No Just War

“Victory obtained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.” — Mahatma Gandhi, Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13

“Violence as a way of achieving… justice is both impractical and immoral.” Martin Luther King Jr., Three Ways of Meeting Oppression

“Do not resist him that is wicked; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other also to him.” — Matthew 5:39

I have opened this essay with quotations from three of the best-known pacifists in human history. Pacifism is generally seen as an expression of principle and the refusal to compromise on it no matter what the cost might be, for pacifists view the costs of violence as inevitably greater than the potential gains. However, I believe it is also possible to view pacifism as a pragmatic and even an efficient way to resist evil and wrongdoing, and as a viable substitute for war rather than an abstention from it.

The view of war as necessary evil differs from the nihilistic and, dare I say, somewhat barbaric view of war as a just means to an end, or “the continuation of politics by other means” after Karl von Clausewitz. The notion of just war holds the contradictory view that war is an evil and a last resort, but must sometimes be resorted to in order to combat a greater evil. This idea has so permeated our culture that politicians, with public support, declare war even on the inanimate and the metaphysical, bringing us wars on drugs, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism.

Just-war proponents tell us that regrettable things happen in war, but the ends justify the means. What matters is that we defeated Hitler in WWII. The Allies deliberately killed perhaps 500,000 German civilians and wounded soldiers in firebombing Dresden, for instance, but this was believed necessary to bring the war to a speedier conclusion. It was theorised that the terror of mass bombing would break the morale of the German citizens and force an early surrender, and thus would be worth the horrendous cost in German noncombatant lives. This is the prevalent thinking behind the notion of just war.

You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, you can’t win a war without killing people, and some of them will not deserve to die. That is regrettable, of course, but unavoidable if we are to avoid the greater evil that the war is waged against. Fighting World War II cost 36 million battlefield and collateral dead, according to Rummel. It is hard to imagine a greater evil than 36 million violent deaths, but it is obvious that far more people died fighting against Hitler (or against them in turn) than at his hands.

Even given that these statistics are horrifying, what alternative could have produced a better outcome? An estimated 3.5 million Polish Jews were murdered during WWII. Poland actively and violently resisted the Nazi occupier, most famously in the Warsaw ghetto uprising but also at Vilna, Bialystok, Krakow, and other ghettos, at the Treblinka, Auschwitz and Sobibor concentration camps, and in partisan warfare fought from the forests and backcountry. These Poles fought bravely, but what could passive resistance have offered them instead?

Perhaps a pacifist approach would not only have been based upon uncompromised moral principles, but might actually have been more efficient at saving lives. In Denmark, resistance to Nazi occupation was prevalently nonviolent. The Danish authorities, who did not go into exile, announced a policy of “negotiation under protest”. Danish industry and legislature, under a facade of co-operation, went out of their way to obstruct, delay, harass and defy the Nazi occupiers whenever possible, without resorting to violence. Almost all violence actually committed was sabotage of property.

There were around 7,500 Jews living in Denmark before the war, and when word was leaked of the Nazis plan to murder them all, the Danes collaborated to send over 7,000 of them to safety in Sweden. Danish pleading persuaded the Nazis not to murder the 481 Jews who did not escape but merely to imprison them at Theresienstadt, where the Danes sent them packages containing food and clothing. The insistence of the Danish leadership also succeeded in persuading the Nazis to allow Red Cross inspectors into Theresienstadt in 1944. At the time of liberation only 51 Danish Jews had perished, a mere 0.68%, as compared to Poland who lost a staggering 3,200,000 Jews, an appalling loss comprising 91% of the Jewish population.

Some of this death toll can be blamed upon the attitudes of the Polish gentiles as opposed to that of the Danes, who, on the whole, were willing to help their Jewish citizens whereas anti-semitism had been rife in Poland before 1939 and many Poles took the opportunity to collaborate with the Nazis and do violence to Jewish Poles. But this should be seen as a further indictment of violence, not of nonviolence, because if the Poles had embraced pacifism they would have refrained from violence not only against the Nazis, but also against Polish Jews.

