-Caveat Lector-
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Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 21:57:45 -0700
From: Franklin Wayne Poley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "CANADA-L Political,Social,Cultural,Economic Issues in Canada"
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Subject: U.S. Pre-Emptive Attack Would Be Unprecedented (fwd)
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Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 00:42:07 -0400
From: CERJ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: U.S. Pre-Emptive Attack Would Be Unprecedented
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/d_index.asp
U.S. Pre-Emptive Attack Would Be Unprecedented
by David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
Washington -- The United States has never in its history attacked another
country to pre-empt a suspected attack, says a report recently released by
a research arm of the Congress, apparently contradicting recent assertions
by top Bush administration officials.
"The historical record indicates that the United States has never, to date,
engaged in a 'pre-emptive' military attack against another nation", says
the report, published September 18 by Congressional Research Service
analyst Richard Grimmett, and released online Thursday by the State Department.
In attempting to build a case for a possible war against Iraq, senior U.S.
officials in the past week have argued the contrary -- that there are
precedents in U.S. history for pre-emptive military action.
"It's not a new doctrine. It's been around for as long as warfare has been
around", Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee at a hearing Thursday. "I can give you example after example in
our own history of pre-emptive actions", he said, citing the U.S. action in
1989 to arrest Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, and cruise missile
attacks ordered by former U.S. President Bill Clinton against a suspected
chemical weapons facility in Sudan (see GSN, Sept. 27).
At a press briefing the same day, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
contended that the U.S. blockade ordered by former President John F.
Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis offers an example of
pre-emptive military action.
"In my view, establishing what he called a quarantine, what the world
thought of as a blockade, and preventing, if you will, the Soviet Union
from placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, that was certainly self-defense, it
was certainly anticipatory self-defense, it was certainly preventative, and
we were very close to a crisis of historic proportion", Rumsfeld
said. "And I think it's not unfair or inaccurate to say that he � engaged
in pre-emption."
Questions of Definition
The CRS analysis argues that none of those actions constitutes pre-emption,
though it does not specifically address the cruise missile attacks ordered
by Clinton. It defines pre-emptive use of military force as that taken
against another country to "prevent or mitigate a presumed military attack
or use of force by that nation against the United States."
While the United States did attack Spanish forces prior to an attack from
them during the 1898 Spanish-American War, the report says, the principal
U.S. goal for action "was to compel Spain to grant Cuba its political
independence."
A case using "a less stringent definition" of a pre-emptive attack might be
made for U.S. action during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the report says, but
it rejects that, saying the blockade did not constitute an attack. The
missile crisis, the report says, represented "a threat situation which some
may argue had elements more parallel to those presented by Iraq today --
but it was resolved without a 'pre-emptive' military attack by the United
States". Pre-emptive force then was contemplated, but ultimately not used,
the report says.
In other cases -- such as World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the
1990-91 Gulf War and the Bosnian and Kosovo operations in the 1990s -- U.S.
military action occurred in response to attack and was not pre-emptive in
nature, the report says.
U.S. military interventions in Latin America, specifically in the Dominican
Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983 and Panama, the report says, were based
on concerns that U.S. citizens or other U.S. interests were being harmed by
the political instability in those countries at the time of the
interventions, the report says. Those were not pre-emptive actions, it
says, because those countries were not expected to attack the United States
militarily.
The United States has attempted covert action, the report says, to prevent
foreign groups or figures from gaining or maintaining political power,
citing Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and Cuba in 1961. It adds, however,
that none of those instances qualify as pre-emptive acts because the sizes
of U.S. forces were much smaller than a major conventional military
operation. "It seems more appropriate to view U.S. 'covert actions' as
adjuncts to more extensive U.S. military actions", it says.
An Expanded Definition
In their statements, Rumsfeld and Powell appear to be making a case for a
more expansive definition than that used in the CRS study. For example,
Kennedy in 1962 "decided to engage in pre-emptive action, preventative
action, anticipatory self defense, self defense, call it what you wish",
Rumsfeld said Friday.
According to customary international law dating to the mid-19th century,
pre-emptive force is allowed if a threat is deemed imminent and
overwhelming -- for instance, if armies are seen massing on a border. The
administration released a major national security strategy document last
month arguing for pre-emptive action, calling for a reinterpretation of the
customary law in order to address challenges posed by attackers using
weapons of mass destruction, which might not exhibit tangible signs of an
attack (See GSN, Sept. 20).
Search for Consensus
The question of definitions and precedents for pre-emptive action has
potential implications for the Bush administration's case for attacking
Iraq to remove the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and eliminate
the threat posed by the country's weapons of mass destruction.
The administration has been struggling to persuade three permanent members
of the U.N. Security Council to authorize force against Iraq if it
continues to defy previous Security Council resolutions. Meanwhile,
administration officials have been attempting to build a case under
customary international law by asserting a new understanding of that law,
according to Frederic Kirgis, a law professor at the Washington and Lee
University.
"They are essentially trying to say that there are precedents for this and
that since we got away with it, I don't think Rumsfeld would put it that
way, we created law already and it would authorize us to do what we're
trying to do now", he said.
The administration has encountered opposition from U.S. senators of both
major political parties and from foreign governments. Administration
officials are going to the trouble to obtain justification under
international law, Kirgis said, because, "We have to get along with the
rest of the world. We have to have other governments on our side if we
want to be effective with terrorism, and for international diplomacy. So
there are pressures to comply", he said.
There also is a concern about setting a precedent for other governments to
act pre-emptively, Kirgis said. Some Russian analysts have suggested that
pre-emptive action against Iraq, despite a lack of public evidence that the
country is planning an imminent and overwhelming attack, could provide
justification for Russian action in the republic of Georgia.
Israel is said to have used pre-emptive force twice, one approved by much
of the international community and one rejected. The U.N. Security Council
and General Assembly rejected proposals to condemn Israel for launching a
pre-emptive attack in 1967 on Egypt and other Arab countries after Egyptian
forces were moved toward Israel. The Security Council unanimously
condemned Israel after it bombed a partially built Iraqi nuclear reactor in
1981.
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