Questioning the warist orthodoxy: pacifist critical reflections on Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Pacifists are used to finding their arguments being dismissed as naive 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 article demonstrates the point by articulating three sets of pacifist critical reflections on the reactions to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. First, enough evidence has mounted about the relative effectiveness of nonviolent (compared to violent) methods of civil resistance to ask the question: how might a coordinated national campaign of Ukrainian nonviolent resistance have compared to the way the war has unfolded to date? Second, the defaulting to a 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 centralization, militarism, ‘warism’ and their concomitant dangers. It is too late to apply such pacifist reflections to the conduct of the war in Ukraine up to the present, but it is not too late to do so in the context of any ongoing tensions in the region, or indeed in the context of defence planning the world over.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the widespread assumption across the West was that there was a binary choice to be made: step up, help Ukraine's military efforts to fight back and adjust spending priorities accordingly, or let Russia win. Now was not the time for naive pacifist idealism. Russia initiated the war, and Ukraine and its allies were forced into a military response.

However, to characterize and dismiss pacifism as naive idealism is to misunderstand what it stands to contribute, even to a seemingly clear-cut case like this one. Pacifism is a broad church, and few pacifists oppose all war from a purist absolutist position. Pacifists do differentiate themselves by criticizing war and committing to alternative options much more stringently than others; however, their rationales for doing so can be grounded in different lines of argument, and their analysis often extends beyond war alone to broader critiques of numerous components of ‘the war system’—including the military-industrial complex, the political culture of militarism, and the assumptions about the legitimacy and efficacy of political violence that underlie dominant orthodoxies about war.¹ It does not take long, therefore, for a closer reading of pacifism to reveal that it has much to offer to International Relations (IR) on ‘relevant subjects such as war, violence, security, defence, protection, peacebuilding and the like’, and that its historical ‘subjugation’ in academia, in the dual sense of its silencing and its denigration as naive, ‘sets the boundaries of acceptable discourse on questions of war’² and serves the interests of what Cady describes as ‘warism’ and its associated political economy.³

Russia's invasion of Ukraine nonetheless does appear to present pacifism with a striking challenge. It is rare that military operations can genuinely claim to meet the strict criteria of ‘just war theory’, yet Ukraine's response is a strong contender.⁴ However, few pacifists would deny the legitimacy of efforts to stifle the colonial ambitions of Vladimir Putin's Russia. The critical question is how. Ukrainians and their allies were presented with the view that the only possible option was military. But was it? Were alternative modes of effective resistance available? Could the military response have been rooted in potentially questionable assumptions? And is the military path that was chosen likely to generate better outcomes in the longer run?

This article aims to explore these questions. The first section reflects on what nonviolent resistance to Russia's invasion, on a scale comparable to Ukraine's war efforts, might have looked like. The second identifies and critically discusses, from a pacifist perspective, two deeply ingrained assumptions that underlie the path that was chosen instead. The third develops the pacifist critique further by critically reflecting on some of the wider implications of that path. The article builds on a growing literature that, in recent years, has begun to give greater consideration to pacifism and nonviolence in IR⁵ and in cognate disciplines such as philosophy,⁶ political theory⁷ and civil resistance studies.⁸ It also builds on literature on ‘civilian-based’ (or ‘social’) defence⁹ and on unarmed peacekeeping and unarmed civilian agency in violent conflict.¹⁰ More generally, research on pacifism and nonviolence has been gaining growing momentum, although, in turn, it is raising plenty of further questions.¹¹ This article aims to contribute to this momentum by tackling directly one example among the most challenging that are levelled at pacifists.¹²

This article therefore simultaneously makes several original contributions. Firstly, it applies pacifist lines of analysis to a new case-study—and specifically to a conflict likely to leave a considerable mark on European histories. Doing this both enriches pacifist analysis and provides a reading of the Ukraine war that draws attention to aspects of it that are understudied. Secondly, it provides critics of pacifism with reflections with which to review their appreciation of what pacifism can contribute to difficult questions in IR. Thirdly, it paves the way for concrete proposals, rooted in pacifism, for states and their populations to consider as alternatives to military defence—including for those involved in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

More generally, with the accelerating climate emergency, growing geopolitical tensions in an increasingly multipolar world, the proliferation of small arms and weapons of mass destruction, the continuing development of new technologies of war and the ongoing expansion of military budgets, the threat of war is not expected to abate. Demonstrating that effective responses to security challenges as acute as military invasion need not contribute further violence and destruction may be important to help de-escalate current and future tensions, and potentially to interrupt the mutually reinforcing cycles of warism and organized violence. This study should therefore resonate beyond academia to help inform public debates and policies pertaining to defence, security and foreign affairs.