The further efficiency of passive resistance is in the longevity of its solution, as famous pacifists have said. A violent solution does not need to be right or just, nor does it need to be perceived as right or just by the people it is perpetrated against in order to succeed. All it requires is greater strength of arms. A nonviolent solution, however, works by being perceived as right or just. Rather than seeking to beat wrongdoers into submission, it seeks to show them their moral inferiority and therefore to convince them of the need to repent and reform.

A pacifist resister should ideally be willing to sacrifice his life, like a good soldier. Nonviolent resistance can be very useful where one holds more value to the enemy alive than dead. This is usually the case with wars and conquests, for more labour and riches can be extracted from an occupied people if they are alive. However, if the enemy holds the occupied people as being of no more value alive than dead, or actually wishes them dead, then passive resistance might appear a failure. However, in reviewing the rare but horrible instances of history where this has happened I am forced to draw a different conclusion.

In 416 BC, the ancient Athenians and their allies conquered the island of Melos, slaughtered every male inhabitant and sold the women and children into slavery. This is surely a case where passive resistance would have failed, since the Athenians obviously foreswore mercy. However, slaves who refuse to work are not of much use. Had the enslaved women and children refused to go quietly and had been determined to die, the Athenians could have sent the women and children across the Styx to join their men, but this would have deprived the Athenians of a large amount of loot from the sale of the slaves. Since looting and pillaging was always an incentive to war in the ancient world, if not for the generals then for the soldiers, this would have been a most unattractive proposition.

The second option would have been a compromise, perhaps to refrain from a slaughter of the men if they agreed to be enslaved, or perhaps to free only some people. Neither is an enviable outcome, but under the circumstances it would be fortunate to save anything from the situation, especially considering what violent resistance had actually achieved for the Melians.

The Rape of Nanking can be seen as another example of an enemy who seemed to have no humanity that could be appealed to. The Japanese army occupied Nanking in December of 1937 and proceeded to murder approximately 300,000 Chinese noncombatants and commit tens of thousands of rapes and innumerable other tortures, causing $12.8bn of property damage as they went(2003 US dollars). However, violent resistance had already failed the Chinese, General Tang having been ordered to retreat and save his army rather than lose it to a far better-trained and better-equipped Japanese force, and violent resistance from the unarmed and unorganised citizenry would probably have done nothing more than to enrage the Japanese and urge the slaugter of the 250,000 or so Chinese who escaped to the pacifist International Safety Zone. In actual fact, what undoubtedly ended the slaughter was not any kind of forcible resistance but the growing pressure of world opinion, as Japan faced the outrage of the USA (with whom Japan was not yet ready for war) and even the displeasure of Nazi Germany, and according to Iris Chang all those who escaped the massacre probably did so because of the nonviolent resistance undertaken by the leaders of the Safety Zone.

Non-violence is a method of resisting wrongdoing that is consistent with the basic nature of man, and this is why it works. Humans are social creatures, and when groups of humans are gathered together they instinctively co-operate. Were humans naturally inclined to violent competition, they would exist in isolation, without society, like wild animals that hunt alone and gather together only for mating. The large cities of the modern world are more populous than entire continents were a thousand years ago. The Greater Tokyo Area is home to over 33 million people, Mexico City to 22 million, the New York Metropolitan Area to 21 million, and were the people of these cities not innately nonviolent and co-operative they would be perpetual warzones which no amount of police could calm. Nonviolence, therefore, is the norm to which human behaviour returns rather than Hobbes’ mistaken “state of nature”, and by not escalating violence, passive resistance encourages a return to that norm.

My conclusion is that nonviolence is not only morally and ethically superior, but also a more efficient and effective method of resisting evil and wrongdoing, and one more conducive to a future free of further wrongdoing as it stems from the true nature of humanity rather than an ugly perversion of it. If this is true, then any war, even a “just” war, is a perpetuation of evil that is morally wrong, inefficient in tangible results, and conducive to further suffering and death both in the present and in the future.