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For the longest time I wish I could locate one of the worst examples
I had ever read about pre-emptive war. It turns out I had looked in the right
spot, but the website for a long time was defunct. (It’s still a bit funky to
be honest.) The parable was vague, and a poorly written attack on me, but it did
make me think. And after a brief foreword, I’ll provide my own parable that
should be much better.
As a preamble, I have to point out a few ways this parable
is limited regarding international relations. That’s because those that live in
a state have a series of criminal and civil remedies. If one neighbor is noisy,
nosey, threatening, or violent in any way the other neighbors can do anything
from filing a restraining order to calling the police. Even threats of violence,
or “making terroristic threats,” can result in arrest so there is no need for
preemptive self-help violence.
The state doesn’t have most of those recourses in
international relations. There are some limited remedies ranging from the World
Court, Interpol, diplomats, and some international organizations, but it is the
military that delivers protection and justice for its people. When the citizens
of one nation find themselves threatened by another, the leaders of the state
are the ones responsible for protecting the rights of their citizens. Unlike
the parable of the neighborhood dispute, there are no police to call or
restraining orders to file. I assume my interlocuter chose the example of
neighbors because it seemed especially ridiculous to preemptively shoot one.
Without further ado, let’s assume that this neighborhood doesn’t
have legal and civil remedies. This is apocalyptic Australia, there are no
police and Mad Max is chasing down a biker gang a continent away.
A new guy moves into the neighborhood and despite your best
efforts your relationship sours. But this isn’t what you see on Judge Judgy
about barking dogs or a loud party. The new neighbor, Fred, believes the
property line is misaligned,
or maybe he thinks he was legitimately wronged in having a valuable fruit tree
just over the line. For whatever reason, he is openly antagonistic towards you.
After some time Fred finally says, “I will kill you.” The
aggressive neighbor gives a speech that their problem will soon be solved.[1]
You see Amazon truck after Amazon truck drop off giant boxes from the gun store.[2]
He tracks you in the sights of his machine gun every time you leave the house.
He repeatedly crosses
the property line to see how quickly you react.
Despite your best efforts to diffuse the situation, after
some time his friends pull up in pickup trucks and armed with machine guns they
surround your house. They step forward with their weapons loaded and racked
with a round in the chamber but haven’t fired yet. They take aim, and they
fire. Your house is Swiss cheese from all the bullets, but this is still the
first attack (D&C 98:23-26). They reload, and attack two more times for a
total of three attacks.
The question becomes, at what point would the good follower
of Jesus Christ attack?
Remarkably, there are some people who would wait until the
end of the parable to attack. They mistakenly apply Doctrine and Covenants 98
to assume that it is a guide to foreign policy. They believe that Mormons must
patiently bear three trespasses (usually interpreted as attacks) and lift a
standard of peace before attacking. This group of people sound strong when they
quote the scripture to “renounce war and proclaim peace” (v.16). But their
position falls apart with the first bullet as you think about what it truly
means to bear three attacks such as the massed fire in the parable, three nuclear
strikes, or three sword thrusts. Its completely ridiculous to think that Jesus
requires suffering three Pearl Harbors or 9/11 attacks before defending
yourself.
The most likely answer is that you are justified in
defending yourself after the first attack. This is a reasonable position to
take in response to a clear attack. But there are problems with this position.
Returning fire under these circumstances places the defender at a severe
disadvantage. Remaining on the pure defensive allows the attacker to choose the
time and place of the attack. The attacker could choose to strike when the
defender is asleep or gone to the store or before the defender supplied his own
guns and reinforcements. Once the attack commenced, the defender would have to
return fire in the face of incoming gunfire. Ceding the initiative places you
at in a reactionary and weaker position, much like the Nephites
after the Lamanite attack in Alma 16. There is a significant chance that your defense at this point will not be enough to save your life. So again, waiting to receive the attack
seems as strong as it is simplistic. But it can be a poor and dangerous standard. It’s
the equivalent of having a deranged homeless man brandishing a knife on your
subway train, but waiting to see what he does with it next (See below).
If you want to have a much better defense, you should fire
before they do! This option would preemptively attack between the point when
the neighbors gather around your house and when they first fire at you. It
might be when they first pull up, or when they aim their guns, but the
defending neighbor knows when an attack is happening (or commenced) and he doesn’t
have to wait for it to be carried out.