This article focuses on responses to Russia's full-scale aggression, not on what caused it in the first place, although to some extent the discussion in the later sections speaks to the causes. Neither is the aim of this article to condemn—especially from a distance—those in Ukraine who have adopted violent means to defend themselves. Such responses are understandable, not least given the prevailing assumptions discussed below. It is also harder to opt for alternative ways of responding and resisting invasion when the alternatives are little known, under-researched and poorly understood. This article's attempt to redress that comes too late to alter recent history. But the challenge of how to respond to and indeed prepare ahead of a potential invasion will confront populations again in the future. It is especially upon the planning for such future eventualities that this article hopes to have an impact.

Nonviolent ‘resistance’?

How can people hope to resist nonviolently and effectively something like a full-scale invasion? Sharp famously listed 198 methods of nonviolent resistance in 1973.¹³ These methods escalate from symbolic protests (for example, speeches, petitions, posters, leaflets, marches, picketing or teach-ins) to non-cooperation (consumer boycotts, refusals to pay, industrial or general strikes, boycotting elections or slow compliance) to more confrontational forms of intervention (civil disobedience, hunger strikes, sit-ins or nonviolent occupation). Others have been tried since Sharp produced his classification,¹⁴ and the internet has opened even more possibilities.¹⁵ Some of these nonviolent tactics were used at the start of the Ukraine war,¹⁶ including in Russia, although they were rare and violent conflict soon came to dominate.

The effectiveness of nonviolent resistance

Can such nonviolent methods ever be effective? Discussions between partisans of violence and nonviolence are often frustratingly inconclusive: historical examples can be traded of preferred methods that seem to have ‘worked’ and rejected ones that ‘failed’, and anyway many campaigns often include examples of both violent and nonviolent tactics, making it hard to determine which method was decisive in a campaign's ‘success’ or ‘failure’. Nevertheless, one major study in 2011 by Chenoweth and Stephan reshaped the debate,¹⁷ because it surveyed 323 cases of violent and nonviolent resistance across the time period 1900–2006 and found that, while success is certainly not guaranteed, nonviolent resistance seems overall to succeed twice more often than violent resistance. Moreover, when it succeeds, nonviolent resistance generally begets societies that are more respectful of human rights and democratic principles than when violent resistance succeeds. These findings are not undisputed and have been nuanced by some,¹⁸ but Chenoweth and Stephan's main conclusions have yet to be convincingly disproved, and their pioneering work has prompted a growing number of studies refining and building upon it.¹⁹

One of the most contested aspects of Chenoweth and Stephan's analysis concerns the methods of resistance that are situated at the boundary between violence and nonviolence. Several critics argue that what they term ‘unarmed collective violence’—which includes acts of ‘vandalism, property destruction, rioting, or street fighting conducted without the use of weaponry (aside from improvised objects, like stones)’²⁰—increases the chances of success.²¹ Others, however, disagree (including on how ‘violence’ is defined and measured to begin with) and overall, taking all the scholarship in the aggregate, the empirical impact of unarmed collective violence on campaign outcomes to date remains ambiguous.²² In any case, even if unarmed collective violence was to prove relatively effective, it still amounts to violence of a different nature—of a lower scale and gravity—than military violence.

There is also a related scholarly debate on the effect of ‘radical’ (and potentially violent) flanks on ‘moderate’ (typically nonviolent) campaigns' outcomes. Here too, overall, the research is inconclusive so far: it may be that having a radical flank threatening escalation sometimes increases chances of success for nonviolent campaigners, or that it discredits them.²³

Either way, when it comes to applying these findings to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, critics can argue that Chenoweth and Stephan's database covers examples primarily of domestic resistance, not interstate war. Nevertheless, many cases in that database are examples of resistance to repressive and authoritarian regimes. Actually, this is the alternative path one would presumably have to envisage: nonviolent Ukrainian resistance first to Russian invasion, but also probably then to repressive occupation. The discussion that follows here, then, is inevitably speculative,²⁴ imagining a counterfactual history of a different Ukrainian response to Russia's full-scale invasion. But given that historical experiments cannot be rerun with altered variables (in contrast to experiments in the natural sciences), such speculation is inevitable when considering alternative historical paths, even if the discussion leaves more questions than answers. Besides, such speculation is no less questionable in terms of the certainty of its prognosis than any foreign policy advice given in the present about the future. Moreover, such a thought experiment provides a challenge to militaristic ‘common sense’ and opens themes for discussion further below.

