I watched the “talking heads” programs on broadcast news this morning with rapt attention, eager for insights into what’s going on in Iran. I will post links to transcript of them as they become available. What stood out most to my eye was that President Trump’s supporters were uniformly arguing in favor of preventive war, a subject on which I posted. In short, I think it’s wrong and is bad policy.
However, I wanted to call specific attention to a remark by, I believe, a Republican senator who declaimed confidently that “the requirement for imminence is a fallacy created by the Obama Administration”. Far from being a creation of the Obama Administration, imminence as a requirement for anticipatory or pre-emptive self-defense has been a keystone of American foreign policy for nearly 200 years.
It dates back to the “Caroline affair” in 1837. In December 1837 a group of Canadian militiamen set fire to the steamboat Caroline in New York and sent it over Niagara Falls, killing a black American watchmaker, Amos Durfee. That triggered a reprisal and diplomatic incident that unfolded over several years.
During the diplomatic contretemps letters by U. S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster to British representative Lord Ashburton articulated the conditions under which one country may attack another in anticipation of attack:
those exceptions should be confined to cases in which the necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation
That remains remains the classic statement of anticipatory self-defense in customary international law to this day and has heretofore been American policy.
It highlights a persistent complaint of mine here, that those who do not know history are doomed to say tomfool things about it.
The senator’s abrupt dismissal of a requirement for imminence is a de facto argument for preventive war. The existence of nuclear weapons does not repeal the distinction between imminent attack and speculative future capability as I have already argued in my post on preventive war linked above.
That the Caroline Affair came to describe customary international law is an indictment of how custom is established. Lord Ashburton agreed to the limited grounds of necessity argued by Webster in large part because he believed the facts didn’t apply to the situation. Canadian insurgents, with hundreds of American supporters, had invaded and seized a Canadian island in the Niagara from U.S. territory. They shot ordinance at the Canadian shore (to no effect), while the Caroline transported more and more military supplies to the island.
The Webster-Ashburton exchange came five years later after a man drunkenly admitted to having been on the ship that set fire to the steamer was charged with murder by New York. The exchange resolved to agree to disagree about the facts which. I don’t know how stories like this become customary, particularly as the discussions took place years before under prior governments. The exchange isn’t what states do, what they did was years ago. Under similar circumstances, the U.S. invaded Spanish Florida under the banner of self-defense. If Spain wasn’t going to police threats emanating from its territory the U.S. would. Another story.
I assume you meant “shoot ordnance”. Shooting ordinance is something I’d like to have seen. 😉