'Preemptive self-defense' and its basic assumptions

Ignas Kleden, Sociologist, The Center for East Indonesian Affairs (CEIA), Jakarta

On Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, some Jakarta newspapers published a "statement of concern to stand in opposition to war". It was signed and supported by some 105 individuals. Most of them are public figures, journalists, lawyers, NGO activists, political analysts and politicians whose role and participation in public life of Indonesia are fairly well known.

The statement questions seriously the validity of President George W. Bush's new doctrine on "preemptive self-defense", on the basis of which he believes that military action against Iraq is a well argued decision and can be justified by its legal grounding.

However, the statement makes it very clear that this doctrine is not known, let alone recognized, by the international law. Preemptive self-defense -- logically speaking -- is based on some presuppositions which are currently made seemingly self- justifying though they are far from justifiable.

It is obviously assumed that attack and aggression are the best self-defense. To beat another party one step ahead is a clever method of protecting oneself. However, this is only true for a state of war when aggressions from hostile states are very likely to occur at any time.

It is also true for a mixed martial art in which preemptive self-defense can produce a fatal hit to the opponent and vice versa. This assumption, however, is definitely not valid outside a war situation, whereby the relations between states and nations rest fundamentally on the principle of non-intervention (as far as civilian politics is concerned), and on the principle of non- aggression (as far as it concerns military affairs).

Presumption of non-intervention and non-aggression between nations and states is comparable to the presumption of innocence in the relations among individuals and among social groups. In contrast, presumption of aggression between states and nations in a state of no war is parallel to the presumption of guilt between individuals and among people.

Further, this doctrine can only operate on the basis of a self-justifying reasoning which turns out to be very bad logic. Preemptive self-defense is an act with which one attacks another party before one is supposed to be attacked in order to protect oneself, by means of paralyzing the supposedly carried out attack. However you have to presume some conditions according to your own prejudice.

One condition is that there is an enemy who intends and plans to make an attack, or, in the case of inter-states relations, an aggression. The question is twofold. With regard to power comparison, is Iraq in the position and what is the point for Saddam Hussein to wage a war against the U.S. and the member states of NATO?

Is that not a self-destroying action? With regard to empirical indicators, is there enough evidence that Iraq really intends and plans to take military aggression against the U.S.?

Thirdly, the implementation of preemptive self-defense will bring about an international chaos owing to the nature of that doctrine which provides a self-appointed right.

In the case of President George W. Bush, his government seems to feel entitled to make its own reasoning and to come to the conclusion that the U.S. -- the country, the states and the nation -- are very liable to be attacked by Iraq. This conclusion has been drawn and becomes the ground on which a preemptive self- defense of the U.S. and its allies has been decided upon.

Who is to judge that such a conclusion is valid, well grounded and justified? Who is to make the final judgment that Iraq has really transgressed against the internationally accepted principle of non-intervention and non-aggression? Should we rely on the judgment of President Bush and his administration alone?

What if China does the same thing and claims the same self- appointed right and takes the same military action against other countries under the pretext of the same preemptive self-defense?

What if other bigger states claim the same right and just follow suit? We would face a condition worse than that once imagined by Thomas Hobbes: bellum omnium magnorum contra omnes parvulos, a war launched by all bigger states against all smaller ones.

Everybody can understand that Sept. 11, 2001 remains a great shock for the U.S. government and citizens. Terrorism becomes so concrete and stands, as once Hannibal did to ancient Rome, ante portas (in front of the gate). Bush's determination to fight terrorism is only logical. The U.S. and the whole world still suffers from the fact that some people are prepared and motivated to eliminate their own lives, to eliminate the lives of thousands of innocent people in a time of no war, and to use non-military means and equipments. It was an action beyond international law and even beyond international imagination.

Yet to fight terrorism without any serious effort to eradicate the main causes which have contributed to its emergence might be effective only as a short-term action to scare away terrorists, but is by no means sufficient to remove the potentials of terrorism.

To a certain extent one may compare terrorism to poverty. Unless something is done to improve the international division of labor and international distribution of income and wealth, the poor will always be there despite any drastic action.

It is of little avail to think and to believe that terrorism is a result of mere mad intentions, crazy conspiracy or daring ventures. Terrorism, just like other social conflicts, might appear as ethnic, cultural, ideological or religious phenomenon. However, this appearance contains in many cases only super- structural motivations which are to justify more basic conflicts which arise from contradictions at economic and political level owing to power differential, social injustice, economic inequality, political domination and military supremacy.

The very unequal international division of labor and the concomitant unjust international income distribution will always become an inexhaustible source of dissatisfaction, structural and economic violence, which might not appear violent at all, but is certainly equally repressive and cruel.

We should never stop bringing up the very old appeal that there is no moral right whatsoever that a group of people, of nations, and of states can live in superfluous affluence at the cost of others who make up the majority of world population and who have to struggle every hour for mere subsistence.

Questioning the moral right of some people who purposely destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people and their material achievement is identical with questioning ourselves of the moral right with which we live, while letting millions of innocents face insurmountable daily misery only because the simple means of their livelihood has been taken away, by the invisible hands of international economic and political forces.