How to make peace.

[the weight of echoes]

I am a Christian pacifist. Don't be scared by the fourth word of that sentence. My theology informs my ethics, but is separable from it. I say this only because there isn't any point in hiding my religious views, they can obviously be inferred from what follows. The teaching of Jesus is my primary ethical guide, and this would be the case even if I believed he were nothing more than a moral teacher. Who he is, in this context (not all), is separable from what he says.

This post is not designed to invite religious discussion (always welcome, but peripheral). My challenge is: show me, on ethical grounds, that I'm wrong. Not because I want to provoke, but because I'm trying to make up my own mind.
"Pacifist" is a scary word though isn't it? Here we go.

1. The sort of pacifism I endorse is absolutist: I am unconditionally against all violence in all circumstances.

2. Violence is destructive by nature.

3. All human beings, no matter how evil, share a common humanity that must be respected. For this reason alone, there is potentially always more that unites us than divides us.

4. Jesus teaches the following moral principles as central, the highest goods to which we should aspire:
- The power to forgive.
- The power to love your enemies.
Forgiveness has two components: personal and active. Personal forgiveness is striving to rid any hatred and vengeful feelings you have for those who have harmed you; active forgiveness is acting on the freedom brought by this abolition, through seeking reconciliation with your enemies.
Love of enemies is with a view to destroying your enemies, not as people, but as enemies, thereby recreating them as people. This implies:

5. To love your enemy is to refuse to be his enemy. The concept "enemy" implies that of mutuality. Someone is only your enemy if you agree to be his in response. This manifests itself in fighting violence with violence; that is, hating hatred with hate.

6. War, and all forms of violence, is never ever justified. It cannot possibly be a means to seek reconciliation with those who have made themselves your enemies, because it meets them only on their own terms, thus placing no hope of the dissolution of your mutually agreed enemy status. This is why "violence breeds violence". Here a Bible verse is appropriate:
"Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone...Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good". (Romans 12:17-18, 21)

8. There is, by definition, no possible situation in which war is "the last resort". To claim that there is is simply to give up hope of the source of the conflict ever being resolved. Temporary good may resort from war: lives may be saved that may otherwise be lost, but enemies will be made and multiplied. Those who you turn on will turn on you, and so on, until one side is completely destroyed. The victorious enemy, still defined by what he hates, untrusted by anyone, then turns on himself.

9. If you want peace, make it. Say to your enemy, in whatever way you can, "I will not fight on your terms. I will not hate you". Disarm, unilaterally and unconditionally. If your enemy hates you, there is a reason for this. Have you showed him love? It is his perception that matters, not how you feel. Personal fogiveness must lead to active forgiveness. Humble yourself, do not take the moral high ground. We may be less evil than our enemies. If so, the solution is not to become more evil.

10. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing". If we say this, we have abandoned faith in humanity, in the possibility of changing ourselves for the sake of peace. We are changing only our enemies for the sake of war.
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love only those who love you, what reward will you get?" (Matthew 5:44-46) In any case, I am by no means condoning doing nothing. War is doing nothing new.

11. The love of our enemies should outweigh the love of our friends. Those we do not love already, we must seek to love, not because some of us deserve it but because none of us do.



This is not an issue of UN resolutions, weapons of mass destruction or anything of that sort. All those issues are only issues on the assumption that Saddam Hussein is beyond hope of reconciliation. This is not, and will not ever, be true. The politics is complicated, but only on the assumption that the past is in control of the future. To those who accuse me of idealism, I accuse of cyncism. I would rather reason on the basis of what I know than what I doubt. Saddam Hussein has done nothing to merit trust, forgiveness or love. Neither have we.

Examples of the consequences of the principles I have given is a resort to sentiment and not a response. What is wrong with the principles?

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Good and evil are purely arbitary terms doled out by society and/or religion.

[Partizan]

Pacifism is a fine ideal, but unworkable in real life.

There are some disputes between nations that can only be settled with conflict. If the Allies had disarmed in the face of Nazi aggression, can one really argue that Hitler would have been satisfied with our love and charity?

Saving war as a last resort, at least in theory, does a great deal to prevent its misuse. But removing that last resort through naive pacifism amounts to ignoring reality.

