What is Pacifism?
Pacifism is the belief that war and violence are wrong or should be avoided as a means of solving conflicts. Britannica describes two broad types: one focused on national policy, which seeks to have countries give up war, and one based on individual moral conviction, which leads people to refuse to take part in violence. Pacifists favor negotiation, international law, nonviolent protest and disarmament. Pacifism is less a full economic program than a commitment that shapes views on foreign policy, policing and civil liberties.
Core beliefs
- War and killing are morally wrong or should be a last resort at most.
- Disputes between nations should be solved through diplomacy and law.
- Nonviolent resistance can achieve political change.
- Individuals have the right to refuse military service on grounds of conscience.
- Military spending and weapons, especially nuclear weapons, should be reduced.
History
Ideas of nonviolence appear in many religious traditions, including early Christianity, Jainism and Buddhism. After the Reformation, groups such as the Mennonites and the Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, made refusal of military service part of their faith. In the nineteenth century, organized peace societies formed in Britain and the United States. The Austrian writer Bertha von Suttner published the antiwar novel Lay Down Your Arms in 1889 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy argued for Christian nonresistance. Mohandas K. Gandhi developed satyagraha, a method of nonviolent mass resistance, in South Africa and India, and Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolent methods in the American civil rights movement. The American activist Dorothy Day linked Catholic faith with pacifism.
Variants
Absolute pacifism rejects all use of violence, even in self-defense. Conditional or contingent pacifism accepts that violence might be justified in theory but argues that modern wars almost never meet that standard. Nuclear pacifism opposes nuclear weapons in particular. Some scholars use the term pacificism for the view that war can sometimes be justified but that the long-term goal should be its abolition. Religious pacifism rests on faith, while secular pacifism often rests on ethics, human rights or practical results. Pacifism differs from just war theory, which sets conditions under which war may be morally allowed.
Criticisms
Critics from the realist tradition in international relations argue that pacifism leaves people defenseless against aggression and that strong armed forces can prevent war through deterrence. Many conservatives and liberals argue that some wars, such as the fight against Nazi Germany, were necessary to stop greater harm. Some critics on the left, especially in anticolonial and revolutionary movements, argued that armed struggle was needed against oppressive rule and that nonviolence asked too much of the oppressed. Philosophers also debate whether refusing to use force when others are attacked is itself morally acceptable.
In practice
Pacifist ideas have shaped laws that recognize conscientious objection to military service in many countries. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 asked signatory states to renounce war as a tool of national policy. After the Second World War, Japan's constitution included Article 9, which renounces war, and Costa Rica abolished its army in its 1949 constitution. Peace movements have campaigned for arms control treaties and nuclear disarmament, and nonviolent methods have been used in many civil rights and independence movements.