Pacifism and Nonviolence as Critique and Theory/Praxis in Ukraine and the Climate Crisis

The most pressing and urgent crisis humanity faces at this juncture of human history is climate change. This is glaringly apparent to those in areas most impacted by too much and too little water, violent weather, and human insecurity, who are willing to see that these conditions have been brought on or exacerbated by the global warming that results from the emissions of greenhouse gases. How is this relevant? I have argued, in The Pentagon, Climate Change and War (Crawford, 2022), that over the long durée, war and mobilization for it have been important factors causing both direct military greenhouse gas emissions and military industrialization that fosters and depends on fossil fuels. Offensive and defensive military doctrine have become dependent on mobility, which is in turn dependent on having military bases in far-flung places to provide both shorter lines of communication in any one region and refueling. These bases become interests that must be defended. The bases and alliance relationships necessary to defend them can and often do destabilize governments and regions. Fossil-fuel-powered military industry, required to equip these forces, has a ripple effect in civilian industry, as when wwi and wwii accelerated the commercial aviation industry, the use and extension of highways, and the replacement of renewable materials (such as plant rubber and wood) with petroleum-based plastics.

War is both a direct and indirect cause of global warming and climate change through emissions from operations and installations, its effect on economies, and its destructive effects on the natural and built environment. Total direct military emissions are high. For instance, even in the last two years, when Pentagon greenhouse gas emissions have declined roughly half from their 1991 peak, Department of Defense emissions were 51 MMTCO2e. At this scale, the U.S. dod is the single largest institutional emitter in the U.S. government and the single largest emitter in the United States. Put in a comparative perspective, dod greenhouse gas emissions are larger than the emissions of entire countries, such as Norway and Portugal. If all military emissions from all countries, and those from war, were added, this becomes an even larger share of global emissions (Michaelowa, et. al., 2022).

There are also war-related greenhouse gas emissions from the deliberate burning of cities and reconstruction. In war, governments also often deliberately target forests, decreasing the ability of forests to sequester carbon, and the fossil fuel installations of the enemy, leading to emissions of potent greenhouse gases such as methane. Mobilization encourages adversaries to build their own weapons and bases. Even if war worked in the way its advocates suggest, in addition to its human toll, its environmental costs are too large. Further, the military budget and the human resources associated with war are enormous when compared to the budgets associated with reducing emissions, adapting to climate change, and fostering resilience. The climate crisis only adds to the urgency of avoiding violent conflicts and utilizing nonviolent means to wage and resolve conflict.

Of course, even if war did not cause climate change, I believe that aggressive war is wrong and that self-defense, including the use of force, is legitimate. Nonviolence, even in opposition to war, is morally preferred to violence that harms others. On the pragmatic side, there is good reason to suspect that while violence can “work”, in an instant, or even for many years and in many situations, it is both often, and perhaps more often than not, unnecessary and overused (as opposed to alternatives) and sometimes ineffective and counterproductive. Pragmatic pacifists are committed to pragmatic or strategic nonviolence—the refusal to do harm to other people because violence may or likely would be ineffective or counterproductive.

Advocates of pacifism and nonviolence question the moral and practical claims the advocates of war make for the virtues of war and preparation for it. As Duane Cady argues, the dominant culture of “warism” is almost always being loudly asserted. Pacifists can argue and show that the virtues of war are generally overrated in societies that are dominated by militarist beliefs. As Cady (2004, 470–471) says, “People tend to think pacifism will not work because they are largely ignorant of when and where it has worked.” (Also see Cady, 1989). Research can critically analyze the effects and effectiveness of pacifism and nonviolence in various situations.

There is always the question of how a state could respond to an armed invasion by an aggressor. The traditional argument for military forces is that ruthless states would take advantage of states that were perceived to be weak, and that therefore states ought to have robust military capabilities. In the early 1980s, peace research scholars working in the field of non-offensive defense, or defensive defense, offered a different answer: the response to aggression could be denial using a combination of defensive (military) weapons and nonviolent, non-military means that make it difficult for an aggressor to take and hold territory. Johan Galtung, for example, argued that models of non-military and defensive military defense have advantages. Specifically, they would serve “never to offer the adversary any targets with such a high concentration of defense potential that it would be worthy of a nuclear attack, and at the same time being able to resist an attack in all corners of the country. . . . For the case of non-military defense this obviously means not only territorial defense in the sense of resistance in geographically well-defined units, but also social defense in the sense of all organizations and associations in a country finding their own ways of resisting attack by not producing goods or services for the adversary etc.” Galtung argues that “Clearly this is defensive as it is only meaningful in one’s own society” (Galtung 1984, 131). Of course, while the distinction between offensive and defensive weapons is easier asserted than implemented in practice, any weapons used in a defensive and denial strategy would have to be basically incapable of long-range and offensive uses, and coupled with a defensive doctrine.

