U.S. Use of Preemptive Military Force
Released: 2003-04-11T00:00:00

RS21311 -- U.S. Use of Preemptive Military Force

Updated April 11, 2003

Background

During the summer and fall of 2002, the question of the possible use of "preemptive" military force by the United States to defend its security was raised byPresident Bush and members of his Administration, including possible use of such force against Iraq. Inmid-September 2002, the Bush Administrationpublished The National Security Strategy of the United States which explicitly states that the UnitedStates is prepared to use preemptive military force toprevent U.S. enemies from using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against it or its friends or allies (1) The following analysis reviews the historical recordregarding the uses of U.S. military force in a preemptive manner. It examines and comments on military actionstaken by the United States that could bereasonably interpreted as preemptive in nature. For purposes of this analysis a preemptive use of military force isconsidered to be the taking of military actionby the United States against another nation so as to prevent or mitigate a presumed military attack oruse of force by that nation against the United States. Thedeployment of U.S. military forces in support of U.S. foreign policy, without their engaging in combat, is not deemed to be a preemptive use of military force. Preemptive use of military force is also deemed to be an action addressed at a specific and imminentmilitary threat, requiring timely action (2)

By contrast, a "preventive war" would be a significant use of military force against a nation as a "preventive"action, to forestall a presumed military threat fromthat nation at some point in the future, whether months or years. Such an action would be outside the traditionalparameters of the concept of preemptive use ofmilitary force. It would be a significant expansion of the customary understanding of the elements that define suchan action. However, such an expansiveview of military preemption is contained in the Bush Administration's September 2002 U.S. National Strategydocument, and in related public policystatements by senior Bush Administration officials. Thus, various instances of the use of force that are examinedherein could, using a less stringent definition,be argued by some as examples of preemption by the United States.CRS:Logo: The discussion below is based uponour review of all noteworthy uses ofmilitary force by the United States since establishment of the Republic.

Historical overview. The historical record indicates that the United States has never, to date, engaged in apreemptive military attack, as traditionally defined, against another nation. And only once has the United Statesever unilaterally attacked another nationmilitarily prior to its first having been attacked or prior to U.S. citizens or interests firsthaving been attacked. That instance was the Spanish-American War of1898. In that military conflict, the principal goal of United States military action was to compel Spain to grant Cubaits political independence. An act ofCongress, passed in April 1898, just prior to the U.S. declaration of war against Spain, explicitly declared Cuba tobe independent of Spain, demanded thatSpain withdraw its military forces from the island, and authorized the President to use U.S. military force to achievethese ends, if necessary. (3) Spain rejectedthese demands, and an exchange of declarations of war by both countries soon followed thereafter. (4) Although U.S. military actions against Spain werebasedon special U.S. foreign policy considerations, they occurred after war was formally declared, and cannot be fairlycharacterized as preemptive in nature. During the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, preemptive use of military force to destroy Soviet missiles that had beenintroduced into Cuba was very seriously consideredin the early days of the crisis, but the matter was ultimately resolved diplomatically. Although the United Statesdid not use military force "preemptively," it diddeploy military forces as an adjunct to its diplomacy, while reserving its right to take additional military actions asit deemed appropriate.

The circumstances surrounding the origins of the Mexican War are somewhat controversial in nature-but the term preemptive attack by the United States doesnot apply to this conflict. During, and immediately following the First World War, the United States, as part ofallied military operations, sent military forcesinto parts of Russia to protect its interests, and to render limited aid to anti-Bolshevik forces during the Russian civilwar. In major military actions since theSecond World War, the President has either obtained congressional authorization for use of military force againstother nations, in advance of using it, or hasdirected military actions abroad on his own initiative in support of multinational operations such as those of theUnited Nations or of mutual securityarrangements like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Examples of these actions include participationin the Korean War, the 1990-1991 PersianGulf War, and the Bosnian and Kosovo operations in the 1990s. The use of military force against Iraq in 2003,while controversial within the internationalcommunity, was justified by the United States, the United Kingdom and others, as an action necessary to enforceexisting U.N. Security Council resolutions thatmandated Iraqi disarmament. Yet in all of these varied instances of the use of military force by the United States,such military action was a "response," afterthe fact , and was not preemptive in nature, as traditionally defined.

