Pacifism in a time of war and chaos [American Politics #16]

Ted Grimsrud—March 10, 2025

I am deeply troubled by the wars and rumors of war, the social chaos, and the strong sense of pessimism that seem to be so much a part of our current situation. I also feel confused, uncertain, and relatively powerless. At such a moment, reflection on my core convictions is one way to steady my nerves, if nothing else. Almost exactly three years, a couple of weeks after Russia’s intensifying the conflict with Ukraine with their “special military operation,” I published a blog post on my Thinking Pacifism site that came out of such reflection, “Thinking as an American pacifist about the Russian invasion.” In this post, I want to update the thoughts I shared then.

“Pacifism” as a core conviction

It is challenging to be a pacifist in an environment with a strong cultural consensus in favor of military action. The United States has been deeply involved in the war that has been going on in Ukraine since 2014. When that conflict greatly intensified three years ago, the US prowar consensus also intensified, with both strong support for accelerated military aid for Ukraine and strong condemnation of Russia, usually couched as condemnation of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. It has been virtually impossible to find dissent from the insistence on support for war in the American mainstream media, among Democratic Party politicians, and in my social media circles. But this support for war is at odds with my pacifist convictions.

I do believe that being a minority, even a small minority, due to one’s convictions is not a good reason to weaken one’s convictions. We should, of course, always be open to testing the validity of our convictions in face of challenges. However, it is actually to be expected that pacifist convictions will not widely be shared when the cultural zeitgeist favors war. Rather than doubt the validity of my pacifist convictions, I want to ask how these convictions speak to my warist context.

I use “pacifism” here to refer to a fairly general belief. I use it as roughly equivalent to, say, being a humane person, a person who supports social and political self-determination for all people, a person who affirms the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pacifism affirms that to support war is antithetical to humane values, to the practice of self-determination, and to an affirmation of universal human rights. In what follows, when I use “we” I mean those of us who affirm these pacifist convictions (even if one may not like to use the term “pacifism” itself—I use this term as a convenient rubric for this set of convictions, but I care about the convictions more than the term itself).

A pacifist, in this sense, will be suspicious of all those who do support warfare, especially those who profit from it. We distrust our most powerful media outlets and the spokespeople for our military policies and military-oriented responses to crises. We seek to be self-conscious about the impact of the mass media in shaping people in our society to support America’s military policies and practices and preparations. It takes an effort to resist that shaping.

How might pacifism speak to our current context?

(1) We condemn all overt acts of war. This starting point means we condemn Russia’s drastic escalation of the conflict with Ukraine three years ago. We believe that every overt act of war is wrong. So, we do not condemn Russia’s actions simply because they are done by a nation that the United States opposes. We condemn them because warring actions are inherently wrong. Crucially, if actions are wrong when the Russians do them, they are also wrong when the US and our allies do them.

We recognize the dangers of having our revulsion toward Russia’s actions channeled into support for militarist responses by our country and its allies. Given our distrust of the motives and interests of the American National Security leadership and its influence on our corporate media, we will be slow to join in the “official” US condemnation of Russian actions and acceleration of the conflict. We are cautious not due to an ideological embrace of “neutrality” as if we should avoid involvement in the world’s affairs. Rather, we seek to remain clear and committed to our core convictions about human rights, self-determination, and the preciousness of all life—at all times. War by its very nature needs to be rejected no matter who executes it.

(2) A pacifist-inclined perspective on the Russia-Ukraine conflict will be especially concerned with retaining moral sight, with keeping core convictions about human wellbeing in mind. This kind of perspective is not about maintaining a sense of purity or avoiding moral ambiguity or compromise. Ambiguity and compromise seem inevitable for anyone engaged in public policy conversations. However, quite often moral values and important convictions are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant.