The immediate defensive response of Ukrainians to the Russian invasion of February 2022 used some of these tactics, including civilian-based non-cooperation and misdirection of invading troops (Christoyannopoulos 2022). The success of the Ukrainian people at blunting and stalling Russian troops also suggests that the West may have overprepared against the Russian military and, prior to that, the Soviet conventional military threat. Relatively small and comparatively weak forces supplemented by civilian non-cooperation were able to stall and reverse Russian military advances. Some civilians put up barriers to Russian vehicles and stood in front of them. Others even made and used Molotov cocktails. But here we have moved from nonviolence to defensive violence. Are the people who deploy civilian-based defense tactics at risk of losing their Geneva Convention Additional Protocol protections—which are based on their status as “non-combatants”—against being attacked? Do they put other non-resisting civilians at risk?

Research on effects and effectiveness of nonviolence ought also to include the instances when a commitment to nonviolence against property may be limiting a movement. What are the boundaries of nonviolent direct action? Does it only apply to people and animals? We might ask whether sabotage of weapons, equipment, and industrial plants is nonviolent. The Berrigan brothers (who physically damaged nuclear warheads) and those who have damaged fossil fuel infrastructure have taken direct action to include destruction of property. If, rather than simply blocking the gates of fossil fuel industry, or holding signs outside banks, climate activists destroy oil pipelines or production facilities, are they still nonviolent? As I write this article, on 7 November 2022 from the UK, Scotland Yard has arrested 23 people for nonviolent climate protest, and four more people were arrested preemptively because the police judged that they were preparing to protest. An Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist told reporters, “We will continue with our proactive effort. We will work as hard as we can to identify those that are intent on committing crime and to arrest them.” (Rawlinson 2022). And then we might ask, as Andreas Malm (2021) does in the context of the climate change movement, where physical destruction of property fits in the tool kit of a largely nonviolent movement.

Pacifism and Nonviolence in Perspective

It used to be the case that the advocates of war were loud, proud, and crude in their argument that war is good. This view, which reached one of its heights in the run-up to the First World War, was not confined to military and civilian leaders. For instance, the “Futurist Manifesto” of 1909, written by artists and writers were blunt in their celebration of the virtues of war: “Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece” and “We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman [sic]. We will . . . fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.” (Martinetti, 1909). After the death and destruction of the World Wars, those views were, ostensibly, tempered in the mainstream. But as I suggest below, many of them are still with us.

On the other hand, pacifism and nonviolence are seen to be exceptions to normal practices of politics, while the practitioners of pacifism and nonviolence are seen themselves as exceptional and extraordinary. Historically, the people who espouse pacifism and engage in nonviolence do so for practical reasons—pragmatic pacifists who believe that, unlike violence and war, pacifism and nonviolence work—or because of a normative/spiritual commitment to not harming others, the principled pacifists. These individuals are heroes not only because their movements were successful but also because of the physical, intellectual, and cultural courage it took and still takes to articulate a pacifist philosophy and enact nonviolent strategies and tactics in a world dominated by militarist beliefs. And, indeed, many of us know more about the heroic individuals who deployed nonviolence for both spiritual and practical reasons—e.g. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King—than we do about the philosophies, organizational embodiment, and the “success” of pacifism and nonviolence. The trouble with the political and philosophical/spiritual concepts of pacifism and nonviolence, in the context of politics, is that both are frequently framed in opposition, as inaction and against violence and systems of oppression, and we tend to think of pacifism and nonviolence in conjunction with their antipode—the violent assertion of one person, institution, or state over another.

