Prevent & pre-empt

Prevent (pronounced pri-vent)

(1) To keep from occurring; avert; hinder, especially by the taking of some precautionary action.

(2) To hinder or stop from doing something.

(3) To act ahead of; to forestall (archaic).

(4) To precede or anticipate (archaic).

(5) To interpose a hindrance.

(6) To outdo or surpass (obsolete).

1375–1425: From the late Middle English preventen (anticipate), from the Latin praeventus, past participle of (1) praevenīre (to anticipate; come or go before, anticipate), the construct being prae- (pre; before) + ven- (stem of venīre (come)) + -tus (the past participle suffix) and (2) praeveniō (I anticipate), the construct being prae- (pre; before) + veniō (I come).  In Classical Latin the meaning was literal but in Late Latin, by the 1540s the sense of “to prevent” had emerged, the evolution explained by the idea of “anticipate to hinder; hinder from action by opposition of obstacles”.  That meaning seems not to have entered English until the 1630s and the spelling prævent is archaic.  Prevent, prevented & preventing are verbs, prevention, reventability (preventibility the alternative spelling), prevention, preventive (preventative the alternative spelling) & preventable (preventible the alternative spelling), preventor (preventer the alternative spelling) are nouns, preventable (or preventible), preventive & preventative are adjectives and preventably (preventibly the alternative spelling) is an adverb; the noun plural is preventatives is in more common use than preventives.

The adjective preventable (that can be prevented or hindered) dates from the 1630s, the related preventability a decade-odd later.  The adjective preventative (serving to prevent or hinder) is noted from the 1650s and for centuries, dictionaries have listed it as an irregular formation though use seems still prevalent; preventive is better credentialed but now appears relegated to be merely an alternative form.  The adjective preventive (serving to prevent or hinder; guarding against or warding off) has the longer pedigree (used since the 1630s) and was from the Latin praevent-, past-participle stem of praevenīre (to anticipate; come or go before, anticipate).  It was used as a noun in the sense of "something taken or done beforehand” since the 1630s and had entered the jargon of medicine by the 1670s, and under the influence of the physicians came the noun preventiveness (the quality of being preventive).  The noun prevention came from the mid-fifteenth century prevencioun (action of stopping an event or practice), from the Medieval Latin preventionem (nominative preventio) (action of anticipating; a going before), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of the Classical Latin praevenīre.  The original sense in English has been obsolete since at least the late seventeenth century although it was used in a poetically thus well into the 1700s.

Many words are associated with prevent including obstruct, obviate, prohibit, rule out, thwart, forbid, restrict, hamper, halt, forestall, avoid, restrain, hinder, avert, stop, impede, inhibit, bar, preclude, counter, limit & block.  Prevent, hamper, hinder & impede refer to so degree of stoppage of action or progress.  “To prevent” is to stop something by forestalling action and rendering it impossible.  “To hamper” or “to hinder” is to clog or entangle or put an embarrassing restraint upon; not necessarily preventing but certainly making more difficult and both refer to a process or act intended to prevent as opposed to the prevention.  “To impede” is to make difficult the movement or progress of anything by interfering with its proper functioning; it implies some physical or figurative impediment designed to prevent something.

Pre-empt or preempt (pronounced pree-empt)

(1) To occupy (usually public) land in order to establish a prior right to buy.

(2) To acquire or appropriate before someone else; take for oneself; arrogate.

(3) To take the place of because of priorities, reconsideration, rescheduling, etc; supplant.

(4) In bridge, to make a pre-emptive bid (a high opening bid, made often a bluff by a player holding a weak hand, in an attempt to shut out opposition bidding).

(5) To forestall or prevent (something anticipated) by acting first; preclude; head off.

(6) In computer operating systems, the class of actions used by the OS to determine how long a task should be executed before allowing another task to interact with OS services (as opposed to cooperative multitasking where the OS never initiates a context switch one running process to another.

(7) In the jargon of broadcasting, a euphemism for "cancel” (technical use only).

