Pacifism totally opposes war. While pacifists oppose all killing, they particularly abhor the mass killing which usually accompanies war. They object to this type and scale of killing. Pacifists believe that no moral grounds can justify war, and that it is always wrong. Many thinkers disagree with this blanket opposition to war.
The pacifist position has been criticized from many sides, including by Just war theorists. Some critics argue that the pacifist shies away from the brutal measures needed for defending himself and his country in order to maintain his own inner moral purity. The pacifist is a type of free-rider who while enjoying the benefits of citizenship refuses to share its burdens. Some argue that a pacifist is an internal threat to the over-all security of his state.
But this criticism appears to be harsh. Morality is premised on thebelief that moral agentsought to do what they consider good or just and to avoid what they consider bad or unjust. This view weakens the criticism of pacifism. Further, the view that pacifists are morally or spiritually selfish is difficult to maintain. Many pacifists have braved social boycott and prison terms in war times. Genuine pacifists are perhaps more interested in promoting a humane world than in preserving theirinner moral purity.
Some writers consider pacifism’s idealism as over optimistic, and that its vision of a nonviolent world as an empty dream. Practical statesmen and people have to adopt a less utopian moral outlook on war. One has to recognise that sometimes war is morally justified in the real world. Nazis could not have been defeated by any means other than war.
Another criticism of pacifism is that failure to effectively resist international aggression, rewards aggression as it fails to protect defenseless people. Pacifists argue that armed invasion can be effectively countered by an organizedandcommittedcampaign of non-violent civil disobedience,accompanied by international diplomatic and economic sanctions. No invader could administer the conquered nation when met with such systematic isolation, non-cooperation and non-violent resistance. The invaders cannot carry on work in factories, fields, stores or run the infrastructure.
In this context, the commonly cited examples are Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign against the British rule in the late 1940s and Martin Luther King’s civil rights crusade in the 1960s on behalf of African-Americans. Walzer argues that effective non-violent resistance depends upon the scruples of those against whom it is aimed. It was only because the British and the Americans had some scruples, and were moved by the determined idealism of the non-violent protesters, that they acquiesced to their demands. But aggressors will not always be so moved. A tyrant like Hitler, for example, might interpret non-violent resistance as weakness, deserving contemptuous crushing.
This sort of civil disobedience relies on the scruples of the invader, and fails if the aggressor is totally ruthless. The invader can displace the local population with people from home country. (China seems to have done this partly in Tibet and Sinkiang.) Under certain circumstances the defence of people’s lives and rights against such invaders of various hues will need use of force. Under such conditions, (as Walzer says), adherence to pacifism might even amount to “a disguised form ofsurrender.”
Moral thinkers have extended debates – from deontological and consequentialist perspectives - on whether pacifism is justifiable. In the real world, it is neither reasonable nor fair to require a political
communitynot to avail itself of the most effectivemeansavailableforresisting an aggressiveinvasion which threatens the lives and rights of its citizens. It is simply not reasonable to require a state to stand down while an aggressor—be it state or terrorist—wreaks havoc, murder and mayhem upon its people.