Pacifism and nonviolence are for peaceful institutions and practices and against militarization, militarism, and war in general. Why be against all that? A militarist world view is one in which the use of military force to resolve disputes is understood to be effective, efficient, legitimate, praiseworthy, and even glorious, noble, and purifying (see Berghahn 1981, Cock 1989, and Falk and Kim 1981). Realists assume that the use of force in domestic and foreign politics is natural (given both our human nature and the anarchic nature of the international system) and to be expected, in most instances. In this world, security is understood to be a zero-sum commodity; if you have it, I don’t. The fear is that others are potentially violent and they are so powerful that they pose a direct threat to you and your interests. We can’t all feel secure at the same time. Further, a strong military deters potential aggressors; there is no security dilemma, where what I do to feel secure may make an adversary feel less secure and therefore defensively aggressive. As John Mearsheimer argues, “Survival mandates aggressive behavior” (Mearsheimer 2001, 22). Threats and the use of force will cause others to back down. Further, the amount of military spending is positively correlated with military capacity and security. And, moreover, militarists assume that military spending is good for the economy, tending to only see the benefits of military spending, while discounting its damaging and distorting effects.

Militarism is thus a mix of extreme insecurity (fear), hubris, and a feeling of entitlement coupled with attribution bias and a distinct lack of empathy. The hubris is overconfidence, a sense of omnipotence, and the entitlement an inflation of what we need and deserve over what others might. Attribution bias in war is the tendency to assume that when others act as you want them to, it is because they fear your power, and when they don’t do as you like, it is because they have ill intentions or are aggressive. Militarists are bullish about the potential for threats and war to work, a sort of hyper and, on occasion, maladaptive version of the overconfidence that Dominic Johnson argues is a common cognitive bias in international politics. Militaries sometimes engage in peace-time pessimism about their own capabilities and threat inflation about the capabilities of their adversaries; yet, at the same time, they may display optimism and overconfidence about their capacity to successfully deploy threats and win wars. Thus, on the one hand, militarists assure us that the other side is well prepared and ready to fight and that we can never have enough military spending and military force. And, on the other hand, when confrontation comes to a head, diplomacy is discounted and we are told that conquest is easy. As Johnson (2020, 65–66) argues, if the costs of a failed aggression are low, then overconfidence may, over the long run, be beneficial, as states take risks that may pay off. If costs are high, and discounted, and risks are underestimated, however, overconfidence may lead to disastrous consequences. Militarism may also affect alliance cohesion. For militarists, allies who don’t follow your lead in terms of military spending or going to war are at the least taking advantage of you, and at the worst cowards and an unnecessary nuisance. In fact, allies who are not compliant are in some respects seen as adversaries.

Militarization is the social, psychological, political, and economic mobilization of a group’s resources for the use or threat of violence, and the ascription of extraordinary virtue to those who use military force. A militarized society takes militarist beliefs for granted and devotes a significant share of resources for military and military-related purposes. Militarism and militarization may become the lens through which actors see each other and construct their social world. In a militarized culture, the majority takes war and mobilization for it for granted, understands “security” in military terms, and devotes a large share of economic and cultural resources to military and military related purposes. (On militarization, see Lutz, 2004.) In a state of continuous rhetorical and material mobilization, the distinction between war-time (and all the things that context is said to allow) and peace-time blurs. “Wartime becomes a justification for the rule of law that bends in favor of the security state” (Dudziak 2012, 3–4). When “security” is invoked in a militarized society, the realm of normal democratic political processes shrinks, and concerns and anxieties about economic or political rivals turn potential adversaries into threats that may demand a military response. Economic, political, or even environmental conditions are seen through the lens of military threat, a process of “securitization.” The argument is that the speech act of framing an issue as one of “security” moves politics from the rule of law to the rule of force and emergency measures (Waever 1995). The contents of dissenting views are marginalized, and dissenters are often discredited as unrealistic and unmanly; further, by virtue of their questioning of militarist beliefs and the militarization of policies, dissenters may themselves be branded threats to security.

As Robert Holmes argues, violence is always “for the morally infallible” (Holmes 1989, 288). Thus, militarists argue that preventive war is legitimate because they believe that the other does not deserve to become an equal or surpass them. They believe that preemptive, first strike, offensive wars are generally successful, despite evidence that such wars often fail or produce inconclusive outcomes. As Kevin Wang and James Lee Ray observed nearly 30 years ago, the success rate of countries that initiate wars is mixed: “Initiators won 79.5 percent of the wars [between 1494 and 1991] when the initiator was a major power and the target was a minor power. Initiators won only 31.3 percent of the wars in which minor power initiators fought major power targets, and 51.1 percent of those wars in which there were major powers on both sides” (Wang and Ray 1994, 146). Further, militarists tend to believe that escalation and war is controllable, that quagmires and stalemate are for the other guy, that conquest is valuable, and that the resources gained through force and conquest are cumulative. They worry that their reputation for keeping commitments and following through on threats will be tarnished should they seek negotiated peace. They worry about appearing weak. This view is summarized by the Latin saying, si vi pacem, para bellum—if you want peace, prepare for war. Indeed, war works and is good for you. Once at war, militarists believe their own rhetoric, that war will be quick, decisive, and cheap in blood and treasure. They will be home before the leaves fall or the snow falls, or by whatever the next season is; those they conquer will greet them as liberators, and those at home should and will see them as heroes.