1830: An invention of US English, a back formation from preemption which was from the Medieval Latin praeēmptiō (previous purchase), from praeemō (buy before), the construct being prae- (pre; before) + emō (buy).  The creation related to the law or real property (land law), to pre-empt being “to occupy public land so as to establish a pre-emptive title to it".  In broadcasting, by 1965 it gained the technical meaning of "set aside a programme and replace it with another" which was actually a euphemism for "cancel”.  The use of pre-empt as a noun happens in bridge, broadcasting and the design of computer operating systems (mostly in the context of multi-tasking).  Pre-empt is a noun & verb, pre-empted & pre-empting are verbs, pre-emptor, pre-empted, pre-emptory, pre-emptive & pre-emptible are adjectives; the noun plural is pre-empts.

In law, broadcasting and computer operating system architecture, pre-empt has precise technical meanings but when used casually, it can either overlap or be synonymous with words like claim, usurp, confiscate, acquire, expropriate, seize, assume, arrogate, anticipate, commandeer, appropriate, obtain, bump, sequester, take, usurp, annex & accroach.  The spelling in the forms præemption, præ-emption etc is archaic).  The hyphenated form (pre-empt) was historically the standard form except in the US English where all style guides recommend "preempt".  Usually, simplified US spelling improves things (despite what the pedants claim) but pre-empt really is preferable because the double "e" makes the word less legible (it looks like a spelling mistake) and for those for whom English is not a first language, on first acquaintance, pronunciation must be baffling.  Given all that, pre-empt is recommended.    

Pre-emptive and preventive wars

A pre-emptive war is a military action by one state against another, begun with the intent of defeating what is perceived to be an imminent attack or at least gaining a strategic advantage in the impending (and allegedly unavoidable) war before that attack begins. The “pre-emptive war” is sometimes confused with the “preventive war”, the difference being that the latter is intended to destroy a potential rather than imminent threat; a preventative war may be staged in the absence of enemy aggression or even the suspicion of military planning.  In international law, preventive wars are now generally regarded as aggressive and therefore unlawful whereas a pre-emptive war can be lawful if authorized by the UN Security Council as an enforcement action.  Such authorizations are not easily gained because the initiation of armed conflict except in self-defense against “armed attack” is not permitted by the United Nations (UN) Charter and only the Security Council can endorse an action as a lawful “action of enforcement”.  Legal theorists suggest if it can be confirmed preparations for a future attack have been confirmed, even if the attack has not be commenced, under international law the attack (as a legal construct) can be said to have “begun” but the UN has never upheld this opinion.  Militarily, the position does make sense, especially if the first two indictments of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) assembled at Nuremberg (1945-1946) to try the surviving Nazi leadership ((1) planning aggressive war & (2) waging aggressive war) are considered as reality rather than in the abstract.

Legal (as opposed to moral or ethical) objections to pre-emptive or preventive wars were not unknown but until the nineteenth century, lawyers and statesmen gave wide latitude to the “right of self-defense” which really was a notion from natural law writ large and a matter determined ultimately on the battlefield, victory proof of the ends justifying the means.  Certainly, there was a general recognition of the right forcibly to forestall an attack and the first legal precedent of note wasn’t codified until 1842 in the matter of the Caroline affair (1837).  Then, some Canadian citizens sailed from Canada to the US in the Caroline as part of a planned offensive against the British in Canada.  The British crossed the border and attached, killing both Canadians and a US citizen which led to a diplomatic crisis and several years of low-level clashes.  Ultimately however, the incident led to the formulation of the legal principle of the "Caroline test" which demands that for self-defense to be invoked, an incident must be "…instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".  Really, that’s an expression little different in meaning to the criteria used in many jurisdictions which must exist for the claim of defense to succeed in criminal assault cases (including murder).  The "Caroline test" remains an accepted part of international law today, although obviously one which must be read in conjunction with an understanding of what's changed over the last 200-odd years.

