Talk:Pre-emptive war

I don't think the WWII began as a pre-emptive war. Hitler lied and told the german people that poland attacked first and that germany is retaliating. /Unknown Anonymous

I agree. --Ruhrjung 06:54, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I thought I should explain some of the mods I just made that amount to close to a revert of the changes made by Jerzy. Firstly, I removed the 'direct attack' statement as I don't believe it is relevant. You can have a nation declare was in response to an indirect attack (ie. Briton and France in WW2 were not directly attacked by germany, but still declared war and I have yet to here this described as pre-emptive) and not have pre-emptive war.

Secondly I removed the 'critics' statement from the Bush Doctrine statement. I believe it is generally accepted that pre-emp is a part of the doctrine, the wiki entry on the doctrine states so, the only thing that is disbuted is whether it is a good or bad thing. Niether side of which is taken in the article. I also tried to expand the the area of critics believing pre-emp had been used by the US.

Thirdly I modded the german-poland part. The norminal reasons for the disbute is not relavent to the topic of pre-emptive war, so I removed it. Likewise for the "living room point". Steven jones 04:12, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm curious as to why you don't explain your inclusion of the German attack on Poland, which according to my limited knowledge is downright wrong (no offence intended!).

I would also hope that someone who is knowledgable would pin down the difference betwene preventive and preemptive wars.

According to what I once learned when in school, the German occupation of Norway could with good will be classified as aimed at preventing a (highly) probable British invasion of Norway, while the Soviet Union's attack on Finland in November 1939, the Winter War, was a better example in as much as it being highly likely that a Kremlin fear for Finnish-German military cooperation really was one of the motives for the attempted occupation (although general expansionism certainly was another motive), finally the German attack on the Soviet Union was a clear cut case of preventive war &mdash; i.e. one knew "for sure" that Communist Russia had strong incentives and would attack sooner or later, why OKW decided to prevent such an attack at a time convenient for the enemy by commencing an invasion of their own, at a time more convenient for the Wehrmacht.

regards! --Ruhrjung 16:43, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)