Todorov was getting at a critical point that has been periodically debated since President Bush, in 2002, declared that preemption was back as a central American principle for dealing with a hostile world. If the United States saw a missile on a North Korean launch pad being fueled, loaded with a warhead, and seemingly intended for American territory or that of an ally, it would likely be within its rights under international law to take out the missile on the pad. But “left of launch” suggested a different scenario: A preventive strike, the kind that one state executes against another in the
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