Jonathan Dean
Adviser on International Security Issues
Union of Concerned Scientists
1707 H Street, NW, 6^th Floor
Washington, DC 20006

Telephone: 202-223-6133
FAX: 202-223-6162
e-mail: jdean@ucsusa.org

October 9, 2002

Aside from its Tarzan-like intensity, the bombastic nationalistic tone of the present document is not unusual in an annual report called for by congressional legislation (the Goldwater -Nichols Defense Department Reorganization Act of 1986). These are reports to Congress, and thus to the American public. They are loaded with self-adulating statements of American superiority in most fields, statements which would easily alienate foreign readers. For example, the Clinton administration report of October 1998 begins, like the Bush version, with a statement of U.S. power, "The United States remains the world’s most powerful force for peace, prosperity and the universal values of democracy and freedom." However, the Clinton report immediately goes into the area of multilateral cooperation by citing the need to sustain the United States’ leadership role through "harnessing the forces of global integration for the benefit of our own people and people around the world" (p. 1, para. 1). The Clinton report contains extensive sections on arms control and non-proliferation. In contrast, in the Bush paper, non-proliferation gets a single brief paragraph in a large section entitled, "Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, our Allies and Our Friends With Weapons of Mass Destruction." Arms control receives a single mention (p. 14, para. 5) in this paragraph and in the document as a whole.

Some Important Sub-Themes

Before turning to defense, it is useful to mention two other sub-themes in the document. First, the report focuses repeatedly on relations among the big powers as providing the structure of international relations. This is also a major theme of President Bush’s June 1 address at West Point. In contrast, cooperation with the UN is mentioned once.

Second, and related to this, is the concept of creating "a balance of power that favors human freedom." This phrase appears four times in the text (Introduction, page 1, para. 2; page 1, para. 1; page 25, para. 1; page 29, para. 4) and seems to be a favorite concept of the authors (Condoleezza Rice?). The meaning of the phrase is not entirely clear – it would seem preferable to create superior power in favor of freedom rather than a balance of power -- but the sense seems to be that a coalition of great powers led by the U.S. will generate influence and pressure to the benefit of freedom. It is claimed that China and Russia increasingly share democratic values.

Defense Issues

The strategy posits that the United States will maintain military power greater than all others: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hope of surpassing or equaling, the power of the United States" (p. 29). The "threat" – rogue countries and terrorists armed with WMD, is a rearrangement of components already found in the Clinton strategy reports. Obviously, the September 11 attacks gives these familiar components greatly enhanced immediacy. And, instead of separate components presented in unrelated sequence as they were in the Clinton reports, (1) three small rogue countries which might provide the undramatic focus for two regional wars (the previous, unconvincing U.S. strategy); (2) more active terrorists; and (3) a growing WMD menace – the Bush administration masterfully packages all three elements into a single impressive menace (although the "axis of evil" is not mentioned by name).

Preemption

The main significance of this report is that it declares preemptive military action to be an official national strategy of the United States. This is an extremely intimidating declaration for the most powerful country in the world to make, because only that country will decide, without consultation with others in the UN and elsewhere and without deference to the views of others, to use its immense military power without warning. Military aggression against another country becomes a discretionary decision by the U.S. administration. Might makes right. We are back to the days of Hitler and earlier.

The administration argument for preemption is that deterrence won’t work against the combination of rogue states and terrorists arrayed against the United States. The nature and motivation of these rogue state opponents, their greater willingness "to gamble with the lives of their people and the wealth of their nations" means that deterrence may not work with them. (It did with regard to Iraq’s abstention from use of chemical and biological weapons in the Gulf War.) The report points out that deterrence would in any event not work against suicidal terrorists.

Therefore, the U.S. will act against emerging threats "before they are fully formed" (p. 2, para. 2). "While the U.S. will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively" (page 6, para. 5). Preemption is mentioned and justified at several other points in the paper (page 15, paras. 1, 5, 6, 7; page 16, para. 1). This repeated systematic emphasis on preemption seems deliberately intended as a warning and a special form of deterrence against rogue states.

Deterrence and Self Defense

The UN Charter (Article 51) says, "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." International law has interpreted the inherent right of self defense to include defensive action in anticipation of imminent attack, attack in order to frustrate pending attack. Self defense in criminal law also includes use of violence to prevent attack on oneself. However, many have been killed because the person originally attacked mistakenly believed the assailant was reaching for a weapon. This example illustrates a major weakness of preemption strategy. How does a country ascertain or know that attack on it is "imminent"?

Preemptive attack depends on observation or intelligence that there is an immediate threat. U.S. and UK intelligence reports on Iraq are, as they state, inconclusive and based on fragmentary evidence. The consequences of error could be disastrous. Announcing the preemption strategy to NATO in June, 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld said the U.S. might have to act before it had full information.

And what does "imminent" mean in terms of time? According to a recent CIA report, Iraq could have nuclear weapons within a year. Is that so imminent that all other means are precluded and that military attack is the only answer?

