Publication

The authors of this paper argue that including the strategy of preemption in US President George Bush's National Security Strategy created a conceptual "gray zone" by failing to clarify the substantive difference between "imminent threats" and "adapted imminent threats" as postulated by the Bush administration. Strategic confusion results when these concepts are applied to the alleged nexus of "rogue states", "terrorists", and "weapons of mass destruction". This Carlisle Paper proposes a new threat threshold, termed "convergent threat", for using force where there is "substantial evidence" of such a link. Further, the paper recommends a strategy of "forcible counter proliferation" (FCP) to disrupt "converged threats" that result from the confluence of "convergent threats". The paper concludes with recommendations to adopt the notion of "converged threats" and to employ a strategy of forcible counter-proliferation.