Comparing scenarios in the context of Ukraine

The 2013/2014 Euromaidan protests that toppled Viktor Yanukovych's Kremlin-leaning government provided Ukrainians with considerable experience in trialling and adapting nonviolent methods of resistance. It was within days of the success of the Euromaidan that Russia began its war in Ukraine by invading Crimea, its operations in Donbas following just weeks later. Between 2014 and 2022, the conflict with Russia somewhat ‘frozen’ but still on Ukrainian minds, Ukraine pursued a strategy of nearly doubling its military expenditure²⁵ while seeking a closer relationship with NATO.

What if—instead of, or on top of that—Ukraine's government had implemented a strategy and policy of mass training of its entire population in nonviolent methods of resistance? Advocates of nonviolent resistance since the time of Gandhi have always stressed the importance of training and planning.²⁶ It takes discipline and training to remain nonviolent when facing violent repression. Nonviolence training also involves learning about a wide variety of nonviolent campaigns, successful or otherwise, as sources of inspiration and creativity. Rolling out a programme to train the entire Ukrainian population in nonviolent resistance would, of course, have required considerable financial and administrative effort, in turn calling on the full organizational capacity of the Ukrainian state. Had such a strategy been pursued, how might have things unfolded from 24 February 2022?

One could start by reflecting on how the Russian regime's perceptions (and descriptions) of Ukraine might have been different in that scenario. Without Ukraine's military buildup and its courting of NATO membership, some of the arguments with which the Russian leadership chose to justify the 2022 invasion would have looked weaker and been harder to sell to domestic audiences and potential international supporters.²⁷

Regardless, let us imagine Russian troops crossing the same lines on 24 February 2022. Ukrainians might have met them without weapons. They might have come out in the streets. They might have blocked the roads. They might have addressed Russian troops directly (often in the Russian language), perhaps with posters, songs and leaflets, as well as by using diverse media channels. Would this have prevented Russian violence? Probably not. It is likely that Russian troops would still have shot, wounded or killed resisting Ukrainians, driving over civilians and marching onwards. But Ukrainians would continue to not resort to violence. Reports of this response would circulate in news and social media outlets. As time went on, Russian soldiers would likely have continued to obey orders, but some at least would soon presumably begin to find the confrontation disturbing. Some would question official Russian narratives. Some would be traumatized by the violence they would be inflicting on peaceful Ukrainians who were meeting them nonviolently. Whether every cog of the Russian operation would continue to cooperate in the invasion and kill stubbornly nonviolent Ukrainians trying to stop them is an open question.

Let us imagine nonetheless that Russian troops would roll on and eventually conquer all of Ukraine. There would have been many Ukrainian casualties, but no violent retaliation. Now, however, would begin the challenge of occupying Ukraine, changing its political structure, reframing media and educational narratives, and managing Ukraine to the tune called by the Russian government. Ukrainians would have been prepared for such a scenario. They would continue to resist, nonviolently but tenaciously, at every turn. Like the Norwegian teachers who refused to deliver the Nazi curriculum, the Dutch doctors who refused their profession's nazification, the Polish teachers who organized underground education during their country's occupation, and like the many workers in heavy industry and public administration across the territories occupied by Germany during the Second World War, they would refuse to collaborate despite threats, arrests and persecution; they would go slow, they would strike; and they would operate parallel channels to carry on with what the occupying power would want to stop.²⁸ There would be petitions, industrial strikes, sit-ins, civil disobedience, occupations and boycotts. Ukraine's allies would join in with economic and political boycotts. A growing number of opponents to the invasion might additionally organize similar actions within Russia. But few Ukrainians would be found to collaborate with the occupation, and a potentially growing number of Russians might struggle with it, too.

In fact, during the earliest stages of the Russian invasion in 2022, various nonviolent initiatives to resist it were implemented at grassroots level by groups of civilians.²⁹ However, these were few and far between; they tended to be under-reported and were drowned out by the louder drums of war. They received little government support, and little amplification or discussion in mainstream media. Had such initiatives benefited from much more government planning and preparation, the Russian leadership might have found itself increasingly unable to govern, stretched across a vast occupied country and facing growing domestic discontent. It would have worked hard to vilify Ukrainian's nonviolent resistance, but it would have struggled to do so, since glimpses of the reality would have percolated across Russia via social media, returning soldiers and word of mouth, which Russians would contrast and triangulate with official narratives. The invasion and occupation might still have been violent, with tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed and wounded, but Ukrainians would have been trained to remain nonviolent in their resolute and stubborn resistance. They would have been prepared for the ‘moral’³⁰ or ‘political jiu-jitsu’³¹ of nonviolence, sometimes called the ‘backfire effect’,³² whereby the resolutely nonviolent resistance to the opponent's violence shifts the moral high ground and erodes the consent needed from the opponent's own population to carry on.³³

