Customer Reviews

Preventive War and American Democracy

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Scott Silverstone has written an exceptional book about American political norms acting in the face of potential threats, from the start of the Cold War to the 2003 Iraq War. Preventive War and American Democracy is a ground-breaking theoretical and emperical analysis of how U.S. policy has been influenced by what he calls the "anti-preventive war norm" or the moral argument that the United States should never initiate a preventive war - an aggressive attack to eliminate the potential for a future conflict. The discussion starts with a very useful overview of international relations terminology and background on preventive war, material and moral factors, and ideas about the use of force to coerce potential adversaries before they can effect a substantial "power shift" in the international environment. This discussion is key as it lays out the clear limit of Silverstone's argument, that moral factors, not just material cost-benefit analysis, can and have had significant play in the determination of American strategy.

The author employs several case studies to evaluate the state of the norm, who was most influential expressing it, and if it carried weight with various presidents in deciding how to confront the logic of preventive war. The most interesting studies were the Cuban missile crisis, the confrontation over China's first atomic bomb, and the North Korean nuclear crisis. In these particular cases, Silverstone traces the evolution of an exception to the "anti preventive war norm," namely nuclear proliferation. The discussion on the Clinton administration's view of North Korea, the policy arguments amassed to justify preventitive war, and the very muted opposition on strictly moral grounds is compelling and interesting as to how it influenced George Bush's administration to argue for preventive war with Iraq.

Silverstone accomplishes all this without any political prejudice - his analysis and evaluation is even-handed and objective. His conclusions about the future of preventive war in American policy are equally profound and illustrate how true the Clausewitzian dictum is, that in war the result is never final.

I thought the early chapters were a very detailed and complete investigation of the Cold War era , revealing characters and players not normally discussed , whilst the latter chapters were very exciting as it layed out the forces that direct American foreign policy today