The "Caroline test" was however a legal principle and such things need to be enforced and that requires both political will and a military mechanism.  In the aftermath of the Great War (1914-1918), that was the primary purpose of the League of Nations (LoN, 1920-1946), an international organization (the predecessor of the UN) of states, all of which agreed to desist from the initiation of all wars, (pre-emptive or otherwise).  Despite the modern perception of the LoN as an ineffectual talking-shop, in the 1920s it did enjoy some success in settling international disputes and was seen as as effective.  It was an optimistic age, the Locarno Treaties (1925) and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) appeared to outlaw war but the LoN (or more correctly its member states) proved incapable of halting the aggression in Europe, Asia and Africa which so marked the 1930s.  Japan and Italy had been little punished for their invasions and Nazi Germany, noting Japan’s construction of China as a “technical aggressor” claimed its 1939 invasion of Poland was a “defensive war” and it had no option but to pre-emptively invade Poland, thereby halting the alleged Polish plans to invade Germany.  Berlin's claims were wholly fabricated.  The design of the UN was undertaken during the war and structurally was different from the LoN; an attempt to create an institution which could prevent aggression.

There have been no lack of examples since 1939.  Both the British and Germans staged pre-emptive invasions of Norway in 1940 though the IMT at Nuremberg was no more anxious to discuss this Allied transgression than they were war crimes or crimes against humanity by anyone except the Nazis.  The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 proceeded without undue difficulty but that couldn’t be said of the Suez Crisis of 1956 when the British, French and Israelis staged an war of aggression which not even London was hypocritical enough to claim was pre-emption or preventive; they called it a peace-keeping operation, a claim again wholly fabricated.  The Six-Day War (1967) which began when Israel attached Egypt is regarded by most in the West as pre-emptive rather than preventive because of the wealth of evidence suggesting Egypt was preparing to attack although the term “interceptive self-defense” has also be coined although, except as admirable sophistry, it’s not clear if this is either descriptive or helpful.  However, whatever the view, Israel’s actions in 1967 would seem not to satisfy the Caroline test but whether “…leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”, written in the age of the “flutter of carrier pigeons and splutter of musketry” could by 1967 reasonably be held to convey quite the same meaning was obviously questionable.

Interest in the doctrine of pre-emption was renewed following the US invasion of Iraq (2003).  The White House claimed the action was a necessity to intervene to prevent Iraq from deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) prior to launching an armed attack.  Subsequently, it was found no WMDs by then existed but the more interesting legal point is whether the US invasion would have been lawful had WMDs been found (Iraq’s resistance to the attack was lawful regardless of the status of the US attack).  The relevant sections (Article 2, Section 4) of the UN Charter are considered jus cogens (literally "compelling law" (ie “international law”)).  They prohibit all UN members from exercising "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".  However, this apparently absolute prohibition must be read in conjunction with the phrase "armed attack occurs" (Article 51, Section 37) which differentiates between legitimate and illegitimate military force.  It states that if no armed attack has occurred, no automatic justification for pre-emptive self-defense has yet been made lawful under the charter and in order to be justified, two conditions must be fulfilled: (1) that the state must have believed the threat is real and not mere mere perception and (2) that the force used must be proportional to the harm threatened.  As history has illustrated, those words permit much scope for the sufficiently imaginative.

Pre-emptive progress on the ground, March-July 2022: At the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (June 2025), Mr Putin would describe what really should be regarded as the “Putin doctrine”: “We have a saying, or a parable: Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours”, adding he regarded Russians and Ukrainians to be one people and “in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours.”

Mr Putin (Vladimir Putin (b 1952; prime-minister or president of Russia since 1999)), although avoiding distasteful words like "aggression" “war” or “invasion”, did use the language associated with pre-emptive and preventive wars in his formal justification for Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine.  Firstly he claimed, Russia is using force in self-defence, pursuant to Article 51 of the Charter, to protect itself from a threat emanating from Ukraine.  This threat, if real, could justify pre-emptive self-defence because, even if an attack was not “imminent”, there was still an existential threat so grave it was necessary immediately to act (essentially the same argument the US used in 2003).  This view met with little support, most holding any such theory of pre-emption is incompatible with Article 51 which really is restricted to permitting anticipatory self-defence in response to imminent attacks. Secondly he cited the right of collective self-defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” although neither are states and even if one accepts they’ve been subject to a Ukrainian attack, the extent of Russia’s military intervention and the goal of regime change in Kyiv appear far to exceed the customary criteria of necessity and proportionality.  Finally, the Kremlin claimed the special military action was undertaken as a humanitarian intervention, the need to stop or prevent a genocide of Russians in eastern Ukraine.  Few troubled themselves to comment on this last point.

