Abstract

In this article I present a critique of the moral permissibility of preventive war. Preventive intervention is a murky issue in the just-war thinking, so just-war doctrine does not provide moral clarity in this debate. By invoking the concept of a just peace, I discuss prevention from a non-interventionist perspective and show how it can be an effective measure for national security and humanitarian policies. I draw on Amartya Sen’s idea of justice to reconstruct a justice-based, non-interventionist platform where, instead of enabling the act of warfare, as is the case if we start from a just-war approach, we are encouraged to devise an option that would make the case for preventive war redundant. I claim that it is high time that we shift our discourse from finding security in resorting to a just war to building security via a just peace.