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The 2002 National Security Strategy for the United States focused American strategic policy around the use, or potential use, of preemptive/preventive strikes, particularly as a counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism tool. While preemption and prevention are not new strategies, they have never been highlighted to such a degree as is currently the case. These activities have been studied in the context of international security, using elements such as spiral models and offense-defense theory. This paper seeks to examine if other elements, specifically international law and normative issues, such as just war tradition, contribute to our understanding of the use, or non-use, of preventive or preemptive actions by states. The results indicate that the limitations on the use of anticipatory military activities found in international law and the just war tradition do not have a significant impact on the likelihood that these actions will be used by states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]