[Cola Cube]

Some of the nastiest people I've evr met have been Christians. Just thought I'd point it out.

Your theory of absolute pacifism would only work if everyone had the same opinions as you, rather than all being greedy with some leaders wanting to blow each other up.

Instead of using Iraq (touchy subject) as an example, lets look at WWII. Should we have all just been extra nice to Hitler? Said pretty please? No, because he was an evil human being and if he had been ignored he would have killed countless human beings and we'd probably all be dead, or having never existed.

There are evil people in the world, always has been and there always will be. When such an occasion arises do we sit back and wait for the worst case scenario while at the same time trying to love the enemy? I think they'd really like that, make it much easier for them to kill who they want.

Other religions do not forbid killing, some encourage killing as many as they can and while the Christians tried to wipe out these people they did not succeed.

A world of peace is a pretty picture but as long as there are humans on this planet, a pretty picture is all it will ever be.

[Biitchboy]

Much as I hate to draw from my prior experience as a psychology student, pacifism would not work because it is not an "evolutionary stable strategy". ie if everyone were pacifist, that would be fine. But all it would take would be for one person not to be pacifist, and they would do much better than everyone else. As a result this non-pacifist characteristic would flourish, and the pacifists would be severely disadvanatged yada yada yada...

[Oddball]

I much prefer the Roman way of making Peace. It is practical, and at the time was cost-effective. One simply has to conquer all of one's neighbours, and then you will have peaceful provinces(and a border against the barbarians).

But on a more serious note it is hard to see how a Peaceful stance would get anywhere. Switzerland has avoided war by being prepared for it, it was willing to defend itself. Belgium on the other hand regularly got attacked in the 20thC because everyone knew it was a soft target.

If you want Peace you should be ready to fight. Pacifisim should be left to monks, hippies, way out liberals, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, and other other lost causes.

[Prophet Tenebrae]

I think that you're perhaps making the situation slightly glib. By your logic - Europe is about due for an invasion.

[Al]

"Some of the nastiest people I've evr met have been Christians."

There is a difference between claiming to be a Christian and actually being a Christian. Sometimes I am forced to agree with Friedy when he said that the first and last Christian died on the cross.

"I much prefer the Roman way of making Peace. It is practical, and at the time was cost-effective. One simply has to conquer all of one's neighbours, and then you will have peaceful provinces(and a border against the barbarians)."

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.

"Switzerland has avoided war by being prepared for it, it was willing to defend itself. Belgium on the other hand regularly got attacked in the 20thC because everyone knew it was a soft target."

Regularly? Twice in 100 years cannot be described as a regular event. Besides Belgium was invaded so the Germans could strike easily at France. And I think that the terrain of Switzerland is a better deterrent to invasion than their famous army and their little red knives.

[hr]"Oh sing sing sing
For the dying of the day
Sing for the flames that will rip through here
And the smoke that will carry us away"

[immunodiffusion]

[s]Partizan wrote on 00:50, 18th Feb 2003:
Pacifism is a fine ideal, but unworkable in real life.

There are some disputes between nations that can only be settled with conflict.

How do you know that?

(a) In all disputes which have been "solved" by conflict, we do not know what would have happened if that conflict had not taken place. Therefore it is impossible to say either way whether there are some disputes which can only be solved by conflict or not. We can theorise, and some people theorise that conflict is needed, others theorise that conflict is not needed, but it cannot be stated as a known fact.

(b) Have disputes between nations actually been solved with conflict? They may have lead to a solution in the short term, but many, if not all wars, grow out of other wars. Looking at the World Wars, many people look at the route of WWII, at least in part, as being a result of WWI - the Treaty of Versailles left Germany "defeated" and in a poor economic position - what the Allied forces wanted - however this lead to the growth of support in the NAZI Party, and the rise of Hitler, and the eventual start of WWII. Had WWI not occurred, would Hitler have risen to power and WWII happened?

And WWII eventually drifted into the Cold War, then looking at the case of Saddam, his rise to power can be linked to the Cold War, and the US supporting him through that. Had the Cold War not occurred, would Saddam have had the support from the US to enable his rise to power - would the US have sold him the WMD that they are now so worried about and planning to bomb him over?

