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Worth A Pound Of Cure? An Empirical Assessment Of The Bush Doctrine And Preventive Military Action, Paul F. Diehl, Shyam Kulkarni

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The Bush Doctrine, or the proposal that allows the use of military force preventively to address prospective attack from terrorists or involving weapons of mass destruction, has been debated from various normative and legal vantage points. In this article, we introduce the new evaluative criterion that such military action must also produce the desired outcomes of defeating opponents and preventing future attacks. We test the efficacy of preventive military actions over the last two centuries. We conclude that using military force in a preventive fashion provides very limited, if any value, to states that employ this strategy. At best, there …