Civil disobedience scholarship reflects on the apparently greater effectiveness of nonviolent resistance as being partly owing to such actions pulling apart the pillars of support for the regime, in contrast to how violent resistance often pulls them tighter together.³⁴ Adversaries, when violent, are more easily othered and dehumanized. Their actions can easily be framed as threatening, justifying greater coordination and mobilization in the name of security and self-defence. When an adversary consists of civilians who are addressing an invading nation's troops respectfully and with a disturbing absence of violence, despite violence having been perpetrated against them, doubts are more likely to start creeping in. The minds of the chief architects of the operation might not be affected, but those of the innumerable cogs of the war machine might. How long would the violence continue? How sustainable would it be in the face of increasing numbers of defections—among troops on the ground and perhaps officials higher up—and the possibility of nonviolent discontent arising among the population of the invading nation? Indeed, how long would Putin's regime last, not only in Ukraine but also in Russia?

To be clear: nonviolent resistance would not be a path devoid of violence and human suffering. There would probably still be many thousands of Ukrainian victims, and great harm might need to be absorbed, with no guarantee of success. But how does this compare to the actual path taken since February 2022? By November 2024, according to some estimates, at least 12,000 civilians and 542,000 soldiers—many originally civilians but conscripted, hence counted as soldiers—had been killed, and many more wounded.³⁵ Millions have been displaced, and cities like Mariupol and Bakhmut have been destroyed. At the beginning of 2024 the Kyiv School of Economics estimated the war's economic costs to date as over US$600 billion.³⁶ The path taken since February 2022 has therefore been very violent, with no end in sight nor any guarantee of Ukraine's eventual success at the time of writing. There are also wider implications of this military path, which are considered below.

The impossible but crucial question becomes: is it certain that such a path of full-scale nonviolent resistance would have been worse in process and outcome than the military path that was taken? The nonviolent path might have been challenging, uncertain and ultimately violent, but so has been the military path. Both scenarios involve considerable suffering, and neither path is guaranteed to work. But whether the objectives are restoring Ukrainian sovereignty and independence, protecting Ukrainians from mass atrocities³⁷ or protecting Ukrainian culture from erasure, the warist path's record to date is ambivalent at best, and the future still uncertain. Yet there was little questioning of the military reaction. The Ukrainian people and government mobilized and fought, heroically, and Ukraine's allies supported the military response by providing weapons. Why was the nonviolent path not considered? While one possible reason is that nonviolent resistance methods are not widely known and remain under-researched, not least in security studies and in think tanks close to political power, another is that defaulting to a military response rests on deeply ingrained assumptions about the operation of organized violence.

Deeply ingrained assumptions

The instrumental efficacy of violence

Among the assumptions about the operation of violence that pacifists question, two seem particularly pertinent to the Russia–Ukraine war. The first is the assumption, which is widespread in military circles but also across wider popular culture, and is reinforced by national myths and collective memories, that violence is instrumentally effective: that is, it provides an effective means to an end, at the very least as a last resort.

There are reasons to doubt this. In the first place, in any violent conflict, if one party wins, the other loses: therefore violence can be said to fail at least half the time.³⁸ Moreover, those against whom violence is used might respond by complying, or by resisting.³⁹ Furthermore, few wars in the past century have ended in decisive military victory: indeed, one lesson from examples such as the Vietnam War, the Soviet and NATO military interventions in Afghanistan, or the current Russia–Ukraine conflict, is that states with larger military capacities do not necessarily win wars.⁴⁰ Dissident terrorism and armed insurgencies also frequently fail,⁴¹ as does violent counterterrorism until more diplomatic, longer-term solutions are envisaged.⁴² Contrary to dominant assumptions in IR about miliary violence, the empirical record suggests that it is not particularly effective at achieving stated policy goals, nor does a greater ability to inflict such violence guarantee success.

What using violence does guarantee, however, is a trail of damage—whether it results from interpersonal violence (including gender-based violence) or material destruction (including environmental destruction). Military violence destroys infrastructure. It aggrieves victims and their relatives, brutalizes perpetrators and traumatizes all concerned. To paraphrase Arendt, violent means may not secure the ends for which they are ostensibly deployed, but they do transform the world—to a more violent one.⁴³ That does not mean that particular interests cannot be advanced by using violence: political agendas and careers can be advanced; competitors can be discredited; specific targets can be killed; profits can be made from the production of the means of violence; and images of decisive action can be projected. Pacifists have long been concerned about precisely how those kinds of interests weigh heavily on decisions to wage war.⁴⁴ But the efficacy of violence in achieving stated policy aims is nonetheless questionable.

