The administration’s Global Strike Plan may fail the Just War tests and be strategically unsound.
The just war question is raised – obliquely – by the title of William Arkin’s opinion piece in Sunday’s WaPo.
Not Just A Last Resort? A Global Strike Plan, With a Nuclear Option
Arkin writes:
”In the secret world of military planning, global strike has become the term of art to describe a specific preemptive attack. When military officials refer to global strike, they stress its conventional elements. Surprisingly, however, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which runs counter to traditional U.S. notions about the defensive role of nuclear weapons.”
Defense planners plan against contingencies that they can foresee or imagine. The confluence of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction presents a qualitatively new kind of threat. Deterrence (which literally means to “terrorize away from”) is unlikely to work against a terrorist group that has nothing to lose. A group that has nothing to lose is unlikely to be deterred by even the most credible of threats.
Defense planners are thus left with the task of planning to prevent a terrorist attack before it occurs. Of necessity, they plan on using existing weapons and forces rather than the future forces. This is sometimes called a “come as you are” war.
These two realities lead to the President’s justification for preemption in the national security strategy:
“…we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country;”
As President Bush has said, terrorists do not send calling cards announcing their plans.
Even if one thinks that this rationale is conclusive, just war thinkers, Church officials, and strategists should be asking some very basic questions. For example, Arkin quotes Adm. James O. Ellis Jr, head of Strategic Command as saying;
"If you can find that time-critical, key terrorist target or that weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpile, and you have minutes rather than hours or days to deal with it, how do you reach out and negate that threat to our nation half a world away?"
The assumed answer to the question is that in this case preemptive attack is compatible with the just war criteria of last resort. This may be the case – but the operative word in this statement is “If”. Given the immediate past performance of our intelligence community, it seems unlikely that administration officials will know enough to act correctly, even using force as a last – or any – resort.
Col. Franklin Eric Wester, writing in the U. S. Army War College journal Parameters questions the appropriateness of preemption:
”As stated in the introduction, a new paradigm for right thinking and right acting in war may be emerging. Preempting a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack (or any attack) against innocent people is a morally desirable action. In the case of weapons of mass destruction, the questions remain, “When is imminent, and when is too late?” But these questions can be framed in Just War language. The Bush doctrine of preemption builds on a conviction that using armed force is just when based on partial but sufficient evidence of a clear, unpredictable, and volatile danger that threatens the security of US citizens,liberty for people in other nations, and the rational structure of nation-states. Redefining imminent, as called for in the National Security Strategy, may mean a clear danger is not necessarily a present danger.
The 2002 National Security Strategy, then, is used to justify selective killing of some to achieve a greater good of liberty for many others, driven by an idealistic approach for universal human freedom. This is a strategic move oriented toward future vision and away from the recent, realist historical politics of a balance of power or a balance of terror. In the ethical framework of increased good for the most people and balancing ethical ends and means, the Bush doctrine advances democracy at the tip of a spear. This application of military force presents a moral dilemma.
The case of Operation Iraqi Freedom is a catalyst for further thinking about this new ethic regarding the use of force, particularly the leaner, rapid, decisive, lethal new force of the US military. The pivotal issue about retaining “imminent threat” but redefining its criteria for preemptive self-defense is driven by the threat of terrorists with the means and motives to employ weapons of mass destruction. Until further moral thinking provides a more substantial ethical framework for decisionmaking, however, it seems proper to withdraw references to preemption as a doctrinal element of the National Security Strategy. Further, even should nations proceed toward a new ethic for launching war preemptively or preventively, consideration of second-order effects is important. Even accepting the benefit of preventing Iraq from obtaining nuclear weapons, will other nations pursuing nuclear weapons move more quickly and covertly, believing the United States would attack during their pursuit of WMD (such as Iraq) but not nations possessing them (such as North Korea)?”
Just war advocates should also ask if the Global Strike Plan meets the test of “right authority”. The founding fathers sought to insure that the President would have less authority to start a war than did King George. James Madison provided in the Constitution that the President would have to obtain permission from Congress in the form of a declaration of war. The citizens, whose sons would be sent to war, thus retained some degree of control. While this provision worked imperfectly even in the 18th century, the principle was strategically sound. This is one of the lessons the Army learned from Vietnam. Reasonable assurance of public support is a strategic necessity. If the public turns against a war, failure is certain, no matter how many battles are won. The principle of "right authority" makes sense in both just war and strategic terms.
The need for right authority creates a dilemma. The people, acting through their elected representatives, may not consent in advance to preemptive use of force against an unspecified attack. After the attack, they may not support the ensuing actions that could be required. This will be particularly true if, as in the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the justification turns out to have been based on faulty intelligence.
Carl von Clausewitz, specified another strategic necessity, one that the Army returned in its lessons drawn from Vietnam as specified in the Weinberger doctrine: Political and military objectives should be clearly defined. Von Clausewitz wrote that no one in his right mind should begin a war without knowing exactly what he intends to accomplish. Preemptive attack, of its very nature requires concealment of intention. Concealment means that the "right authority" will have no opportunity to examine the administration’s purpose. If the administration does not face this examination, it is likely to go to war for objectives that are not clearly defined.
There is no way to judge if undefined objectives are strategically sound or – just.
Here is my problem: even after asking all of these questions, I find myself agreeing with Adm. Ellis. Faced with a certain, immanent attack, we should preempt.
Here is a prediction: Military ethicists and journalists will continue to ask questions and probe the issues in advance. Church officials will wait until a crises, haul out its previous just war documents and, having failed to read the "signs of the times", find themselves sitting on the sidelines.
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