War is a cycle - one leads into another, and into another, like a chain reaction. In order to stop it, we need to stop having wars. Violence only breeds more violence.

[Oddball]

Whilst it is true that violence is not always the only option to settling a dispute, it can be the most effective. There are many examples of indecisive wars and battles, but there are also examples of decisive ones.

The first world war may have been indecisive, but the second was decisive. Nazi Germany was utterly crushed, and Facism ceased to play a major role in European political affairs. It is hard to imagine another way that Nazism could have been so comprehensively removed. Communism may have remained a problem, but that is a separate issue.

Another good example of a decisive moment is the American Civil War, it settled a number of issues, including slavery. Since that time there has been no serious effort by American states to leave the Union.

Violence can lead to long term problems, but so can inactivity and not taking action. It would be wiser to judge cases on their own merit rather than making blanket statements. A cynical individual might also point out that people who say that violence never solves anything should hire better soldiers and generals.

[Partizan]

[s]immunodiffusion wrote on 17:11, 18th Feb 2003:

(a) "In all disputes which have been "solved" by conflict, we do not know what would have happened if that conflict had not taken place... We can theorise, and some people theorise that conflict is needed, others theorise that conflict is not needed, but it cannot be stated as a known fact."

(b) "Have disputes between nations actually been solved with conflict? They may have lead to a solution in the short term, but many, if not all wars, grow out of other wars...

"War is a cycle - one leads into another, and into another, like a chain reaction. In order to stop it, we need to stop having wars. Violence only breeds more violence."


I had hoped that common sense would win the day here, but apparently this is not entirely so. Therefore I shall address your points in some detail.

(a) Right, right, the old "what is a last resort" question. Of course there are always alternatives to going to war- if one has exhausted all other options, then, well, one can try using them all over again! But disputes have been solved by use of force as a last resort, in cases where all diplomatic efforts have failed.

The American Civil War solved the dispute between states' rights and union, by preventing the permanent succession of the South. WW2 came about because Britain and France finally meet their treaty obligations instead of kowtowing to Hitler through diplomacy. And that war solved the problem of Nazi and Fascist expansion by crushing the Axis.

You can say "What if war had not been declared at that time?" Or, "What if Hitler wanted to negotiate some more?", but such ignores the fact that diplomacy cannot solve, for example, the dispute between an expansionist state on the one hand and the other states it seeks to subjugate and colonize without quarter. Other disputes may become unsolvable through diplomacy thanks to other circumstances.

(b)OK, here you did make the valid point that WW2 came out of the aftermath of WW1, but that does not impinge on the fact that WW2 was successful in the long and short term. The problem was that the war aims in WW1 were muddled and often ad hoc. On the other hand, in WW2 the notion of "unconditional surrender" of the Axis powers, once it was formulated, was carried until the end of the war and the resulting peace.

The points about Saddam and the Cold War were not so good. Does it really follow that the Cold War happened only because of WW2, or that Saddam rose to power only because of the Cold War? On Saddam, Iraq was a client of both sides in the Cold War, because he was fighting an unneeded war on Iran, so it's not like his support was exclusively American. The Gulf War was a last resort, because Saddam flouted international law and occupied a sovereign nation. Tell me, what other way is there to deal with a such a dictator, when he threatens his neighbors in such a way?

If WW2 had not happened, would the Cold War have happened? What about the policy of containment followed by the West against the Soviets before the war? The Cold War was more a reversion to the mutual animosity between the West and the USSR, exacerbated by the new Soviet power and expansionism following the war. If Stalin had stuck with "Socialism in One Country" rather than making Eastern Europe his communist funland, then a Cold War of sorts would still have happened, considering the lack of trust between the West and Soviet Russia.

"Violence only breeds more violence." And this is why Western Europe has not had a war for 60 years. The reason for this peace is that the intractable differences between those nations there were solved, not on the negotiating table but in the crucible of warfare. A successful, properly-executed war can be a great tool for peace, as WW2 proves. WW1 was by no means the same, looking at the unjust peace that followed. So do not equate the two.

Sometimes violence must be used to end violence. This, not naive pacifism, is the order of the world.