Central American and Caribbean interventions. This is not to say that the United States has not used its militaryto intervene in other nations in support of its foreign policy interests. However, U.S. military interventions,particularly a number of unilateral uses of force inthe Central America and Caribbean areas throughout the 20th century were not preemptive in nature. What led the United States to intervene militarily innations in these areas was not the view that the individual nations were likely to attack the United Statesmilitarily . Rather, these U.S. military interventionswere grounded in the view that they would support the Monroe Doctrine, which opposed interference in the Westernhemisphere by outside nations. U.S.policy was driven by the belief that if stable governments existed in Caribbean states and Central America, then itwas less likely that foreign countries wouldattempt to protect their nationals or their economic interests through their use of military force against one or moreof these nations.

Consequently, the United States, in the early part of the 20th century, established through treaties with the Dominican Republic (in 1907) (5) and withHaiti (in1915) (6) , the right for the United States to collect anddisperse customs income received by these nations, as well as the right to protect the Receiver General ofcustoms and his assistants in the performance of his duties. This effectively created U.S. protectorates for thesecountries until these arrangements wereterminated during the Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Intermittent domestic insurrectionsagainst the national governments in bothcountries led the U.S. to utilize American military forces to restore order in Haiti from 1915-1934 and in theDominican Republic from 1916-1924. But thepurpose of these interventions, buttressed by the treaties with the United States, was to help maintain or restorepolitical stability, and thus eliminate thepotential for foreign military intervention in contravention of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine.

Similar concerns about foreign intervention in a politically unstable Nicaragua led the United States in 1912 to accept the request of its then President AdolfoDiaz to intervene militarily to restore political order there. Through the Bryan-Chamorro treaty with Nicaragua in1914, the United States obtained the right toprotect the Panama Canal, and its proprietary rights to any future canal through Nicaragua as well as islands leasedfrom Nicaragua for use as militaryinstallations. This treaty also granted to the United States the right to take any measure needed to carry out thetreaty's purposes. (7) This treaty had the effect ofmaking Nicaragua a quasi-protectorate of the United States. Since political turmoil in the country might threatenthe Panama Canal or U.S. proprietary rights tobuild another canal, the U.S. employed that rationale to justify the intervention and long-term presence of Americanmilitary forces in Nicaragua to maintainpolitical stability in the country. U.S. military forces were permanently withdrawn from Nicaragua in 1933. Apartfrom the above cases, U.S. militaryinterventions in the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and in Panama in 1989 were based uponconcerns that U.S. citizens or other U.S. interestswere being harmed by the political instability in these countries at the time U.S. intervention occurred. While U.S.military interventions in Central Americaand Caribbean nations were controversial, after reviewing the context in which they occurred, it is fair to say thatnone of them involved the use of "preemptive" military force by the United States. (8)

Covert action. Although the use of preemptive force by the United States is generally associated with the overt use of U.S. military forces, it is important to note that the United States has also utilized "covert action" by U.S.government personnel in efforts to influencepolitical and military outcomes in other nations. The public record indicates that the United States has used this formof intervention to prevent some groups orpolitical figures from gaining or maintaining political power to the detriment of U.S. interests and those of friendlynations. For example, the use of "covertaction" was widely reported to have been successfully employed to effect changes in the governments of Iran in1953, and in Guatemala in 1954. Its use failedin the case of Cuba in 1961. The general approach in the use of a "covert action" is reportedly to support localpolitical and military/paramilitary forces ingaining or maintaining political control in a nation, so that U.S. or its allies interests will not be threatened. Noneof these activities has reportedly involvedsignificant numbers of U.S. military forces because by their very nature "covert actions" are efforts to advance anoutcome without drawing direct attention tothe United States in the process of doing so. (9) Suchprevious clandestine operations by U.S. personnel could arguably have constituted efforts at preemptiveaction to forestall unwanted political or military developments in other nations. But given their presumptive limitedscale compared to those of majorconventional military operations, and also that they were not used to preempt an imminent military attack on theUnited States, it seems more appropriate toview U.S."covert actions" as adjuncts to more extensive U.S. military actions in support of U.S. foreign policy. Assuch, these U.S. "covert actions" do notappear to be true case examples of the use of preemptive military force by the United States.

Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The one significant, well documented, case of note, where preemptive militaryaction was seriously contemplated by the United States, but ultimately not used, was the Cuban missile crisis ofOctober 1962. When the United States learnedfrom spy-plane photographs that the Soviet Union was secretly introducing nuclear-capable, intermediate-rangeballistic missiles into Cuba, missiles that couldthreaten a large portion of the eastern United States, President John F. Kennedy had to determine if the prudentcourse of action was to use U.S. military airstrikes in an effort to destroy the missile sites before they became operational, and before the Soviets or the Cubansbecame aware that the U.S. knew they werebeing installed. While the military preemption option was seriously considered, after extensive debate among hisadvisors on the implications of such anaction, President Kennedy undertook a measured but firm approach to the crisis that utilized a U.S. naval"quarantine" of the island of Cuba to prevent receiptof additional missile shipments from the Soviet Union as well as military supplies and material for the existingmissile sites, while a diplomatic solution wasaggressively pursued. At the same time, the U.S. reserved the right to employ the full range of military actionsshould diplomacy fail. This approach wassuccessful, and the crisis was peacefully resolved. (10)

Iraq War of 2003. In the case of the Iraq War of 2003, the United States has used significant military forceagainst that nation even though the U.S. was not attacked first by Iraq. Various public speeches made by the BushAdministration during the summer and fallof 2003 noted that the United States was prepared to engage in "preemptive" military action against unfriendlynations in advance of their becoming an"imminent" military threat to the U.S. In September 2002, the Bush Administration published The NationalSecurity Strategy of the United States of America which explicitly states that the United States is prepared to use preemptive military force to prevent enemies of theUnited States from using weapons of massdestruction (WMD) against it or its allies and friends. The timing of the release of this strategy document, togetherwith statements of senior BushAdministration officials regarding the potential threat to the U.S. that Iraq's WMD program posed, led to speculationthat Iraq could be the first case where theexpansive approach to use of preemptive military force would be applied. Subsequently, the Bush Administrationsought and obtained passage of U.N. SecurityCouncil Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002, which, among other things, noted that Iraq was still in materialbreach of its obligations under prior U.N.Security Council resolutions to destroy and not to seek to obtain various proscribed weapons and capabilities. UNSCR 1441 further noted that "seriousconsequences" would result from failure of Iraq to comply unconditionally with its obligations contained in the U.N.Resolutions. (11)

When President Bush launched U.S. military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003, he stated he was doing so, with coalition forces, to enforce existing UNSecurity Council Resolutions that had been violated by Iraq since the Gulf War of 1990-1991--Security CouncilResolutions that expressly contemplated theuse of force should Iraq not comply with them--and also to protect the security of the U.S. In a March 19, 2003report to Congress on the issue, President Bush noted his conclusion and determination that further diplomatic efforts to enforce the U.N. imposed obligation thatIraq destroy its WMD would not succeed,thus requiring the use of military force to achieve Iraqi disarmament. The President did not explicitly characterizehis military action as an implementation ofthe expansive concept of preemptive use of military force against rogue states with WMD contained in his NationalSecurity Strategy document of September2002. (12) However, as U.S. military action wasjustified to protect the security of the United States from a prospective , but not imminent threat of military actionby Iraq, it could be argued that, measured against the traditional concept of preemptive use of military force, thiswas an act of "preventive war"by the UnitedStates.