Grasping neither war nor peace: the folly of cosmopolitan preventive war

ABSTRACT

Some liberal-cosmopolitan theorists have sought to justify preventive war by proposing new institutions meant to ensure the accurate evaluation of non-imminent threats, and also make any war against them proportionate. In the debate over these proposals there has been little consideration of the post-war conditions any preventive war will likely produce. This is a serious omission; many theorists emphasize the degree to which the ability to secure a just peace is crucial to whether a war is proportionate. This article begins to remedy this missing piece of the debate over what it calls ‘cosmopolitan preventive war’ (CPW). After reviewing the debate, it discusses preventive war in the context of theorizations of post-war justice, or jus post bellum. It then investigates CPW’s ability to account for jus post bellum concerns through a counterfactual 2003 Iraq CPW. Showing that the proposed institutions do not do enough to account for the likely, and possibly immense, post-war harm wrought by preventive war, the article concludes with a negative evaluation of the CPW program and a brief statement on the ethics of preventive war in general.