Description
Pacifists are used to finding their arguments dismissed as naïve or even dangerous, especially once war has erupted. Yet this is precisely when pacifist arguments are arguably at their sharpest, and when questioning the ‘warist’ orthodoxy is most urgent. This paper demonstrates that by articulating three sets of pacifist critical reflections on the reactions to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Firstly, enough evidence has been mounting about the relative effectiveness of nonviolent (compared to violent) methods of civil resistance to ask how a coordinated national campaign of Ukrainian nonviolent resistance could have compared to the way the war has unfolded to date. Second, the defaulting to the military response that nonetheless prevailed rests on two ingrained assumptions that pacifists query: on the efficacy of violence as an instrument, and on the place of violence in ‘human nature’. Third, war also transforms agents of violence politically, economically, and culturally, thus further entrenching centralisation, militarism, ‘warism’, and their concomitant dangers. It is too late to apply such pacifist reflections to the conduct of the war in Ukraine until today, but it is not too late to do so for any ongoing tensions in the region, or for any defence planning the world over.
