Russia's Military Threatens Preemptive Strike If NATO Goes Ahead With Missile Plan

[patrice]

13. I was just wondering about a distinction that was being made back in 2001-2 about

the differences in the intensity of the potential for First Strike: the "pre-emptive" status quo vs. new levels of escalation that Bush was bringing, which at that time were labeled "preventative" strike.

The point being that the historic acceptability of going to war to stop a specific high-probability instance of violence, a pre-emptive strike, was changing, under Cheney, into a new acceptability of going to war to prevent a wider range of undefined, more-OR-LESS probable, so-called possibilities of violence, with a preventative strike, which we established the acceptability of that in Shock and Awe.

Though any kind of First Strike policy poses intrinsic aggravations to any situation, I was just wondering where we are at in this situation.