Does the preventive use of force meet the criteria for just war that prevail (or should prevail) in a democratic system? Or does it endanger the legal and ethical traditions that characterize the history of Western military ethics? This book analyzes the justification of preventive war in contemporary asymmetrical international relations. It focuses on the most crucial aspect of prevention: uncertainty. Luck plays a significant role in these hazardous preventive wars, with unforeseen and sometimes unforeseeable consequences. This book investigates whether the role of uncertainty in preventive war making can be harmonized with a normative account of prevention. It builds a new framework where the role of luck--whether military, political, moral, or normative--is a corrective to the traditional approaches of the just war tradition.

The end of the cold war politics and the fall of the Berlin wall have had major ethical consequences. In the 90s Ethics have become a rallying point for non-state actors and experts who gather around values and norms in order to oblige institutions to justify their behavior. This process is the result of different changes, the transformation of the international system, the individualization of Western societies and the growing importance of expertise in the justification of decisions in risk adverse societies. Along with the globalization of the economy and the formation of new political coalitions, global ethics are the pillar of our era of international 'turbulence'.

The end of the cold war has paved the way for a series of moral claims that force institutions such as States, International Organizations of Multinationals to justify themselves. What is the effect of this phenomenon on the international relations of the 1990s and beyond.

This book analyzes the justification of preventive war in contemporary asymmetrical international relations. It focuses on the most crucial aspect of prevention: uncertainty. It builds a new framework where the role of luck-whether military, political, moral, or normative-is a corrective to the traditional approaches of the just war tradition.