Yet when a country like Ukraine is facing invasion, the widespread assumption is that the only way to resist effectively is with violence, that coordinated efforts to repel the invasion on the battlefield can succeed and—with enough training, financial and material support from allies, fervour and determination—that they will do so. This course of action certainly has had an impact and has helped advance particular agendas and economic interests, but the strategic aims (‘repelling the enemy’, ‘liberating all of Ukraine’, ‘winning the war’) have been far from secured.

Human nature

A second deeply ingrained yet questionable assumption is that fighting back when attacked is ‘human nature’, and that this applies to states as much as individuals. Firstly, pacifism should not be conflated with passivity.⁴⁵ Pacifists do not deny any ‘natural’ inclination to respond and indeed resist. The question is, how. For example, when an individual is under attack, a range of options—including pleading, screaming, acting disturbingly crazy, even physically resisting short of lethal force—could be considered before pulling a gun and shooting the attacker. Projected onto wider groups of individuals, plenty of possible responses can be creatively envisaged before resorting to lethal violence: hence the numerous methods of nonviolent resistance listed by Sharp in the 1970s, and later expanded.

Violence between states is in any case substantially different to violence between individuals.⁴⁶ Individuals have instincts and emotions. Their physical integrity can be destroyed. States are institutions; they are complex administrations, the effective operation of which is hindered, if anything, by overpowering emotions. What has been termed the ‘war machine’ requires its every cog to perform its function coldly and rationally. Moreover, even when a state is ‘destroyed’, its former territory and many of the people occupying it remain. A state is therefore not ‘destroyed’ in the same way an individual can be. The governing regime and elite might be replaced, but the nature of the threat that a state faces is not identical to an individual.

Furthermore, for a state to be able to retaliate violently when attacked requires a type of preparation that is also different and more complex to the equivalent that individuals may undertake. For states, violent retaliation requires a standing army (or at least trained reserves or paramilitaries that are readily available), hence also the mobilizing of human resources, a programme of training and discipline to create obedient soldiers, the production or purchase of weapons, narratives about ‘our’ culture and that of threatening others—in short, what has been described by some scholars as a ‘war system’.⁴⁷ And that, in turn, generates its own self-fulfilling hazards, including the classic ‘security dilemma’, the potential attracting of pre-emptive attacks, ill-advised militaristic hubris and the leaking of militaristic culture beyond strictly military settings onto wider culture and society.⁴⁸

Individuals might train and prepare themselves for violent aggression and purchase weapons, but the ‘human nature’ analogy fails to capture what it takes for a state to be ready to ‘fight’, and the impact that has on its identity and political economy. Anthropomorphizing states—i.e. treating them in discussion as if behaving like human beings—is thus an approach that rests on questionable shortcuts: it obscures the ‘constitutive’ impact (to be discussed in more detail below) of states preparing themselves to react with violence.⁴⁹

The claim that ‘violence is inherent in human nature’ can be problematized anyway.⁵⁰ In the first place, it is often accompanied by questionable gendered mindsets, practices and expectations about feminine and especially masculine ‘nature’—which are then reflected, for instance, in warist prescriptions of compulsory conscription for all men within certain age limits.⁵¹ However, given that human beings tend to live peacefully most of the time, the ‘natural’ human condition is arguably peace, not war. That is not to deny that violence can and does erupt, for instance in response to perceived threats, injustices or greed, but the ‘natural’ inclination is arguably to live in peace. Why violence erupts when it does, and how that can be prevented or confronted, are obviously important questions, but they are questions that pacifists approach with eyes as wide open as those of their counterparts in other schools of thought. The difference is that the pacifist analysis of violence is especially concerned with how it can be drastically minimized.

Of course, when another country is launching an invasion, a natural inclination on the part of the invaded state's citizens is to resist. But it is a separate, further, and not inevitable step to frame the only possible reaction as having to be violent. Moreover, the natural inclination of Ukrainians to resist is not the same phenomenon as what moves the Ukrainian state to enact the organized reaction it had planned for such an eventuality. It might therefore be ‘natural’ for Ukrainians to be moved to resist Russia's invasion, but to assume that such a reaction cannot be anything but violent, and that this is inherent in human nature, is to oversimplify human nature and to fail to notice the role that questionable assumptions about it play in such an analogy.

