ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the practice and mere threats of preemption or preventive war, in particular when states feel the need to head off a proliferation of the most threatening weapons on the part of adversaries. It offers an analysis of how peace has emerged from decade to decade under varying systems of international relations, and of how preventive wars have played a role in such systems. The book outlines how the dominant world opinion in 1918, as embodied in Woodrow Wilson's designs for the League of Nations, was to delegitimate anticipatory self-defense and preemption, as being the source of needless outbreaks of war. It addresses at greater length whether there is indeed an American tradition of never starting wars, a tradition which President Carter has accused President George W. Bush of violating.
