Strict conditions can separate genuine prevention from pretext

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that both rival answers are responding to real considerations, and that the disagreement is better resolved by specifying conditions than by a blanket permission or prohibition. The case against is strongest where the evidence is thin, the decision is unilateral and the alternatives are unexhausted; the case in favour is strongest where the threat is grave, documented and close. A rule that distinguishes those situations captures what each side is right about. The conditions proponents set out are demanding and cumulative. The threatened harm must be severe and the preparations for it demonstrable rather than inferred from capability alone. The window must be genuinely closing, so that waiting forfeits the ability to respond. Every non-military alternative — negotiation, inspection, sanction, deterrence — must have been tried and failed, not merely considered. The force used must be proportionate and confined to removing the threat. And the judgement must be authorised by a body other than the state proposing to act, so that the party with the interest is not also the judge. Proponents argue that conditions of this kind do the work each rival answer leaves undone. They prevent the absolute prohibition from binding a state whose destruction is being visibly prepared, and they prevent the permissive view from supplying cover for wars of choice, since a government acting on a pretext will fail the evidential and authorisation tests. That such conditions will rarely be satisfied is, on this view, a feature: preventive war should be available but almost never available in practice. Because the justification turns on circumstances that can be specified in advance, this argument concludes, preventive war can be justified under set conditions and not otherwise.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents reply that conditions of this kind have never in practice constrained a government that had decided to act: evidence is assembled to fit, imminence is asserted, alternatives are declared exhausted after token attempts, and authorisation is sought selectively or dispensed with. They argue that a conditional permission therefore operates as a permission, supplying the vocabulary in which wars of choice are justified, while an absolute prohibition at least denies them that cover.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The two poles are described and the ground between them is left out, which is where almost every actual case falls. Evidence is rarely either thin or grave, documented and closing, and the premise does not say how the intermediate case is to be classified. [Rejecting P2] Each condition is itself a matter of contested judgement: what counts as demonstrable preparation, as a closing window, as alternatives exhausted. A test built from contestable terms is applied by the state that wants to act, which is the problem it was introduced to solve. [Rejecting P3] That a government acting on a pretext would fail the evidential and authorisation conditions assumes it could not satisfy them by assembling the evidence it wants and obtaining authorisation from willing partners, a possibility the premise does not rule out.