Preemption as a Doctrine

The main problem arises from the fact that, in its National Security Strategy, the administration elevates preemption to a formal doctrine. In the past, preemptive response has been an implicit, unstated aspect of self defense invoked by governments in individual cases, often as a post-facto rationale after military action. In clear distinction to threats of retaliation if attacked, which are frequent, preemption has not been proclaimed as a national strategy. Doing so appears aggressive and bullying; it could provoke the feared attack; and it establishes an attractive precedent for preemptive action by others. The National Security Strategy document recognizes this difficulty and argues weakly (p. 15, last para.), "The United States will not use force in all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a pretext for aggression."

There is an unevaluated assumption in the preemption approach that the target countries would try to attack the United States and its allies as soon as they have weapons to do so. This is not the case. Deterrence would have effect and even if it did not, a decision to attack results from a mix of many motives, not merely the availability of weapons. Many countries have had impressive military power and have not used it. However, it is not legitimate to threaten early use of weapons when threats from others are not pressing or evident and may not become so. And it is not legitimate to threaten early use of weapons when approaches of diplomacy and negotiation are either untried or not exhausted.

In the cold war nuclear confrontation, preemption or even the appearance of possible preemptive action was regarded as something which must be avoided because it could trigger a full nuclear exchange. We were willing then (at least in theory) to absorb a first strike. Deterrence rested in the capacity for a prompt second strike. Today, largely because the probable opponents are much weaker, we are not willing to take the risk of a much more limited blow without first obliterating the presumed opponent. A policy of preemption today could still elicit serious attack from the opponent. Preemption is also not legitimate or moral if the actual political or military objective is broader than the announced target of preemption. This could be the situation with regard to Iraq, where the ostensible objective would be to block imminent attack on the U.S. or its allies, but the actual objective would be regime change.

Preemption as a general policy is the essence of U.S. unilateralism. It is a generalized threat that the U.S. will decide for itself when to take drastic action when its information, whose details must remain secret, indicates that military attack may be useful. Because a policy of preemption has no congressional authorization although it claims the right of unannounced warlike action against a wide range of states and groups, it has an unconstitutional quality of vigilante justice armed with nuclear and precision-guided weapons.

Dimensions of the Threat

After the September 11 attacks, no one can contend that the threat of terrorist attack as described by the administration does not exist. Nonetheless, in order to justify preemptive attack, the strategy report exaggerates the threat of attack on the U.S. to a considerable extent. In the report, the administration has followed the same approach of taking possibilities, enhancing them to certainties and linking them together into a serious threat, as it has used in the specific case of Iraq. The threat portrayal is exaggerated both as regards the possible attackers and the weapons.

First, as regards the potential attackers, the governments of the three small rogue countries are surely deterred by the threat of massive U.S. retaliation. No real effort is made in the strategy paper to explain motivation of the rogue states or why they would wish to attack the United States at great risk to themselves. Their inflexible, deep hostility and disinterest in probable U.S. retaliation is stated without supporting evidence – the authoritarian rulers of Iraq, Iran and North Korea are presented as members of a different, non-human species, even though both Iraqi and North Korean leaders have recently followed long-observed patterns of at least partial submission under pressure. To say these people are indifferent with regard to their populations does not mean they face their own obliteration with indifference.

The terrorist threat is also exaggerated. Hizbullah and al Qaeda are the main ones to have struck at the United States territory or United States forces. Rogue state cooperation with terrorists is regional. No rogue state, including Iraq, has a convincingly documented record of cooperation with al Qaeda. None of the known terrorist groups in the Mideast has any corroborated capacity with nuclear or biological weapons. (Even Aum Shinryko failed with biological weapons.) Preemptive attack cannot have much value against terrorists, except for those infrequent cases where they are using large training complexes like al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Potential host governments are surely already deterred by the fierce response of the United States to the September 11 attacks. The threat of preemption is unnecessary in this case.

As regards weapons themselves, the WMD stocks of the rogue states, if any, are small, and their means of long-range delivery very limited. Indeed, the main emphasis of administration statements is not on an imminent present threat but a threat that could materialize in the future, the relatively near future in the case of Iraq. It is unlikely that, at absolute worst, any of the rogue states now has more than a handful of nuclear weapons. There is no comparison between their capabilities and the possible destruction from a cold war nuclear exchange. Chemical weapons are not suitable for nationwide attack. Biological weapons are unlikely to survive the shock of missile delivery. In spite of the administration’s worst case focus on smallpox, rogue state governments are unlikely to use or to hand over contagious biological agents because of the danger of blowback.

This argues that we are at worst faced by the possibility of a few separate localized incidents. I am not arguing that we should take on this inflated WMD giant ourselves and try to let the air out of it. Instead, we should focus on refuting the claim that rogue state governments cannot be deterred. But we should also be aware of the overall exaggeration.