When militarist beliefs become the lens through which actors see each other and construct knowledge about their social world, the institutionalization of those beliefs can and does yield a world that meets some of these expectations. The first function of pragmatic pacifism then, as noted above, is to highlight these arguments as assumptions and to question their “natural” status. The second function, as also noted above and further explored below, is to uncover, create, and develop pacifist political theory and the analysis of techniques of nonviolence.

A Spectrum of Belief and Action

Although the sit-down strike and going limp strategies of active nonviolent resistance that a child might use to resist going somewhere they don’t want to go (such as to bed or the first day of school) are superficially similar to people who are engaged in a political protest when faced with being forcibly removed, these gestures are utterly different on a strategic level. In this, context and purpose are everything. The child’s actions are private, apolitical, and short term, whereas nonviolent direct action has a larger audience and political purpose. Without rehearsing all the ways politics has been defined, I have argued (Crawford 2009) that politics is “argument” nearly all the way down in the sense that politics—even in its coercive aspects—mostly works through persuasion. Between the extremes of political action—brute force on the one hand and mutual communication on the other—the role of persuasive argumentation is wide. As Hobbes and Machiavelli implied, and E.H. Carr (1946, 132) argued, after David Hume, brute force has its limits: “man-power is not reckoned by mere counting of heads. . . . Power over opinion is therefore not less essential for political purposes than military and economic power, and has always been closely associated with them. The art of persuasion has always been a necessary part of the equipment of a political leader.”

In the political setting, pacifism and nonviolence are both moral arguments and acts that are intended to communicate and persuade. They occur along a spectrum, such as the one illustrated in Figure 1. The societies and religious communities where nonviolence is the norm and violence a deviation are at one end of the spectrum. These are the “peaceful societies,” which some might say do not exist or, if they do, exist as small, pre-literate, or tribal groups. Well, these peaceful societies, cultures and communities arguably have existed and have been studied by some scholars (largely by anthropologists and historians, see Brock 1991, Fabbro, 1978, Montagu 1978, and Fry 2006, 2009, 2013), although they are rarely discussed by political scientists. In this sense, nonviolence and pacifism are the opposite of mere inaction and stubborn resistance. They are the positive side of the spectrum of politics where action through nonviolent argument and mutual communication creates a peaceful community. These peaceful societies tend to be egalitarian and democratic, and characterized by a commitment to equity, collaboration, and cooperation. In the nineteenth century, and earlier, people set about creating these peaceful communities. There are still such communities at the domestic level, though the norms of the international system tend to favor states that are prepared to use violence.

The Spectrum of Pacifism and Nonviolence

Citation: Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/27727882-bja00012

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The Spectrum of Pacifism and Nonviolence

Citation: Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/27727882-bja00012

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The Spectrum of Pacifism and Nonviolence

Citation: Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/27727882-bja00012

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A deep, deliberative, democracy is a system of governance that takes force off the table in favor of political participation by the entire population in agenda setting, the distribution of resources, and conflict resolution. Among other things, democracy is characterized by participation of the “entire” population, but there are usually limits to participation in democratic deliberation and participation. Formal limits have historically and today ranged from prohibitions on felons voting to restrictions based on citizenship, race, sex, and age. Clearly if the franchise is limited to a small group of people in a country that claims to be a democracy, that assertion is belied by those facts. In a society characterized by deep deliberative democracy, people would both deliberate among themselves in smaller groups and elect representatives and then would respect the peacefully arrived at decision and abide by a peaceful transition of power. At this point on the spectrum, pacifism and nonviolence are both the sine qua non for democratic politics and considered normal. In this world, acts of nonviolence—deliberative and inclusive democracies—would not be seen as extraordinary and would generally require no particularly notable amount of physical or moral courage. The rule of law and norms of peaceful deliberation set expectations of peaceful discourse and decisionmaking. Further, as I have argued elsewhere, violence is the antipode of democracy, and vice versa (Crawford 2021).

