Talk:Preventive war

message: It seems to me that this whole article should be trashed and redone.  While I'm not saying I agree or disagree with everything it all seems extremely biased.  199.184.205.99 (talk) 03:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Trash it?

message: These two forms of warfare cannot be merged by reason of logic and legality.  Based upon the clearly stated defenitions of both terms it is very clear that they are not the same.  We CANNOT rely on the discursive practices of the Bush Doctrine, that has greyed the differences in the two definitions, in an effort to justify the further expansion of US global primacy. If definitional mergers like this are allowed it will open the door to allow mergers of other terms that carry significant legal weight, such as torture and interrogation and self-defense and murder.
Please do **NOT** merge these, at all. They are entirely and completely different things, and as such, should be in seperate articles with a link. There is a major difference between these two types of wars which needs to be stressed, and as such, they should be seperate. -- Mattworld 00:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Both these articles have problems and IMHO should be merged.  I won't be able to do serious work for a week or two on them.  I am removing flagrantly false statements in the introduction to this article, that both terms have no generally accepted definition.  This is true only of "preventative", and the fact (which should be in the only reference for this article) that "pre-emptive" has had a strict and universally accepted legal definition  for 170 years clarifies the meaning of "preventative" somewhat, which is a reason I support the merger.  Saying that they should be merged is not saying they are the same by any means, just that confusion is less likely if they are put together, to put each other in relief. John Z4.234.102.166 05:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Put in the addition about "anticipatory" because sometimes these words are used in confusing ways. And my first post above was confusing, because of the following ambiguity of "preemptive".   The distinction is sometimes between anticipatory vs. preemptive instead of preemptive vs. preventive, where in the first pair, "preemptive" is used like "preventive" here at Wikipedia.  The O'Connell paper has good footnote on this. This is another argument for merger, so we can explain how people use the 3 words for 2 concepts.  If there are two articles, the other one should be renamed anticipatory self-defense for clarity, and preemptive should be a disambiguation page.4.234.102.166 06:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I think you've mistaken preventative for pre-emptive; preventative is the same as preventive. 131.236.12.157 (talk) 02:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge? [[Preventive War]] and [[Preemptive War]] 

message: Other than that, I don't think that it is good to put a lot of information about the examples. I think that it is best to just link to articles on particular preventive wars, and let that article discuss the motivations of the war. At most there should just be a couple of sentences about why this war may be described as "preventive" (George Bush claimed that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction). AdamRetchless 06:26, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summarize examples 

message: The entry discusses Germany's attack on the Low Countries in 1940 as examples of preventive war but that ignores the simple fact that Adolf Hitler attacked Poland, France and Britain's ally in 1939, and a state of War existed between Britain, France and Germany before the Nazi invasion of Holland and Belgium, both of which had defense treaties with England. Germany didn't invade those countries to prevent the UK from occupying them. A large British Expeditionary Force was already on the Continent before Hitler attacked. Again, one can't start a preventive war where an existing state of war exists between opponents.
Some argument in the past has existed for the idea of preventive war in German's attack on Poland, as the Germans claimed they were attacked first by the Poles, but the fact both Germany and Russia invaded Poland during the same month negated that idea. Russia and Germany carved up Poland among themselves in 1939. A claim of preventive war should have some factual data to support it.
In fact, Hitler's reason for attacking the Low Countries was the same as his "logic" for attacking Poland: Lebensraum. That is to say, living space for the German people. Hitler wanted land and every country with a border with Germany was in danger of attack. To quote in Hitler's own words: "Without consideration of "traditions" and prejudices, it [Germany] must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation." - Mein Kampf (1924)
I do not know of treaties between the Benelux countries and Britain, but the fact is that these countries were very much at peace with Germany until they were invaded by Germany. The Belgians resisted offers of the French to even plan a joint-defense in the case of a German invasion of Belgium. And a alrge British expeditionary force was indeed on the continent, but in France, not in the Benelux countries.
As far as I know, Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands to lure the allied armies north into Belgium to cut them off through their main strike delivered through the Ardennes. thestor 10:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WWII: The Third Reich and Lebensraum 

message: :The Six-Day War, initiated by Israel, is regarded by many as a preventive war, since there was no overt invasion or attack against that country.  The government of Israel and its supporters, however, believe that an Egyptian blockade preceding the invasion was a casus belli created a state of war and justifies the attack.  Following the end of the war, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242.  It instructed Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied: the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.  Israel has yet to comply with this instruction.
According to the information in the main article about the six-day war, this is a  pre-emptive war, not a preventive war. The Arab countries had mobilized their armies and were moving into offensive positions. On top of that, there had never been a peace treaty from the previous war and there had been continuous border skirmishes. Israel attacked out of concern for it's immediate safety. This paragraph makes no argument that Israel was concerned with the long-term balance of power or that peaceful relations were possible. The last two sentences are off-topic and seem to be included simply to condemn Israel in this article. In other words, they are POV. AdamRetchless 07:02, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The German version includes the sentences "The Six Days War  between Israel and its arab neighbours was the only war thast was seen as legal according to modern international law. Contrarily, the Israeli air raid against the Iraqi nuclear power plant  Osirak in 1981 was regarded as forbidden aggression." Who was it who judged like that? If it was the International Court who had to deal with the cases I think this should be mentioned, if it was someone else I do not think judgments should be reported as if they were facts. Get-back-world-respect 01:03, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Six-Day War 

