How do you know that's not how it is going to work ?
It might. In which case, pre-emption by the
US against a country that does not threaten
us will have been avoided. Once you make
pre-emption a tactic to be used whenever
one country sees the other developing means
of attack, you set the stage for war by
what-if. There are too many what-ifs out there
that never come to fruition to be going to
war over them.