At the other end of the spectrum, where the context is a militarized or deeply unequal world, nonviolent direct action would be used in reaction and response to unjust systems or practices. Here we see both the articulation of schemes to abolish war, and individuals, groups, and organizations refusing to participate in and actively subverting wars and unjust and violent systems through nonviolent resistance. The relevant distinctions here may emerge from exploring the relationships between acts that refuse to participate in systems of violence, those that obstruct violent practices and institutions, and those that destroy the infrastructure of violent/damaging systems.

The bulk of the research on nonviolence seems to be focused on the far right ends of this spectrum, and often specifically on whether and how those forms of resistance succeed in resisting military aggression, or reforming or transforming an authoritarian system. For instance, scholars have analyzed the role of nonviolent direct action in transitions to democracy in the twentieth century (see Ackerman and Duval 2000, Chenoweth and Stephan 2011). In the context of war, nonviolent resistance requires both physical and moral courage. Thus, we often recall the ways ordinary citizens resisted the Nazis during World War ii, such as when many non-Jews helped Jewish people escape Nazi violence in occupied Europe, including the “kindertransport” movement that brought Jewish children from Nazi occupied territory to the UK between 1938 and 1940. In Denmark, while under Nazi occupation, thousands of workers resisted working for the Nazis by engaging in work slowdowns and many Jewish people were rescued from deportation to death camps in October 1943 when they were secretly transported out of Denmark to Sweden.

There are also questions of how we transition from systems that depend on violence, to institutions that are less violent, and ultimately move toward peace. Randy Forsberg articulated a path to abolish war in her book Toward a Theory of Peace. For Forsberg, defensive nonviolence and non-offensive defense would be the route to the abolition of international war and would then foster an individual commitment to and practice of nonviolence. “Preponderant individual commitment to complete nonviolence cannot be achieved before the initial transition to the abolition of war, but it is likely to develop after that transition, when it will become central to the long-term maintenance of peace” (Forsberg 2019, 16). Forsberg believed that the “individual commitment to nonviolence might grow as a function of the long-term global trends that make both international cooperation and the spread of democratic institutions increasingly common” (Forsberg 2019, 22).

And in between these poles—on the one hand, the everyday nonviolence of peaceful societies and deliberative democracy and, on the other hand, wholesale resistance to manifest injustice—there are what might be considered ad-hoc acts of individual non-participation and smaller, though systematic campaigns. As Bertrand Russell said of his position during World War I, although he felt he had done nothing to diminish the violence, “at any rate I had not been an accomplice in the crime of all the belligerent nations” (Russell quoted in Cook 1973). And further along the spectrum are acts of nonviolent resistance such as the refusal to pay taxes, aimed at bringing about the return to the rule of law, or more significant reform. Here, individuals and groups who are part of a system that they generally otherwise support may refuse to participate in actions that they consider unjust, immoral, or illegal. This includes the actions of peaceful protesters and conscientious objectors within armed forces.

In sum, we need to know a lot more about the full spectrum of pacifism and nonviolence, from “cultures of peace,” to use Elise Boulding’s (2000) phrase, through to nonviolent resistance and direct action. Specifically, the field can accommodate the analysis of situations on the left end of the spectrum that I identified, where pacifism and nonviolence are taken for granted and institutionalized in communities and institutions. And of course, on the other end of the spectrum, in the world we live in—which is in some respects dominated by war, militarization, authoritarianism, and punitive logics of policing, education, and reform—nonviolence is a strategy and tactic for many movements and a potential antidote to militarism. Scholars of pacifism and nonviolence will continue to study cases where putting those philosophies and strategies forward was exceptional and demanded enormous physical and moral courage.

Sand Creek Massacre and Ad Hoc Resistance

While it was famous in the late nineteenth century, few Americans today have heard of the “Sand Creek Massacre” of 1864 when noncombatant Native American Cheyenne people were killed by volunteers and regular army forces of the U.S. led by Colonel J.M. Chivington as they were peacefully encamped. Killing noncombatant “Indians” was the norm in the mid- nineteenth century U.S., but that norm was courageously challenged by soldiers who refused to kill noncombatants and who “blew the whistle” on the massacre.