Fate

Fate (pronounced feyt)

(1) That which unavoidably befalls a person; their fortune or “lot in life”.

(2) The universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time.

(3) That which is inevitably predetermined; the inevitable fortune that befalls a person or thing; destiny; the ultimate agency which predetermines the course of events.

(4) A prophetic declaration of what must be.

(5) A common term for death, destruction, downfall or ruin; a calamitous or unfavorable outcome or result.

(6) The end or final result (usually in the form “the fate of”).

(7) In Classical Mythology, as “the Fates”, the three goddesses of destiny (Clotho, Lachesis & Atropos), known to the Greeks as the Moerae and to the Romans as the Parcae.

(8) To predetermine, as by the decree of fate; destine (used in the passive and usually in the form “fated to”).

(9) In biochemistry, the products of a chemical reaction in their final form in the biosphere.

(10) In biology, as fate map, a diagram of an embryo of some organism showing the structures that will develop from each part.

(11) In embryology, the mature endpoint of a region, group of cells or individual cell in an embryo, including all changes leading to that mature endpoint (the developmental pathway).

1325–1375: From the Middle English fate (“one's lot or destiny; predetermined course of life” or “one's guiding spirit”), from the Old French fate, from the Latin fātum (oracular utterance; what has been spoken, utterance, decree of fate, destiny), originally the neuter of fātus (spoken), past participle of fārī (to speak), from the primitive Indo-European root bha- (to speak, tell, say).  The Latin fata (prediction (and the source of the Spanish hado, the Portuguese fado and the Italian fato)) was the plural of fatum (prophetic declaration of what must be; oracle; prediction), from fātus (“spoken”), from for (to speak) and in this sense it displaced the native Old English wyrd (ultimate source of the modern English weird).  When a Roman Emperor said “I have spoken” it meant his words had become law, subject only to the dictates of the gods, a notion in 1943 formalized in law in Nazi Germany when a decree of the Führer was declared to be beyond any legal challenge.

In Latin, the usual sense was “that which is ordained, destiny, fate”, literally “that which was spoken (by the gods) and often was used in some bad or negative way, (typically as some kind of harbinger of doom) and this association with “bad luck, ill fortune; mishap, ruin; pestilence or plague” carried over into Medieval Latin and from there to many European languages including English.  From the early fifteenth century it became more nuanced, picking up the sense of “the power or guiding force which rules destinies, agency which predetermines events” (often expressed to mean a “supernatural predetermination” and presented sometimes as “destiny personified”.  The meaning “that which must be” was first documented in the 1660s and that led (inevitability as it were) to the modern sense of “final event”, dating from 1768.   The Latin sense evolution came from “sentence of the Gods” (theosphaton in the Greek) to “lot, portion” (moira in the Greek, personified as a goddess in Homer; moirai from a verb meaning “to receive one's share”).  The Latin Parca (one of the three Fates or goddesses of fate) was the source of the French parque (a fate) and the Spanish parca (Death personified; the Grim Reaper) and may be from parcere (act sparingly, refrain from; have mercy upon, forbear to injure or punish (which etymologists suspect was a euphemism) or plectere (to weave, plait).  The Moerae (the Greek plural) or the Parcre (the Roman plural) were the three goddesses who determined the course of a human life (sometimes poetically put as “the three ladies of destiny”) and were part of English literature by the 1580s).  Clotho held the distaff or spindle; Lachesis drew out the thread and Atropos snipped it off, the three goddesses controlling the destinies of all.

The verb in the sense of “to preordain as if by fate; to be destined by fate” was first used in the late sixteenth century and was from the noun; two centuries earlier the verb had meant “to destroy”.  The adjective fateful dates from the 1710s and was from the noun, the meaning “of momentous consequences” noted early in the nineteenth century and both “fateful & “fatefully” were used by poets of the Romantic era with the meaning “having the power to kill” which belong usually to “fatal”, the attraction being the words better suited the cadence of the verse.  Just as the noun fate enjoyed some broadening and divergences in its meanings, other adjectival use emerged including fated from the 1720s which meant “doomed” (and “destined to follows a certain course” & “set aside by fate”), fatiferous (deadly, mortal) from the 1650s (from the Latin fatifer (death-bringing) and the early seventeenth century fatific & fatifical (having the power to foretell) from the Latin fatidicus (prophetic).  Fate is a noun & verb; fatalism, fatefulness & fatalist are nouns, fated & fating are verbs, fatalistic & fateful are adjectives and fatalistically & fatefully are adverbs, the noun plural is fates.

