Pacifism

In the twentieth century new forms of pacifism emerged that were linked to political traditions: anarchist or socialist pacifism, nationalist pacifism (for example, in Wales), nuclear pacifism or the refusal to support or tolerate the stockpiling manufacture, use, or threatened deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Many pure pacifists were ambivalent about such a movement against only one form of war, while others took leadership roles in movements opposing the atomic bomb, in turning the movement to the use of Gandhian nonviolence. Feminism took an interest in pacifism from the first women's movements, burgeoning in the antinuclear women's peace movements of the 1980s and reflected in writers such as Barbara Deming.

Since 1918 the link between individual pacifist ethics and political pacifism has been shown to be most obvious; the sum of individual conscientious stances can create a social force based on ethics that can have an impact on policy. While more noticeable in liberal democratic contexts, even in authoritarian and repressive situations, such movements have had enormous effectiveness. Acting against the military draft, opposing the threat to engage in war, or the planned deployment of a new weapon (for example, to target civilians), or the invasion of another country—such movements have suffered many short-term setbacks but some long-term successes. Yet often pacifist and pacifist groups have remained marginal in their attempt to bring ethical stances into political life; the peace churches and "prophetic minorities" have kept ethics alive and provided leadership but are at best pressure groups or lobbies for change, as was the attempt to stop the strategic bombing of cities in World War II (1943–1945). In retrospect this was, even from the mainstream, not considered treasonable behavior but a legitimate ethical position. At the time it was seen as disloyal and questionable and was therefore marginalized by the allied military-political elites.

The war in Vietnam is another instance where, in hindsight, the pacifist positions that were marginalized in 1965 seemed justifiable only a decade later. The draft resistance movement led by pacifist groups has gained a respectable if not heroic image. However, this opportunistic application of just war or pacifist theories is anathema to absolute pacifists for whom even World War II, the "good war," remains ultimately an injustice—to the victims and those forced to fight in it.

Ethical pacifists who have emerged in the twentieth century with leading roles in social movements—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and many others—have, like some of the great pacifist religious prophets of the distant past, had an impact on social consciousness and cultural history far beyond their immediate actions. Yet pacifist ethics are in tension not only with the institution of war but even with the violent origins, foundations, and operations of the state and its penal and security systems. Despite the Gandhian model, pacifism often finds itself in tension with nationalist aspirations, or the urge toward armed emancipation from oppression. The "Balkan Gandhi," Ibrahim Rugova (b. 1945), witnessed two decades of nonviolent struggle for the autonomy of Kosovo, but also saw his nonviolent movement overtaken by a violent reaction to Serb oppression in 1998–1999 and ultimately by military intervention by NATO.

The episode in Kosovo, like the Spanish Civil War of 1936, underlines the dilemmas of pacifist ethics in a highly militarized world, socialized toward violent solutions to conflict. Such events do not prove pacifism right or wrong; they do raise issues of immediate effectiveness in the last resort (especially where peoples are under threat, or as in Spain where the long-term consequences of inaction may be disastrous), as against aspirations for long-term cultural and political change, and the failure to break the cycle or self-sustaining character of violent action. The great social structural insight of pacifism (as opposed to its ethical probity) is that violent conflict and change begets violent institutions, authoritarianism, and further violence. Whether nonviolence as a method can slowly replace that structural dynamic remains open to question, yet it is surely one of the prime issues of all human politics.