Preemptive war

Has the United Sates ever engaged in a preemptive war in her history? What would you classify Panama and Grenada? I'm asking to satisfy my own curiosity.
 

mowque

Banned
1812, Mexican-American, all those Indian wars? No nation ever says they are the mindless aggressors. Also, this isn't AH, let alone Post-1900.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Has the United Sates ever engaged in a preemptive war in her history? What would you classify Panama and Grenada? I'm asking to satisfy my own curiosity.

Preemptive War - War that is not in response to attack or immediate threat.

Bush II - Iraq
Obama - Libya
Bush II, Obama - Drone strikes outside of Afghanistan, Pakistan border region and Iraq.
Reagan - Grenada
Bush I - Panama
Wilson - Tampico incident.
Many presidents - Marines in Latin America.
Many presidents - Many Indian wars. While the Indians did break the treaties some of the time, so did the USA.
There are more.
 

TheKinkster

Banned
All it takes is READING the forum titles. They're in this wondrous language called English. Try it sometime.
 
Preemptive war is when one state believes other state will attack it at some time in near future and decides to act first in order to gain advantage of offensive action and gains the innitiative. It's different from intervention when one country acts because it doesn't like how things are developing in another coutnry.

Preemptive War - War that is not in response to attack or immediate threat.

Bush II - Iraq

Yes

Obama - Libya

No, justification for that was that Libyan regime was attacking its own civilians, not that it was a threat to US or any other country.

Bush II, Obama - Drone strikes outside of Afghanistan, Pakistan border region and Iraq.

Extension of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At best you could say US is targetting AQ before they could mount an attack against US however Us is "in war" with AQ since 1996 (I think).

Reagan - Grenada

In response to general instability on the island.

Bush I - Panama

Panama declared war on US so US just honoured that. ;) But I guess you could say Noriega was threatening Panama Canal, at that point still under Us control.
 
The Mexican-American war and WWII are examples of the opposite of preemptive war. The MO in these wars is the following:

Take a bunch of very aggressive but plausibly deniable actions that are just short of war. Provoke the other side into shooting first. In WWII we did this with an oil embargo and brinksmanship in the Atlantic. In the Mexican-American war we did it with a deliberately vague border line and aggressive patrols in the disputed area.
Wave the bloody shirt and prosecute the war aggressively.

This little dance is needed because the population would balk at declaring war as a 'bolt from the blue'.
 
No, justification for that was that Libyan regime was attacking its own civilians, not that it was a threat to US or any other country.

preemptive war in and of itself is value neutral, some can be justified or even good, just as they can be bad and unjustified
 
The Mexican War is iffy, since the first shot was fired in disputed territory. Both sides thought the other were the invaders.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
preemptive war in and of itself is value neutral, some can be justified or even good, just as they can be bad and unjustified

I agree with this statement.

In Libya, we launched the war to prevent slaughters that we thought would occur once Qadaffi won. Preemptive war is basically the opposite to a reactionary war, where the other side strikes firsts.
 
Preemptive War - War that is not in response to attack or immediate threat.

I think you gave too broad a term here.

Preemptive war - War that is in response to an immediate threat (Six day war).

Preventive war - War that is in response to a future/possible threat (Pearl Harbor).
 
Embargo not a Preemptive Strike

The Mexican-American war and WWII are examples of the opposite of preemptive war. The MO in these wars is the following:

Take a bunch of very aggressive but plausibly deniable actions that are just short of war. Provoke the other side into shooting first. In WWII we did this with an oil embargo and brinksmanship in the Atlantic. In the Mexican-American war we did it with a deliberately vague border line and aggressive patrols in the disputed area.
Wave the bloody shirt and prosecute the war aggressively.

This little dance is needed because the population would balk at declaring war as a 'bolt from the blue'.

The oil, and scrap metal, embargo against Japan is not a cause to attack another nation. If it was we would have enough oil to last the US a long time. We could have taken over OPEC.
 
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