preventive strike
preventive attack

They evidently want to deliver a preventive strike at perestroika, which threatens to thwart their far-reaching plans.

The destruction of Osirak has been cited as an example of a preventive strike in contemporary scholarship on international law.

Whatever the attack was, it was not the preventive strike he had feared.

So the Yankees see Stanley's arrival as a preventive strike.

Such an example of the preventive strike has created new questions for international law.

The preventive strike was clearly in the national interest of the United States.

We in Europe reject the theory of preventive strikes against potential dangers.

Besides, they all, including the European Union, agreed in Prague on the preventive strike.

It is much easier to make irresponsible pronouncements about preventive strikes or merely to try and consolidate authoritarian powers.

But cutting down healthy trees as a preventive strikes most experts as unnecessary.