In late November 1864, Colonel Chivington arrived at Fort Lyon, in Colorado, with 700 mounted soldiers and two pieces of artillery with the intention to attack, but he found that the Cheyenne, who had been invited to the fort for negotiations, were no longer there. They had moved to Sand Creek. Major Scott Anthony offered to take Chivington’s forces to Sand Creek and added 125 men and another two pieces of artillery to Chivington’s forces. On learning of the military’s plans to attack the Cheyenne, several members of the first regiment, Captain Silas Soule, Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, and Lieutenant James Connor, protested Chivington’s plan to “massacre the friendly Indians camped on Sand Creek” (Soule 1864). Chivington threatened all three with courts martial if they refused to participate. Captain Soule, the son of abolitionists, had negotiated with the Cheyenne before and made it clear that he would only fire against “fighting Indians.”

The attack proceeded as planned. As Chivington (1864, 48) described it, his forces “surprised, at break of day, one of the most powerful villages of the Cheyenne nation, and captured over 500 animals; killing the celebrated chiefs One Eye, White Antelope, Knock-Knee, Black Kettle, and Little Robe, with about five hundred of their people, destroying all their lodges and equipage, making almost an annihilation of the entire tribe.” Anthony (1865, 16) testified that, “The Indians were attacked by us, under command of Colonel Chivington, about sunrise in the morning. Detachments from the command took position on two sides of their camp. There had been a little firing before that. When I first came up with my command, the Indians, men, women, and children, were in a group together, and there was firing from our command upon them. The Indians attempted to escape, the women and children, and our artillery opened on them while they were running.” Chivington’s forces celebrated the killing. According to the historian Mark Grimsley, the soldiers “returned to Denver festooned with scalps and women’s genitalia, to receive a heroes’ welcome” (Grimsley 2002, 88–89).

The massacre seemed not to have chastened the Cheyenne, if that was Chivington’s hope. In a report on 15 January 1865, Wyncoop said that the slaughter had led to retaliation: “already over 100 whites have fallen as victims to the fearful vengeance of these betrayed Indians” (Wyncoop 1865).

Reports of these events attracted wide public attention and many Americans were appalled by what became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. Soule’s letter eventually led to an Army investigation of the massacre at Sand Creek, from February through May 1865 in Denver. Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer were the first and second witnesses to testify. Testimony by Soule, Cramer, and others described the assault in detail. Even as the inquiry proceeded, Soule was gunned down in Denver by Private Charles Squire, a man who had served under Chivington (National Park Service undated, U.S. Senate 1867).

Conclusion and Future Research

There is something to both admire and learn from in the actions of Silas Soule, Joseph Cramer, and others at the Sand Creek Massacre and afterward. Nonviolence, pacifism, and the principled, if ad hoc, refusal to kill innocent people have always required courage. What made Soule and Cramer risk their lives? How important was it that Soule’s parents were reportedly abolitionists and that Soule himself was a committed abolitionist? According to the U.S. National Park Service (undated), “Following the execution of famed abolitionist John Brown in 1859, Silas Soule traveled to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in an attempt to rescue two of Brown’s followers. The rescue mission failed but Soule proved his courage and resourcefulness.” As Peter Brock writes, “Beginning in the early 1830s American abolitionism and American pacifism and nonviolence had become closely intertwined” (Brock 1991, 58). Many of those who were in the peace movement in the U.S. between the 1830s and 1900 were connected to the Indian rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, and the women’s rights movement.

The connections between these movements—in the person of individual activists—illustrates how nonviolence, human rights, and democracy are tied together, not only conceptually but in the people who inhabited multiple movements or who moved from one movement to another. The activists of one hundred-sixty years ago certainly understood what is today called intersectionality. Pacifism and nonviolence are embedded in and cognate with other orientations and philosophical and cultural systems. This suggests we ought to attend to the links between human rights, feminist, and environmental movements to see how the philosophies that undergird those movements intersect.

The antipodal relationship between philosophies of pacifism and nonviolence and militarist beliefs is a virtue. I have argued that pacifism questions both the extreme and more subtle forms of militarism that are so familiar that they are often scarcely noticed or questioned. I have also argued that pacifism and nonviolence offer ways to respond to violence and remake the world. But we must also discuss and explore the limits of nonviolence. Specifically, we might ask, what is the role of defensive defense in theory and action? Further, we might ask, as Andreas Malm does, “Will absolute nonviolence be the only way, forever the sole admissible tactic in the struggle to abolish fossil fuels?” (2021, 24). The generation and comparison of case studies that attend to the successes and failures of nonviolence, and defensive defense tactics is essential, not least because of immediate policy implications, including in relation to the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis.