This is a position most commonly associat! with the George W. , but its main problem is simply that the idea that ‘defensive’ force can be us! to prevent highly speculative future threats cannot be made compatible with a legal system that comprehensively prohibits the unilateral use of force in international relations.
Between utopia and apology and attempting
Occupy the middle ground are those who argue that self-defence is possible against a future arm! attack, but only very exceptionally, if the attack is imminent. Virtually all states and scholars that endorse some canada phone number library of self-defence in response to a future attack thus rely on imminence as a limiting criterion – it would be unreasonable for a victim state to have to suffer the weight of the first blow before it could respond, but it would also be unreasonable to launch pre-emptive responses to any threat that is not genuinely imminent.
Thus, for example, before the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 the official legal advice of the UK Attorney-General disavow! any broad theory of preventive self-defence – like the one offer! in the US Department of Justice memo providing legal cover for the war within the malaysia numbers list administration – and expressly invok! imminence as a limiting criterion, concluding that on no reasonable view could Iraq be said to be imminently attacking the Unit! States or its allies (para 3).
The big question here is of course what imminence actually means.
Here again we have two big groups of positions
On one view imminence is a temporal criterion – an imminent arm! attack is one that is about to occur. On the other why automation is key in an platform an imminent attack is one that will occur in the ordinary course of events, and it is necessary to act now to deflect it. Imminence is here an aspect of the necessity of self-defence, and contains elements of causality and intention. Here’s how one proponent of such a theory, my good friend Mike Schmitt, puts it (p. 535):