The experience of the 2003 Iraq War demonstrated, though, that no such international support for a norm of “preventive” intervention existed. Often the word “preemptive” is used to describe what the United States did—indeed, it was the word used by the Bush administration in its 2002 national security document—but this is to confuse two terms that mean very different things and have very different standing and acceptance.9 To be clear, what the United States did in 2003 was to launch a preventive action, one aimed at stopping a gathering threat, in this case what
