Preemption, Self-Defense, and Just War

During the Republican presidential debate hosted by CNN a couple of weeks ago, Congressman Ron Paul made a remarkable statement:

“We in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or go to aid of somebody,” he said. “But now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war — we have rejected the Just War theory of Christianity.

“We have to come to our senses about this issue of war and preemption and go back to traditions and our constitution and defend our liberties and defend our rights,” he added.

This is a lovely thought, as evidenced by the 250 supportive comments to the CNN post. It's also factually incorrect:

Are we really to believe that this country never before waged war even though our national security was not being directly threatened? What then was the first of this republic's wars, its war for independence? That colonial rebellion, which would last eight long years, began as a disagreement over tax policy, not because our security was threatened—directly or indirectly.

Skipping lightly over the undeclared naval war with France (1798-1800), the same could be said of the War of 1812, which was a war of our choice. Indeed, at the time it wasn't easy for Americans to decide whether to go to war against France, Great Britain, neither or both.

The Mexican-American War needn't have been fought if this country had been willing to recognize Mexican claims. It, too, was a war of choice, not necessity.

And what about the Spanish-American War? Our national security was scarcely threatened by the decaying Spanish empire, much of which we soon made our own. Nor did we have to put down the Philippine Insurrection that followed — for years.

There was considerable hesitation before the United States chose to enter the First World War, too, under a president who had just campaigned for re-election under the popular slogan, He Kept Us Out of War.

Nor did American involvement in the Second World War begin, as it does in the movies, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the United States was being drawn into that conflict long before war was formally declared.

For the purposes of this discussion, it suffices to say that Thomas Aquinas' theory of just war holds that only waging war in self-defense is morally justifiable. And today, many in the western world share Ron Paul's premises by interpreting the meaning of national "self-defense" as to require any military action to be a response to a prior incident of direct military aggression from another (and to some that other entity must be another nation-state). This interpretation may indeed be appropriate in the non-lethal environment of a school playground, but in any potentially lethal context, especially the context of international aggression, such an interpretation is an invitation to catastrophe.

Whether viewed as a vital training tool, an odious doctrine of militarism, or a cool scene in Full Metal Jacket, The Marine Corp Rifleman's Creed is utterly unambiguous in its conceptual understanding of self-defense (emphasis added):

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than the enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. My rifle and I know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, or the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit.

My rifle is human, even as I am human, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other.

Before God I swear this creed. My rifle and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy.

On the battlefield or in any lethal encounter, self-defense is, by definition, preemptive. What Ron Paul and so many others confuse with self-defense is magnanimity, a willingness to stand and take the first hit as a show of disambiguating virtue in our use of force. When one is very strong and all potential enemies are relatively very weak, magnanimity may be a harmless conceit. In the age of nuclear proliferation and third-world weapons of mass destruction, however, such high-mindedness represents an immoral foolishness of the highest order.