Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy.

• Author: Gerber, Matthew
• Position: Book review

Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy. By William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006; pp. viii + 360. $27.95 paper.

Hitting First is a painstakingly researched and documented collection of essays that transcends disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to unpack the myriad questions surrounding the trajectory of American military policy in the post-9/11 security environment. Co-edited by William W. Keller, a political scientist, and Gordon R. Mitchell, a scholar of rhetoric and public argument, this volume reflects a commitment to ideologically motivated but also methodologically objective criticism. Readers from all academic and social spheres will find this volume accessible, informative, and thought-provoking. The editors have woven the central themes of the book throughout each of the chapters in remarkable fashion. This is no small feat when attempting to uncover and examine the complex origins of, assumptions behind, and rhetorical justifications for the Bush administration's military strategy of preventive force.

Part I explicates the historical origins of preventive force in U.S. security policy. In Chapter 1, Keller and Mitchell examine NSS 2002 (National Security Strategy of the United States of America), a document detailing the nation's security priorities that must be submitted annually by the President, as a prism through which the assumptions, ideologies, and arguments behind Bush's commitment to the doctrine of preventive force can be exposed and tested. The authors indicate that three points must be engaged in any meaningful analysis of the preventive force doctrine. First, pervasive use of the acronym WMD in both NSS 2002 and subsequent speeches by Bush administration officials functions rhetorically because it enables "disparate threats" to be "neatly bundled together under the umbrella of WMD" by advocates of preventive force (10). While the threat posed by chemical weapons or by so-called "dirty" radiological bombs is far less than that posed by nuclear weapons, the discursive use of WMD rhetorically levels the threats by elevating chemical and radiological weapons to WMD status. The Bush administration used the term repeatedly in public discourse to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and ultimately to justify preventive war.

Second, NSS 2002 begs definitional questions about the distinction between "preemptive" and "preventive"...