Preventive War and American Democracy

This volume explores the preventive war option in American foreign policy, from the early Cold War strategic problems created by the growth of Soviet and Chinese power, to the post-Cold War fears of a nuclear-armed North Korea, Iraq and Iran.

For several decades after the Second World War, American politicians and citizens shared the belief that a war launched in the absence of a truly imminent threat or in response to another’s attack was raw aggression. Preventive war was seen as contrary...