The military path's productive impact

Beyond identifying alternative ways in which Russia's invasion might have been resisted under a strategy of collective nonviolent resistance, and highlighting deeply ingrained assumptions that are central to a state's defaulting to a military response, a pacifist critique of the war would also express concern with the wider consequences of the military path that was chosen. This is because pacifists worry not only about the legitimacy and effectiveness of violence as an instrument, but also about its ‘productive’ or ‘constitutive’ impact—in other words, about how it transforms the agents of violence in the process.⁵²

Self-reinforcing militarism and warism

Wars tend to stimulate a hardening of attitudes and dehumanization towards the human beings who happen to be on the other side. The invasion started as an operation orchestrated by the Kremlin without obvious massive support from the Russian population, at a time when many westerners still favoured engagement and interaction with Russians. Western sanctions and support for Ukraine, however, have hardened Russian distrust of the West.⁵³ Conversely, public opinions in the West have coalesced towards greater allegiance to NATO, a sharper identification with ‘the West’ and with ‘liberalism’, and a consolidated perception of Russia, China and ‘illiberalism’ as enemies.⁵⁴ Wars, then, forge and reinforce ‘imagined communities’⁵⁵ out of bitter histories of violence and mutual distrust.⁵⁶ By contrast, nonviolent methods of resistance cultivate a higher degree of mutual respect, treating the human beings on the other side with dignity and addressing them in ways more likely to stimulate a change of will and possible reconciliation.⁵⁷

Wars also accelerate processes of centralization and hierarchical statebuilding. Pacifists (especially anarcho-pacifists) have long warned that ‘predatory political power’ results from the ‘centralisation’ of ‘killing for political ends’.⁵⁸ War generates pressures to centralize command and control. States at war can easily be tempted to infringe human rights and instigate repressive policies to maximize the mobilization of resources for the war effort.⁵⁹ This includes the compulsory military conscription of citizens identified as human ‘resources’—a practice pacifists have long denounced and campaigned against. In this particular war, thousands of Ukrainian and Russian citizens have found themselves forced to enrol (and consequently potentially kill, or themselves die), and thousands more are expected to, not by choice but because their governments have identified them as resources at their disposal.⁶⁰ Both states have also implemented crackdowns on those who have objected or sought to opt out;⁶¹ and the war has renewed discussions about reintroducing or extending conscription across Europe.⁶²

The conflict has also had multiple economic consequences of concern for pacifists. The defence industries on both sides have seen considerable growth in revenues and profits, and enviable rises in share value.⁶³ In terms of opportunity cost, every penny of government budgets spent in the military-industrial complex is money not spent on other priorities, such as public health, education or other public policies contributing to ‘human security’ and ‘positive peace’.⁶⁴ As other scholars have noted, it is not uncommon that war economies become entrenched, generating their own self-reinforcing dynamics through well-oiled lobbying operations, revolving doors between the defence industry and policy-makers, funded collaborations with research institutes and universities, an appetite for cultural productions (such as films and series) shaped and censored by the defence establishment, and so on.⁶⁵ In other words, war injects renewed vitality to the military-industrial complex and opens opportunities for it to sink deeper roots in the wider political culture and economy. The consequences of this war on the economies of the nations concerned will therefore be felt for years to come.

The war has also triggered a realignment and hardening of international and geopolitical alliances. NATO has rediscovered its raison d'être, enjoying renewed support among its members' populations, and being able to deploy its processes and operational capacity with renewed urgency. Countries with histories of geopolitical neutrality have joined it (for example, Finland and Sweden) or have come under pressure to contribute to the war effort (notably Switzerland). Belarus is now more tightly aligned with Russia, whose cooperation and coordination with Iran and North Korea has also intensified. The way in which tensions played out when opposing geopolitical alliances hardened in Europe in the twentieth century is unlikely to reassure pacifists that such a geopolitical trajectory is the safest way to preserve peace in the twenty-first. The dangers of escalation are real, including to nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

These reactions across state capitals illustrate the self-reinforcing, self-fulfilling and inherently dangerous productive impact of warist paths. The war system is fed by, and in turn further fuels, an ingrained mindset embedded in geopolitical practices, wider political cultures and the military-industrial economy, which in turn constitute the conditions for future conflicts, reinforcing the attractiveness of war as an option in the present and future. Putin's calculations and Russia's aggression grew out of such a context in the first place (a militarized and coercive political culture, nostalgia for geopolitical grandeur and a distrust of NATO), and the warist reflex by Ukraine and its allies demonstrates militaristic logics embedded across Europe and beyond. This conflict thus illustrates how war becomes a recurring sedimented practice which constitutes and perpetuates the conditions for its reproduction. Pacifism provides the theoretical lenses to bring this into focus, as well as tentative proposals to interrupt this warist cycle.

