Edward Feser writes,
. . . if Iran were actually in the process of preparing an attack against America, we could justifiably preempt it with an attack of our own. But we cannot justifiably attack any country simply because it might at some point in the future decide to harm us.
Feser obviously has a point: the Iranian regime posed no imminent threat to the USA. An imminent threat is one that is about to be executed. At the present time, however the regime lacks both the nuclear warheads and the ICBMs needed to deliver death to the Great Satan.
On the other hand, if we wait until the threat becomes imminent, it may be too late. For despite Trump’s joking about a third term, he will be out of office in three years. If his successor is a Democrat, then, given the fecklessness and incompetence of the current crop of electable Dems, we can reasonably expect to be ‘toast.’ Can you imagine AOC as Commander-in-Chief? If Trump’s successor is Vance or Rubio, a ‘toasty’ outcome is much less likely. But bear in mind that these gentlemen, as outstanding as they are, are professional politicians, unlike Trump. They need the job and cannot be expected to be as bold as he is.
What say you, Vito?
Feser’s objection to the preemptive attack on Iran is what I would expect from a leftist, not from Feser. Now — whenever that might be — is never a good time to take action against the inevitable, especially if the inevitable is something that will harm America. One must be willfully ignorant of Iran’s intentions to believe that it wouldn’t develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems capable of inflicting great harm on American interests, and probably Americans directly. It’s folly to wait until the evidence is clear and compelling that such weapons and systems have been developed and are ready to use. In fact, it would be far too late to act at that point because Iran would then be capable of nuclear blackmail, which is (at a minimum) why the weapons and systems are being developed. And without a man like Trump in the White House, and especially with a Democrat in the White House, we can be sure that Iran’s nuclear blackmail would succeed.
Bill,
I’ve read Ed’s post and his rhetoric on X of late, and I fear he is a little hysterical about the situation — and Trump generally these days.
According to the just war criteria he presents, specifically the one about the condition of imminent threat, Ed, I think, accurately claims Iran doesn’t have the means to actually be an imminent threat — not at least to the homeland at this time. But neither was Nazi Germany, even though de facto war was occurring between our nations with the U-boat attacks on our shipping convoys to Great Britain in the Atlantic. I contend there has similarly been a de facto state of war between us and the mullahs since 1979. They’ve armed, trained, and directed proxies to kill American soldiers. The Houthis shooting at our ships, the Beirut barracks bombing, and the IEDs that have maimed and killed our troops during the second Iraq and Afghanistan wars are all examples of such. Apparently, they’ve also tried to assassinate President Trump. But if all that’s not provocative enough and analogous here to be a just cause, and I grant, that such actions are intermittent and not necessarily an indication of an imminent threat from Iran in the here and now, it seems to me that our campaigns in North Africa, Italy, and then France into Germany would be hard to justify according to this imminent-threat criterion, no? The Third Reich through the entirety of WW2 was not an imminent threat to us. Japan was the one who attacked and directly threatened our holdings in the Pacific, yet after Hitler declared war on us after Pearl Harbor, we committed to a “Germany-first” strategy and prosecuted the war accordingly, even though fighting was simultaneous in both the Europe/Africa/Mediterranean and the Pacific theaters after Dec. 7, 1941.
Likewise, I understand that Ed argues that just war rules out preventative war a priori. But let’s say there is a mad man, foaming at the mouth, has been swearing he wants to kill you for about 50 years. You know he’s serious because he’s taken every opportunity he has to strike out and try to hurt you, regardless of the vast discrepancy in strength between the two of you, and has shown a committed belligerence to hurting and threatening your friends. His bellicosity is such that he threatens the peace and order of not only of his neighborhood but the larger international community. In fact, he recently dispatched one his minions to attack and succeeded in heinously brutalizing one of your friends. In such a case, do you need for him to assemble a gun and point it directly at you before you can be justified in taking action to stop him, even including up to the point where he will never threaten anyone again (toppling the regime, but maybe that’s not a proportionate response either)? Consider that we, as in whole international community of nation states, have noticed that this mad man, while rambling aloud about his premeditated intent to murder Israel, us, and bully the Sunni Gulf states, has been collecting the parts for the aforementioned gun, including the bullets. He also gets extremely evasive and uncooperative when we and others, including a neutral third party in the UN, ask: “What are you doing exactly here? Can you swear to refrain from collecting the parts and ammunition necessary for assembling and firing a gun and let us periodically come over to see if you’ve been true to your word?”
I respect both you and Ed greatly, and I certainly know far less about just war theory than either of you as philosophers. The flaw could lie with me, but I just don’t agree with Ed’s analysis here. The regime in Tehran, I think, clearly, is reaping what it has sowed since it came into being, especially as it looks like it has overplayed its hand with Oct. 7. I suspect, like with the War on Terror, we won’t know if Trump’s Iran gambit was good or prudent for a long while, though.
Ben,
Excellent points, well expressed. I agree with them all. It’s funny that Ed is agreeing, unwittingly, with Rachel Maddow on the imminence issue! Strange bedfellows.
I’m glad you brought up Nazi Germany. The Hitler regime was slaughtering its own citizens in great numbers just as the Iranian regime was and is. And yet the rest of the world, more or less aware of the slaughter, did nothing. Does it not fall to the USA, grounded as it is in Judeo-Christianity, and possessing as it does awesome might, the responsibility to help save the Iranian people? Little or nothing can be expected from the decadent Europeans and the U.K. who are committing cultural suicide and who lack the will to defend their superior civilization.
You will agree that the decapitation of the Islamo-theocratic regime is not primarily about saving Israel. It is about saving civilization itself, and not just Western civilization. You will recall what the Taliban savages did to the Buddhist statuary.
Finally, why haven’t the Fox and Newsmax commentators mentioned the Achille Lauro incident? https://afsa.org/achille-lauro-affair-1985
Bill,
First, I would say that Feser critique inexcusably ignores the other principal justification given by the WH for Operation Epic Fury, which is to retaliate against, to punish the Iranian regime for the harms that it has inflected on American citizens, both civilians and military personnel, since 1979. In reality, the WH and Trump has from the beginning emphasized both the preemptive and the retributive character of the military assault. Thus, in a post on Truth Social, the president wrote: “For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the American people and our allies.” The veracity of this claim is easily demonstrated by a glance at history of the deadly direct or indirect Iranian attacks in last four decades : 1983 (bombing of the Beirut barrack by Iran-backed Hezbollah, which killed 241 American troops); 1983 (bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut by another Iran-backed group, which killed 17 Americans; 2003-11 (Iraq War: Iranian-backed militias and supplied weapons, which killed at least 603-608 American troops); 1996 (Iran-linked Kobar Towers bombing, which killed 29 U.S. Airmen; October 7, 2023 (Iran-backed Hamas attack in Israel, which killed at least 40 Americans). Overall, Iran has been responsible for the deaths of between 1,000 and 1,200 American citizens and the wounding, often gravely, of many (between 2,000 and 4,000) thousands more. For the sake of brevity, I leave aside the many more dead and wounded among our allies in the Middle East and Europe and the documented (Biden DOJ) plot of the IRGC to kill Trump and other prominent American political figures.
Why does Feser speak as if these historical harms never occurred? Is it perhaps because mentioning them might provide a justification for the very military operation that he seeks to condemn? In the ST, Aquinas speaking of the “three things…necessary” for a just war includes–along with (1) being carried out by a legitimate authority and (2) for “a rightful intention… the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil”–that of (3) “a just cause…, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says …: ‘A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly…’” (II-II, q. 40). This perfectly describes the situation with Iran, which has inflicted countless “wrongs” on the people of the United States and which has consistently “refus[ed to make amends for [these] wrongs.
This brings us, secondly, to the preemptive war question and in particular Feser’s insistence that “There is no imminent threat to the United States, and no evidence for one has been produced.” This is a strange assertion, something akin to saying that a man who has killed and maimed many times over many years, often through the most devious means, and who has repeatedly expressed the desire to do so again must be treated as if he unlikely to do so again. The likelihood of harms that states, like persons, are likely to commit can only be judged on the basis of their past actions and expressed intentions. In the case of Iran, the propensity for inflicting such harms, evils is clear. Deadly, periodic violence, direct or indirect through proxies, against the U.S. has been an essential, inherent feature of the Iranian theocracy from its coming to power. It has always been at war with our country, and thus it is a continuing “imminent” threat, one that choses the times and places that are convenient for it to strike again. No great nation can or should tolerate such an ongoing menace (“wrongs’) to its people or interests.
Vito
Ben,
Bill is right: Your comment contains “excellent points, well expressed.”
Vito
Gentlemen,
I’m happy we agree. There are also considerations of jus ad bellum and jus in bello proportionality to consider. But I don’t know enough about these topics to comment.
Related: https://maverickphilosopher.blog/index.php/2021/05/20/weakness-is-no-justification-the-converse-callicles-principle/
Winston Churchill wrote an entire book on this subject; it is titled “The Gathering Storm.” I have read it 3 times, and I highly recommend it.
