to protect against attack rather than to retaliate for one, and that treating the absence of a first blow as conferring immunity rewards an aggressor for completing its preparations undisturbed.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The phrase has not attacked is carrying the argument and is ambiguous between a state that will not attack and one that has not yet. The premise describes the act in terms that already settle the question of whether it can be justified. [Rejecting P2] A rule met by not attacking supplies assurance only among states that observe it. Where one does not, the premise's condition protects the state that breaks the rule and binds the state that keeps it. [Rejecting P3] The claims about arming and about extending the licence to adversaries are empirical predictions about how states respond to a norm, offered without support, and they would have to be weighed against the consequences of the restraint the premise recommends.