Is “Preventive War” always wrong?

I answer that question in the negative in my lastest essay at Open Source Politics.

I think we face a serious risk that the extreme claims of the “Bush Doctrine,” combined with the rocky progress of the occupation of Iraq, will lead to the sort of overgeneralization among progressives that followed the War in Vietnam. Even if this particular war turns out to have been a bad idea, and even if some of the folks around Bush have a truly scary streak of military adventurism near the core of their being, the general proposition that a nation must always wait to be attacked before defending itself seems to me awfully hard to defend.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

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