ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a doctrine advanced by the US for consideration by the interpretive communities but which is yet to be used in justification for action. In 1837, an anti-British insurrection was taking place in Canada. Although the US and Britain were in a state of peace, the Caroline, a ship owned by US nationals, was allegedly providing assistance to the rebels in Canada. The Bush administration was propounding a rule that accepted that whenever and wherever a terrorist group or possible threat from a state is located; it should be destroyed without necessarily acting within the intersubjective agreement of the interpretive communities. Within a year of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US had begun to build a case for widening the conventional right of self-defence so as to include taking traditionally unlawful unilateral pre-emptive military action against the new threats of global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
