The Foreign Service Journal, February 2007

problem for us — is by military strikes to cripple the regime’s nuclear pro- gram. Let me emphasize that I speak not of an invasion, as we carried out in Iraq, but merely air strikes. Even so, it is fair to ask whether we can possi- bly summon the political and military energy for another use of force of any kind amidst our travails in Iraq. My answer is as follows. At the end of World War I, Winston Churchill, then a member of the British War Cabinet, urged an invasion of Russia substantial enough to strangle the nascent Bolshevik regime. However, Britain felt too drained from the war to embark on such a risky venture. Fifteen years later, when Hitler began to shred the disarmament provi- sions of the treaty of Versailles, Britain and France still could not find the will to mobilize their forces. It would have been relatively easy to crush the Bolsheviks or to stop Hitler at those early stages. The failure to do so, in each case, cost tens of millions of lives. An Act of Self-Defense Would air strikes against Iran’s weapon facilities constitute an act of aggression on our part, impermissible under international law? No, it would be an act of self-defense. President Bush spelled out his legal reasoning in his National Security Strategy Doctrine of 2002, summarized in the phrase: “We will not allow the world’s most terrible regimes to threaten us with the world’s most terrible weapons.” The right of self-defense is among the most fundamental principles of international law, held to be inherent by the U.N. Charter. All the way back to its founder, Hugo Grotius, international law has recognized that this right includes the right, as he put it, to “kill him who is preparing to kill.” Critics, however, have argued that Bush was overstep- ping the long-acknowledged right of pre-emptive self- F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39 For the remainder of his term, Bush should not flag in the oratory of freedom that has been his hallmark.