The Gamble of War Is It Possible to Justify Preventive War?

by Colonomos, Ariel

• ISBN13: 9781137018946
• ISBN10: 1137018941
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-02-06
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

With the new millennium, prevention has become a popular doctrine in international politics. One of its most noticeable features is that democracies become inclined to strike first. In the US, it has served as the banner of the neoconservative movement but it also gathered support from some liberals. It has also inspired several Israeli interventions. Does the preventive use of force meet the normative criteria that prevail or should prevail in a democratic system? Or does it endanger the legal and ethical traditions that characterize the history of Western military ethics? This book analyzes the justification of preventive war in contemporary asymmetrical international relations. It focuses on the most crucial aspect of prevention: uncertainty. Luck plays a significant role in these hazardous preventive wars, with unforeseen and sometimes unforeseeable consequences. This book bridges the explanatory analysis of uncertainty in preventive war making (using field work and data) with a normative account of prevention. It builds a new framework where the role of luck whether military, political, moral, or normative is a corrective to the traditional approaches of the Just War tradition.

Author Biography

Ariel Colonomos is a senior research fellow at CNRS (the National Center for Scientific Research) in Paris and a research professor at Sciences Po, Paris. He has previously taught at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. His most recent book is Moralizing International Relations: Called to Account (2008).

Table of Contents

To come