Research Catalog

Title

The gamble of war : is it possible to justify preventive war? / Ariel Colonomos ; translated by Chris Turner.

Author

Colonomos, Ariel.

Publication

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, c2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Turner, Chris.

Description

x, 277 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

With the new millennium, prevention has become a popular doctrine in international politics. One of its most noticeable features is that democracies become inclined to strike first. In the US, it has served as the banner of the neo₆conservative movement but it also gathered support from some liberals. It has also inspired several Israeli interventions. Does the preventive use of force meet the normative criteria that prevail or should prevail in a democratic system? Or does it endanger the legal and ethical traditions that characterize the history of Western military ethics? This book analyzes the justification of preventive war in contemporary asymmetrical international relations. It focuses on the most crucial aspect of prevention: uncertainty. Luck plays a significant role in these hazardous preventive wars, with unforeseen and sometimes unforeseeable consequences. This book bridges the explanatory analysis of uncertainty in preventive war making (using field work and data) with a normative account of prevention. It builds a new framework where the role of luck -- whether military, political, moral, or normative -- is a corrective to the traditional approaches of the Just War tradition.

Series Statement

Sciences Po series in international relations and political economy

Uniform Title

Pari de la guerre. English

Alternative Title

Pari de la guerre.

Subjects

• War > Moral and ethical aspects
• Security, International
• Preemptive attack (Military science)
• POLITICAL SCIENCE > General

Note

• "First published in French as Le pari de la guerre. Guerre preventive, guerre juste? by Ariel Colonomos, (c) by Editions Denoel, 2009"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Machine generated contents note: pt. 1 On the Forms of Preventive War -- One.Narrating, Explaining, Defining Preventive War -- Two.A Just War? -- pt. 2 Waging War -- Three.On Temperance -- Four.Precision as Justification -- Five.Targeted Killings: Manhunts -- pt. 3 Moral Luck -- Six.Good or Bad Fortune -- Seven.Possible Worlds.

ISBN

• 9781137018946 (alk. paper)
• 1137018941 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2012032270

OCLC

• 783144371
• SCSB-12728090

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library