Whither pacifism?

Instead, however, the Ukraine war has reinvigorated the ‘subjugation’ of pacifism in the public discourse.⁶⁶ Numerous commentaries, including by some with historic sympathies for pacifism, came out as supporting this particular war, thus reinforcing the framing of pacifism as too categorical and naive. Pacifism has therefore been dismissed as if its only contribution to the discussion would be some principled and categorical rejection of all wars. Not only does this ignore the deeper and richer critique that pacifism can contribute along the lines sketched in this article, but it also overlooks the reality that few pacifists have ever actually embraced a categorical rejection of all wars in all possible circumstances. As I have explained elsewhere:

Some pacifists reject all war due to a belief that killing is always wrong, but others reject war based for example on the view that human judgement is always fallible, or that modern technology has made it impossible for wars to be fought solely between combatants, or simply that war is never effective in bringing about desired results. Some even concede that ‘just wars’ are theoretically legitimate but contend that the criteria for such ‘just wars’ are hardly ever met in reality (thereby blurring the distinction between just war theory and pacifism at this end of the pacifism spectrum). For some pacifists, therefore, it is conceivable that violence could be legitimate in theory or in very specific and limited circumstances.⁶⁷

What that implies is that it is not inconceivable for a pacifist to see some military response to Russia's full-scale invasion as not incompatible with their pacifist critique, presumably provided the violence is strictly limited and contained, its necessity constantly reappraised and its wider productive impact never overlooked, underestimated or left unquestioned. One can therefore maintain a critical pacifist awareness of the questionable efficacy of violence and of war's constitutive impact, while contributing to Ukrainian efforts to resist Russia's invasion. One can also still ask whether nonviolent resistance might have had, and may still have, a role to play. Put differently, to dismiss pacifism offhand in light of this war is to ignore and close the door to a critical lens that potentially offers important observations about both this war and the planning for any other future conflict.

However, the dominant reactions to Russia's invasion rested upon and reaffirmed unquestioned assumptions about the legitimacy, necessity and effectiveness of war as a policy option. Politically, but also economically and culturally, the war led to an escalation of militarism and militarization not just in Ukraine and Russia, but also in the wider region and beyond, potentially rendering future war not less, but more likely and destructive. That is, the war has hardened militaristic mindsets and policy decisions, to the detriment of pacifist critique, but also illustrating precisely some of the core concerns of that critique.⁶⁸

Contrasting security horizons

It is possible that this military path might lead to a victory for Ukraine and its allies. In such a scenario, would it be reasonable to expect an even more militarized but now wounded Russia to accept the peace of the victors? Even if Putin's regime were toppled by a coup, as can happen to autocratic regimes when a military adventure fails, would the new regime be likely to be less militarized, less threatening and less worried about NATO or EU enlargements? However, it is also possible that Russia might win the military conflict. In that scenario, every independent state bordering it would be fearful of the Kremlin's next move. Ukraine would vow revenge, and tensions would remain high across Europe, with military-industrial complexes at heightened capacity. The same effects might conceivably be observed in the case of a mixed outcome based on current demarcation lines. In short, no peace extracted from the current warist path seems particularly primed to deliver demilitarization or the ingredients for peaceful coexistence.

In contrast, it is possible to theorize a different kind of peace that might conceivably have emerged in the case of Ukraine from a path of committed, large-scale nonviolent resistance. First, the contours of such a peace, following a Ukrainian victory, might have been inferred from the empirical record of successful civil disobedience campaigns.⁶⁹ The Russian population (and a growing number of its troops) might have struggled to see the enmity of the ‘enemy’. Loyalty shifts might thus have weakened the Russian regime. The Ukrainian example might have inspired and rejuvenated Russian civil resistance, which in turn might have brought about dramatic, bottom-up political change in Russia and ushered in a new regime that was more respectful of democracy and human rights. Similar changes might have been stimulated in countries such as Belarus and Georgia. Meanwhile, Ukraine would have regained its independence, and the civil leaders of the resistance might have replaced controversial figures such as Stepan Bandera as national heroes. Previously antagonistic populations might be more likely to work together. Moreover, instead of producing accelerated militarization, the economic structures and cultural productions of Ukraine and its allies might be directed to more constructive and peacebuilding-orientated activities.