Here is Machiavelli, from “The Prince:”
“The Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only put off to the advantage of others.”
Ben and Vito make excellent points about the distinction between preemptive and preventive war. I haven’t read Ed Feser’s piece, but I remember that he whipped out his Just War checklist some months ago and gave Trump demerits for bullying Denmark over Greenland.
A state may lawfully resort to force under three circumstances: in self-defense; if asked for help by another lawful actor (a treaty obligation); or if authorized by the UN Security Council, whose resolutions have the force of international law.
(A fourth justification could be the “responsibility to protect,” the idea that state may intervene with force to protect a vulnerable group. R2P emerged after the massacres in southern Africa in the mid-1990s, but there is no consensus about it. A few weeks ago, Trump sounded R2P notes when he told the Iranian protestors that help is on the way.)
The source of the legal debate is Article 51 of the UN Charter, which has always been controversial:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.
“Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
There are two problems with text: self-defense is permitted only after an armed attack has taken place, and resistance to it is temporary until the Security Council wheels into action.
Some experts would say that the text could be understood to authorize a preemptive attack if the threat was clear and imminent, but the consensus view is that there is no room in it for a preventive war interpretation.
The US is now flouting Article 51. Trump’s decision to go to war is saying that the US considers preventive war a legitimate tool of statecraft.
The US and Israeli justifications are not identical. Israel seems to have the stronger case because the war-and-peace dividing line between it and its enemies has been blurred for generations. Israel pleads that a state of war has been in effect with Iran since the founding of the Islamic Republic and that the threat coming from it is real and existential.
Trump supporters are now making a similar kind of de facto war argument against Iran, cataloging Iranian misdeeds going back decades, but it sounds weaker.
Nonetheless, what were watching is the real-time unfolding of a preventive war justification. It’s different from “jus ad bello.” So far it’s taking on the following characteristics:
— grievances are cumulative; there must be a long record of misdeeds by one’s opponent
— the grievances must be serious enough to justify the use of force
— the threat need not be existential
— the case for acting now rather than later must be made; the complainant must demonstrate that harm will be more serious in the future
— the Just War principle of exhausting diplomatic solutions must be satisfied
— after armed conflict breaks out, the “jus in bello” principles would apply
Bill,
I call to your readers attention an important Substack post by Zineb Riboua, “Under Beijing’s Wing: Iran’s Arsenal,”* which precisely explains the “imminence” of the threat posed to the United States and its allies by Iran’s massive production of missiles, in close cooperation with China, over the last ten years. Reading in allows one to understand the remarks of Secretary Rubio yesterday, when he stated that had the U.S. not attacked now, Iran would soon process a missile arsenal so potent that it would be capable of overwhelming any defensive shield, the components of which, American Standard, THAAD, and Patriot and Israeli Tamir, Stunner, and Arrow interceptors, which could not be produced in anything like the quantities necessary to repel an Iranian missile storm. Riboua’s grasp of the looming military threats that precipitated current conflict, a preventive war, exposes the abstract, strategically illiterate reasoning of Feser’s assertion that “There is no imminent threat to the United States, and no evidence for one has been produced. ”
Vito
*https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/under-beijings-wing-irans-arsenal?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Thanks, Vito. Here is the link: https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/under-beijings-wing-irans-arsenal?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Excellent link, drawing together many threads.
A very well done post and comments on this issue. Thanks to all!
Bill, I cannot find your email address on this new blog, otherwise I would broach this with you privately. I would suggest a relevant follow up. Ed Feser posted on Twitter/X yesterday rather forcefully that Trump’s recent call for the unconditional surrender of the Iranian regime was unjustifiable. Here is the link to his argument that Trump is “unbelievably reckless and immoral,” https://x.com/FeserEdward/status/2030009371762254055?s=20 and here is a reply to Feser, https://x.com/ez_yeats/status/2030281581189877983?s=20 and a reply to the reply, https://x.com/ez_yeats/status/2030291793313468577?s=20 both of which I heartily endorse.
Thanks, Tom. Feser writes, “That an enemy nation has done wrong does not entail a right to demand that it put itself totally under our control to reshape however we see fit, or to deploy just any old means to secure this extreme end. ”
But Trump’s aim is not to “reshape [Iran] however we see fit.” He leaves that up to the Iranians. ‘Regime change’ is ambiguous as between a) regime decapitation, and b) regime replacement. Trump’s aim is decapitation, not replacement.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that MAGA doctrine, which opposes nation-building and teaching Middle Easterners how to live, allows for an Islamic theocracy in Iran provided that it renounces the destruction of Israel and the USA and does not attempt to export terrorism or sharia law.