And this gets to the crux of preemptive war. Preemptive war
is the right to attack between the point when the attack is commenced but not
carried out. Or as the Book of Mormon implies, when the sword is raised, but
hasn’t yet struck (Alma 48:14). The key is the phrase “raise a sword,” which
compares to the theoretical standard of preemptively striking a charging
assailant with sword in hand.[3]
But there are arguments that you could launch a just attack
even earlier. What if your neighbor wasn’t importing more rifles, but instead
was importing tactical nukes? Just the transfer of nuclear weapons to a place
where an avowed enemy could quickly strike the continental US was enough to
justify the blockade of Cuba. If your neighbor has vowed to strike and has the
weapons, then there are other theorists that suggest the attack doesn’t have to
be imminent.[4] For example, if the US waited until the 9/11 strikes were commenced but not carried out, they still would destroy four airplanes filled with innocent Americans. These are variations that don’t change the right to preemptive war, only the application
of that right regarding difficult issues like striking terrorists.
So what does the parable of the Bad Neighbor teach us? Well
the parable as originally given is too vague to be of much use except as a
strawman perception of preemptive war. The specifics matter. The real-life
application of the preemptive right is clearly seen in the New York Subway
incident. An aggressive and disturbed person comes on board a train waving
around a knife and screaming that he doesn’t care if he goes to jail. No
rational person would say to themselves, “This is creepy, but let’s see where
it’s going.” “The restored gospel is clearly superior to and excludes preemptive
just war theory.” “The gospel says renounce war and proclaim peace.” Or maybe “we
should wait until he tries to stab someone because after all, we only believe
in defensive war.” Daniel Penny clearly and correctly anticipated an attack, so
he subdued the dangerous would-be assailant.
When these ideas are
presented in a specific scenario, like a brandished gun about to be fired, or
drawn knife in a closed subway, the Parable of the Bad Neighbor shows that most
people intuitively agree with the concept of preemptive war. That strong
intuition is a sense of your natural rights. When the neighbor has shown intent
(they announce their intent to kill you), means (they have imported a
devastating number of weapons), and the attack is imminent (they’ve surrounded
your house and march towards it with raised weapons),[5]
the sword is raised, and the attack is commenced but not carried out. As a
result, the defending neighbor has a God given right to defend themselves
preemptively.
Exactly when that point is reached is often disputed. In
fact it’s common in debates around the justified use of preemptive war to
manipulate and rearrange details to make an attack seem less or more likely and
hence more or less justified. In the parable that would be like an analyst
claiming that the aimed weapons of Fred and his friends were really just target practice or warning
shots, so the defending neighbor was overreacting. You'll see that
both in the original parable below as I’m supposedly cool with randomly killing
someone and Mark
Henshaw tried to rearrange the
details of Kishkumen’s attack as a rebuttal to my use of the story. Preemptive war can also
be abused by Putin or Bush, but that doesn’t diminish the right. Again, these individuals are often invoked as stop think boogeymen.
For kicks and giggles I've
included the original example. You’ll
notice its far vaguer than my parable and filled with loaded language (panic,
paranoid, snooping). I really hate the phony use of the word friend. It builds
a straw man big enough to blaze at Burning Man and is included here as an illustration
of the limited thought on the matter. At least it helped me to crystalize the
key ideas behind the right to preemptive war:
How would our friend Morgan respond to the following situation? A new guy moves into the neighborhood, and after a few months of snooping and spying you determine that Fred…has an arsenal of weapons. You have a meeting with all your neighbors and decide that he might use them against you. You have no proof of this, yet the neighborhood is in a panic and everyone is paranoid that it might be them first. You collectively decide to use force to apprehend Fred’s arsenal, and when he politely refuses the situation escalates and a fellow neighbor shoots Fred with a 30-06 from 300 yards. Problem solved. No judge, no jury, just an executioner. Everyone is safe right? But was it moral? Did you not kill Fred before he had done anything wrong? Obviously this scenario is absurd, but what is the difference when nations do the same thing in the name of patriotism and nationalism?
Asked and decisively answered. Thanks for reading. For a
more official and in depth version of scriptures, theory, and preemptive war
see my article in Square Two, Kishkumen’s
Dagger.
[1]
The Communists clearly indicated they wanted to take islands in the Taiwan
Strait Crisis which led to preemptive US intervention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations#Military_stalemate_to_diplomatic_war_
[2]
The transfer of nuclear weapons to Cuba was enough for President Kennedy to
consider a first strike. He said, “we no longer live in a world where only the
actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s
security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and
ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility
of their use or any sudden change in deployment may well be regarded as
a threat to peace.” Mark Totten, First Strike: America, Terrorism, and Moral
Tradition, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010),71.
[3] Mark
Totten, First Strike: America, Terrorism, and Moral Tradition, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2010), 129-146.
[4] Totten, First
Strike, 136.
[5] These
are the expanded criteria given by Grotius. Hugo Grotius, On the Law of
War and Peace, Stephen Neff trans., (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 84.
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