Of course, the path of nonviolent resistance could fail, just as the warist one could. But which would fail the worst? Which of the two paths would leave, in its wake, societies that are less militarized and less dehumanized, possessing more effective tools and techniques for resistance to continue despite the failed outcome? Moreover, whether comparing paths to victory or paths to failure (and leaving aside questions of comparative ethical merit), the question remains as to whether the military option will produce more promising longer-term outcomes for Ukrainian and wider European security. One of the reasons warism continues to appeal is that it can parade what appear to be tangible results on the battlefield. For Ukraine and its allies, the warist response has brought the invasion to an uneasy standstill—for now. But it should not be overlooked that considerable territory has been conceded, the lines of demarcation are unstable, the likely outcome is uncertain, the human and material costs are high and rising, and militarism is further ingrained across Europe. Nonviolence works differently. It can have tangible results on contested front lines, but these might be less immediate: for example, more territory might be ceded in the shorter term, because instead of violently imposing one's preferences on the adversary, the focal battleground for the nonviolent path is the opponents' mindset. Nonviolent resistance seeks to address rather than destroy adversaries, and it does not feed the war machine.

Pacifism and nonviolent civilian defence provide the possibility of breaking out of perilous yet sedimented warist logics, clearing a path to a different European horizon. While suddenly stopping all western arms supplies to Ukraine would risk precipitating military defeat, it can be argued that it is not too late to train European citizens—including Ukrainians—in nonviolent resistance. Warism is neither the only nor the best response to Russian expansionism, whether for Ukrainian or wider European security. Investing in mass training in nonviolent civilian defence seems at least as likely to deliver security in Europe than betting on traditional great power realpolitik, extended deterrence and growing militarism.

Conclusions

When one state orders its military to invade another, it is sometimes portrayed as the moment when pacifist fantasies must be cast aside: when laudable but naive delusions about peace must make way so that cold, hard-headed military realism can confront the situation. Yet that is also precisely when the pacifist critique is at its most relevant—not necessarily the more absolutist pacifism of some, but the insightful, nuanced and rich arguments that emanate from across the pacifist tradition. Holding to a pacifist view need not mean accepting and not resisting a territorial invasion, although it does mean giving much greater consideration to options short of lethal force when considering how to resist. At the very least, the growing evidence concerning the effectiveness of methods of nonviolent resistance merits closer scrutiny and serious consideration. The assumptions that violence is effective and natural to humans deserve critical scrutiny, and the wider constitutive impact of the military path must not be overlooked.

Analysing the war in Ukraine through a pacifist lens encourages critical reflections on the path the conflict is taking, on what path could have been taken instead, and on decisions yet to be made. It is too late now to rerun the Ukrainian response to Russia's full-scale invasion. But it is not too late to consider the pacifist critique and the potential for nonviolent options, whether in parallel to or instead of violent tactics, as the conflict continues to unfold. Nor is it too late for policy-makers and broader publics to think ahead to potential and future conflicts across the world, with these pacifist considerations in mind.

Pacifism draws attention to the self-fulfilling risk inherent in military planning and preparations for future wars. The inherent instability of the ‘security dilemma’ has long been recognized even in traditional IR circles, yet the same militaristic policies are pursued as if doing the same thing over and over can be expected to produce different results. Meanwhile, militaristic preparations transform the societies that embark on them into more militaristic societies that thereby also feel more threatening to their neighbours. Mimetic cycles of instability and insecurity thus are repeated and reinforced, again and again, with ever more threatening weapons. Yet just as violence or aggressive action tends to trigger mimetic violence or aggression, nonviolent resistance grounded in respect for the humanity of one's opponent can trigger mimetic respect, too. Put differently, one pacifist insight is that, to have a future where we do not feel threatened by our neighbours, we also need to ensure that they do not feel threatened by our own policies in the first place.

Whether a path of nonviolent Ukrainian resistance to Russian invasion might have yielded better outcomes is an unprovable counterfactual. More generally, whether nonviolent resistance might be effective in such scenarios will not be known until tried on a large enough scale. This would require planning and large-scale training in nonviolent resistance methods, as well as popular support. In turn, such preparations would require greater research dissemination and critical discussion of pacifist research and analysis. Having illustrated the analytical depth and originality of pacifism by applying it to such a major event in recent and ongoing European history, this article paves the way for further research and its wider dissemination.

Howes observed that, given the ‘weight of extensive empirical evidence’, it might be proponents and ‘practitioners of violence’, not pacifists, who are ‘the tragic idealists’:⁷⁰ idealists, because their assumptions about how their preferred methods will play out lack realism, and tragic because of the enormous suffering this causes. The war in Ukraine has been tragic so far. The idealism with which actors on both sides started out has been fading. It is an opportune moment to consider what pacifism can offer both to this conflict and to all future scenarios when the drums of warism become louder.

Footnotes

Author notes