An Expected Value Approach to Preemptive War Decisions

[Gordon B]

Gary Becker and Richard Posner are both brilliant and accomplished, the former being a Nobel Prize recipient in Economics. Their new blog promises to be very stimulating.

Their first entry is a good one, IMO. I expect Walt, among others to launch counter arguments.

The Becker-Posner blog

[walto]

Well, Becker's whole statement seems to me based on knowing who the bad guys are (i.e., the "rogue states," "terrorists," etc.) ex ante. Once you've got that, he makes the claim that one is justified in having separate criteria for pre-emptive attacks (because, they're, you know, bad guys), but the whole concept seems question-begging to me. As you know, I prefer multi-lateral approaches to this stuff.

Plus, I defer to Uli, who has a better grasp both of what international relations are and what they ought to be than I do.

Czechoslovakia was a dagger pointed at the heart of Germany! No cost benefit analysis is necessary when the target is eeeeeeeeeviiiilllll!!

[Gary Sisco]

Loving the bureaucratic language. By all means let us make sure we say "preemptive war" rather than "invasion of other countries for American purposes, whenever and wherever the gubmint wants to."

Why even bother rationalizing imperial warfare? Who's supposed to be kidding who here? If you're going to support it, why not just call it what it is and be done with it? What you call it won't change what it is.

[Gary Sisco]

Hey, we forgot to commemorate Japan's preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor!

[sonic1]

h a ha ha h ah ha haha




Every nation thinks they have the right to do what they want. Now that we have set the precedent of preemptive war, other nations may do the same. Now nations can just do what the Bush regime always does, claim terrorism.

Nice example to set for Pakistan and India, both itching to nuke each other.

Or Israel for that matter. Also itching to bomb the hell out of a neighbor too.

Russia has already had a lot of fun with that one!

Again, I vote we preemptively strike against canadians. I never did like the way they all look with their beady little eyes.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by sonic1

Again, I vote we preemptively strike against canadians. I never did like the way they all look with their beady little eyes.

Now that I notice, except for my immediate family and me, Canadians do have abnormally close-set beady eyes. Everyone knows that that's a sure sign of a troublemaker. Watch your back, or your front..................

[Gary Sisco]

Shit, the US has unilaterally and preemporily invaded so many times before Iraq that they can hardly be counted. Talk about non-issues. Nicaragua alone has been invaded by the US double-digits and more than once the US just took the whole country over, lock, stock and barrel, including its customs, treasury and everything else.

Never mind the invasion that's never called one. LBJ's invasion of Vietnam, 1965.

It's all so tiresome, pointing out the obvious to the oblivious.