Senator Edward Kennedy
Speech on Iraq War and Pre-emptive Attacks
Monday, 7 October, 2002
We face no more
serious decision in our democracy than whether or not
to go to war. The American people deserve to fully
understand all of the implications of such a decision.
The
question of whether our nation should attack Iraq is
playing out in the context of a more fundamental
debate that is only just beginning—an all-important
debate about how, when and where in the years ahead
our country will use its unsurpassed military might.
On
September 20, the Administration unveiled its new
National Security Strategy. This document addresses
the new realities of our age, particularly the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and
terrorist networks armed with the agendas of fanatics.
The Strategy claims that these new threats are so
novel and so dangerous that we should "not hesitate to
act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of
self-defense by acting pre-emptively."
But
in the discussion over the past few months about Iraq,
the Administration, often uses the terms "pre-emptive"
and "preventive" interchangeably. In the realm of
international relations, these two terms have long had
very different meanings.
Traditionally,
"pre-emptive" action refers to times when states react
to an imminent threat of attack. For example, when
Egyptian and Syrian forces mobilized on Israel's
borders in 1967, the threat was obvious and immediate,
and Israel felt justified in pre-emptively attacking
those forces. The global community is generally
tolerant of such actions, since no nation should have
to suffer a certain first strike before it has the
legitimacy to respond.
By
contrast, "preventive" military action refers to
strikes that target a country before it has developed
a capability that could someday become threatening.
Preventive attacks have generally been condemned. For
example, the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was
regarded as a preventive strike by Japan, because the
Japanese were seeking to block a planned military
buildup by the United States in the Pacific.
The
coldly premeditated nature of preventive attacks and
preventive wars makes them anathema to
well-established international principles against
aggression. Pearl Harbor has been rightfully recorded
in history as an act of dishonorable treachery.
Historically,
the United States has condemned the idea of preventive
war, because it violates basic international rules
against aggression. But at times in our history,
preventive war has been seriously advocated as a
policy option.
In
the early days of the Cold War, some U.S. military and
civilian experts advocated a preventive war against
the Soviet Union. They proposed a devastating first
strike to prevent the Soviet Union from developing a
threatening nuclear capability. At the time, they said
the uniquely destructive power of nuclear weapons
required us to rethink traditional international
rules.
The
first round of that debate ended in 1950, when
President Truman ruled out a preventive strike,
stating that such actions were not consistent with our
American tradition. He said, "You don't 'prevent'
anything by war...except peace." Instead of a surprise
first strike, the nation dedicated itself to the
strategy of deterrence and containment, which
successfully kept the peace during the long and
frequently difficult years of the Cold War.
Arguments
for preventive war resurfaced again when the
Eisenhower Administration took power in 1953, but
President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles soon decided firmly against it.
President Eisenhower emphasized that even if we were
to win such a war, we would face the vast burdens of
occupation and reconstruction that would come with it.
The
argument that the United States should take preventive
military action, in the absence of an imminent attack,
resurfaced in 1962, when we learned that the Soviet
Union would soon have the ability to launch missiles
from Cuba against our country. Many military officers
urged President Kennedy to approve a preventive attack
to destroy this capability before it became
operational. Robert Kennedy, like Harry Truman, felt
that this kind of first strike was not consistent with
American values. He said that a proposed surprise
first strike against Cuba would be a "Pearl Harbor in
reverse. "For 175 years," he said, "we have not been
that kind of country." That view prevailed. A middle
ground was found and peace was preserved.
Yet
another round of debate followed the Cuban Missile
Crisis when American strategists and voices in and out
of the Administration advocated preventive war against
China to forestall its acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Many arguments heard today about Iraq were made then
about the Chinese communist government: that its
leadership was irrational and that it was therefore
undeterrable. And once again, those arguments were
rejected.
As
these earlier cases show, American strategic thinkers
have long debated the relative merits of preventive
and pre-emptive war. Although nobody would deny our
right to pre-emptively block an imminent attack on our
territory, there is disagreement about our right to
preventively engage in war.
In
each of these cases a way was found to deter other
nations, without waging war.
Now,
the Bush Administration says we must take pre-emptive
action against Iraq. But what the Administration is
really calling for is preventive war, which flies in
the face of international rules of acceptable
behavior. The Administration's new National Security
Strategy states "As a matter of common sense and
self-defense, America will act against such emerging
threats before they are fully formed."
The
circumstances of today's world require us to rethink
this concept. The world changed on September 11th,
and all of us have learned that it can be a
drastically more dangerous place. The Bush
Administration's new National Security Strategy
asserts that global realities now legitimize
preventive war and make it a strategic necessity.
The
document openly contemplates preventive attacks
against groups or states, even absent the threat of
imminent attack. It legitimizes this kind of first
strike option, and it elevates it to the status of a
core security doctrine. Disregarding norms of
international behavior, the Bush Strategy asserts that
the United States should be exempt from the rules we
expect other nations to obey.
I
strongly oppose any such extreme doctrine and I'm sure
that many others do as well. Earlier generations of
Americans rejected preventive war on the grounds of
both morality and practicality, and our generation
must do so as well. We can deal with Iraq without
resorting to this extreme.
It
is impossible to justify any such double standard
under international law. Might does not make right.
America cannot write its own rules for the modern
world. To attempt to do so would be unilateralism run
amok. It would antagonize our closest allies, whose
support we need to fight terrorism, prevent global
warming, and deal with many other dangers that affect
all nations and require international cooperation. It
would deprive America of the moral legitimacy
necessary to promote our values abroad. And it would
give other nations—from Russia to India to Pakistan—an
excuse to violate fundamental principles of civilized
international behavior.
The
Administration's doctrine is a call for 21st
century American imperialism that no other nation can
or should accept. It is the antithesis of all that
America has worked so hard to achieve in international
relations since the end of World War II.
This
is not just an academic debate. There are important
real world consequences. A shift in our policy toward
preventive war would reinforce the perception of
America as a "bully" in the Middle East, and would
fuel anti-American sentiment throughout the Islamic
world and beyond.
It
would also send a signal to governments the world over
that the rules of aggression have changed for them
too, which could increase the risk of conflict between
countries such as Russia and Georgia, India and
Pakistan, and China and Taiwan.
Obviously,
this debate is only just beginning on the
Administration's new strategy for national security.
But the debate is solidly grounded in American values
and history.
It
will also be a debate among vast numbers of
well-meaning Americans who have honest differences of
opinion about the best way to use U.S. military might.
The debate will be contentious, but the stakes – in
terms of both our national security and our allegiance
to our core beliefs – are too high to ignore. I look
forward to working closely with my colleagues in
Congress to develop an effective and principled policy
that will enable us to protect our national security
and respect the basic principles that are essential
for the world to be at peace.
Senator Edward M.
Kennedy represents Massachusetts in the United States
Senate.