message: I’m afraid I don’t understand how one can concluded that by having Bush point out the risk Iraq under Saddam posed sot the united states, that that can somehow be construed as the reason for the iraq war?
As I recall the president stated very clearly three reasons for the Iraqi war:
1.	Saddam’s continued failure after 12 years of our existing every other effort to verifiably disarm of WMD and account for what happened to the WMD he did have before the 1991 golf war.   If you recall in 1996 we even caught Saddam Red handed producing Bio weapons, after a high ranking Iraqi official defected and told us exactly where to look.
2.	Saddam’s Support of International terrorism(Not only does this apply to iraq it apply to the Afghanistan conflict as well, if someone is giving aid to groups waging war on your and allowing them safe harbor with in their country from which to plan and recover from an attack on you, that IS an ACT OF WAR against your country by that country!!!   To say other wises would have to concluded the war of 1812, and the conflict in which we chased poncho via back into México in the early 20th century both as preemptive or Preventive wars.) 
(Except that those wars took place in a time when the international legal framework did not exist, or was very different - also, "harboring terrorists" is simply not an act of war. There are a lot of terrorists harbored by a lot of countries who are not, and were never, at war with the victims of the terrorists. Also, those terrorists are presumed innocent until proven guilty, anyway, so "harboring terrorists" is simply a disagreement over the extradition of suspected terrorists. As far as I am aware, invading a country over an extradition disagreement is not preemptive or preventative. It is an act of aggression.
Also note that the idea that Saddam Hussein was harboring terrorists is in question, if not entirely fabricated.
Quick question: What nation was Saddam Hussein alledgedly a danger to? I genuinely forgot. - Sorenzo)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.50.45.192 (talk) 15:36, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Does Pearl Harbor count as a preventive war, then? DontClickMeName talkcontributions 18:46, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: I don’t understand your reasoning 

message: User:Nescio and I have been continually reverting a long "quote dump" that, while perfectly well sourced and relevant, is not encyclopedic in the least. This kind of thing needs to be pared down and summarized. We can't be including long excerpts of news conferences in every article. That is why I wrote something like "commentators as diverse as Noam Chomsky and Dwight Eisenhower have argued..." earlier.
Eleland 19:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reversions 

message: In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) 
* "Taming American Power, Stephen M% Walt, pp 224" :
**  Taming American Power, Stephen M. Walt pp 224 
**  Taming American Power, Stephen M. Walt, pp 224
DumZiBoT (talk) 13:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot report : Found duplicate references ! 

message: This article currently suffers from deep problems of lacking citations in the body. The lede itself probably has a bare minimum of citations, though it could use more. Still, given the controversial nature of the topic and potential for edit warring, anyone seriously interested in developing this page needs to have multiple citations for many statements. 
In contrast to the lede, many of the claims in the body are totally unsourced, as for example with this claim that "Both Axis and Allies in World War II invaded neutral countries on grounds of prevention." That may well be true, but we need to see sources stating directly that there were such invasions. Otherwise this is original research and should be deleted (see WP:OR).
Correspondingly, users challenging material on this page that actually is sourced need to present their own alternative sources, and cite specifically how their presented source supports their claim.Khin2718 (talk) 08:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation problems 

message: User:Trift has been attempting to insert this material in the lede:
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing." - Dwight D. Eisenhower - "All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time.... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." 1953 press conference, about being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union
The material is highly problematic, for several reasons:
#It's unsourced.
#Its significance is unclear - what reliable secondary source has indicated this particular quote is important?
#Its context is unclear - was this particularly relevant to attacking the Soviet Union, or did he mean it in general? Again, reliable secondary sources required.
#It violates WP:LEDE - what part of the article does it summarize? Apparently none, since the material doesn't appear in the article.
All in all, it's highly unlikely this quote belongs in the article at all, but certainly not in the lede. Please make a case for including it. Jayjg (talk) 04:07, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eisenhower quote in lede 

message: There are examples of preventive war in antiquity as Romans against Celts and Germanics and Chinese against Tocharians. I can't edit this since Eurocentric censors are reversing all my edits. 2804:14C:5BD7:AE55:4558:E645:695:A56D (talk) 12:24, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion of examples in antiquity. 

message: Given that Putin did it to "prevent genocide" and to "keep Ukraine from developing a nuclear weapon" (those were the official reasons), wouldn't this qualify as a preventive war? Whether these claims are true or not is immaterial, see Iraq. --91.64.56.126 (talk) 15:46, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ukraine Invasion?