Fate has in English evolved to enjoy specific meanings and there’s really no exact synonym but the words destiny, karma, kismet; chance, luck, doom, fortune, lot, foreordain, preordain & predestination are related in sense while the antonyms (with a similarly vague relationship) include choice, free will, freedom & chance.  The idiomatic phrases using “fate” includes “as fate would have it” (the same meaning as “as luck would have it”, an allusion to the randomness of events and how so much good fortune in life is a matter of chance”; fate-fraught or fatefraught (fateful), quirk of fate (same as “quirk of fate”, a usually unfortunate (often ironic) change of circumstances or turn of events; seal someone's fate (to prevent (a decision, event, etc.) from being influenced or changed by a wilful act; to pre-empt someone's future actions by deciding the course of events ahead of time); sure as fate (with certainty); tempt fate (to court disaster; to take an extreme list); fate worse than death (which can be used literally (eg being sent to the Gulag in comrade Stalin’s time was often described thus on the basis a quick death was better than a slow one or the phrase “the living will envy the dead”, used often of those imagined to have survived a nuclear war) or figuratively (eg “going to a country & western concert is a fate worse than death” although that one may not be too far from literal.  The words “fate”, “destiny” & “doom” all relate to the hand of fortune (usually in the adverse) that is predetermined and inescapable and although they’re often used interchangeably, there are nuances: Fate stresses the irrationality and impersonal character of events; the randomness of what happens in the universe.  Destiny emphasizes the idea of an unalterable course of events, and is used of outcomes good and bad but rarely of the indifferent.  Doom is unambiguously always something bad, especially if final and terrible.  Doom may be brought about by fate or destiny or it may be something all our own fault.

Fatalist Lindsay Lohan and her determinist lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Many notable political and military leaders like to damn the hand of fate when it doesn’t favour them but the word is often invoked when things look good.  In July 1939, the vice-chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Army (Lieutenant General Shigeru Sawada (1887–1980)), impressed by the dynamism of the fascist states in Europe declared : “We should resolve to share our fate with Germany and Italy”.  In that he was of course prophetic although the fate of the three Axis powers a few years on wasn’t what he had in mind.  By 1939 however, things in Tokyo had assumed a momentum which was hard for anyone in the Japanese military or political establishment to resist although there were statesmen aware they were juggling in their hands the fate of the nation.  Yōsuke Matsuoka (1880–1946; Japanese foreign minister 1940-1941), almost as soon as the signatures has been added to the Japanese-German Anti-Comintern Pact (1936) observed: “It is characteristic of the Japanese race that, once we have promised to cooperate, we never look back or enter into an alliance with others.  It is for us only to march side by side, resolved to go forward together, even if it means committing double suicide”.  Even by the standards of oriental fatalism that was uncompromising and Matsuoka san probably reflected on his words in the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) when he lamented: “Entering into the Tripartite Pact was the mistake of my life.  Even now I still keenly feel it. Even my death won't take away this feeling.”

In the Western philosophical tradition, the difference between fatalism and determinism is sometimes misunderstood.  In essence, what fatalism says is that one does not act as one wills but only in the pre-ordained way because everything is pre-ordained.  Determinism says one can act as one wills but that will is not of one’s own will; it is determined by an interplay of antecedents, their interaction meaning there is no choice available to one but the determine course.  So, fatalism decrees there is an external power which irresistibly dictates all while determinism is less assertive; while there are sequences of cause and effect which act upon everything, they would be ascertainable only to someone omniscient.  That’s something to explore in lecture halls but not obviously of much use in other places but the more important distinction is probably that determinism is an intellection position that can be mapped onto specific situations (technological determinism; political determinism; structural determinism et al) where as fatalism, ultimately, is the world view that would should abandon all hope of influencing events and thus repudiate any responsibility for one’s actions.  Determinism is a philosophy, fatalism a faith.