American history over the past 80 years offers many examples where retaining a sense of moral sight would have had great pragmatic (and not only idealistic) value. Such moral sight may have prevented what were strategically and practically deeply problematic choices—for example, the American disasters in Vietnam and Iraq. The bad choices came on all levels, from the policymakers at the top to soldiers trying to implement the choices on the ground to ordinary citizens offering support for the disastrous choices. Those attracted to pacifism should resist the charge that their perspective is too idealistic and impractical. We will point to the “out of touch idealism” and “impracticality” of the various military actions that have resulted from sidelining moral sight and that led to terrible, self-destructive consequences.

(3) It is important to be attentive toward the historical context for the current crisis. What is going on right now is part of a longer trajectory. Russian-Ukrainian relationships have an especially complicated and fraught history. Ignoring or misreading that history will lead to important misunderstandings when people reduce the current conflict simply to the most recent actions taken by Russian leadership. The Russian warring actions should be condemned, but they also need to be understood in their historical context if truly sustainable solutions are to be found.

Given the abysmal record of America’s national security elite and the corporate media in past conflicts such as Vietnam and Iraq, we should be suspicious of the historical framing they offer now. We should seek for genuine understanding and avoid “explanations” that most of all serve pro-militarist interests. We should especially attend to understandings that help us perceive legitimate interests on all sides that could be addressed through diplomacy and negotiations. A major historical factor in this conflict has been NATO’s expansion to the east, leading to threatened inclusion of Ukraine. From the time of the end of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, even many members of the American national security establishment warned against such expansion, arguing that it was highly dangerous—and were disregarded. Those warnings ring true today.

(4) We should be attentive to who benefits from this war and treat what they say about it with great suspicion. From the time of the ending of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, American policies of expanding NATO into central and eastern Europe greatly enriched US weapons makers. More recently, transferring massive amounts of military materials to Ukraine further enriched those corporations—who also have had great influence on policymakers.

American elites are not disinterested actors in this drama. They have greatly benefited from NATO’s actual and threatened expansion. The reality that the people who make the decisions and frame the discussion of how to respond to the conflict are partisans who directly profit from the conflict being escalated means we should be suspicious of what they say. As a simple principle, we could suggest that until the profit motive is taken out of American national security dynamics, we will treat any policy suggestions that involve money being spent that goes to American war profiteers with great skepticism.

(5) American pacifists should do their moral reasoning in light of their own convictions and most of all apply those convictions to the practical choices and actions that are available to them in their actual lives—not think primarily in terms of the people in power. That is not to say that we shouldn’t try to discern what seem like the best choices that decision-makers can choose, but that should not cause us to set aside our own best moral convictions.

Too easily, we fall into the mentality where the values that determine how we think and act in relation to warfare are not the ones we hold but the ones we imagine are held by people in power. Such a way of thinking sidelines our best insights. It also makes us more vulnerable to being caught up in the war fever and moved toward accepting, supporting, even participating in actions that are not consistent with our core convictions. When we work within our own set of convictions, we are more likely to find alternatives to the war fever.

(6) Accept our relative powerlessness. American pacifists have little direct effect on the violence-inducing policies of our government. We do have the power to dissent. We have the power to point to alternative policies that could emerge in the face of the failures of war-oriented policies. We have the power to think independently and creatively outside the war fevered consensus. That could result in any number of possibilities for healing actions now unforeseen. We have the power to make connections with others across the world who also reject war.

Perhaps most fundamentally, living amidst war fever when we see so little chance of our voices being heard by the power elite may remind us of the value of the simple work of creating space to be human in the world around us that we can affect. I think we should remain attentive to the big issues, wars and rumors of war. However, our powerlessness concerning the decisions that are being made in relation to those big issues challenges us to find ways to express the power that we do have to make the world more just and peaceable.

(7) Avoid demonizing those we are told are our “enemies.” One of the big dangers in our current conflict is the dynamic reflected in the words of our leaders, media pundits, military spokespeople, and the like to reduce the conflict to the allegedly irrational and egotistical behavior of Putin. This echoes past moments where the “enemy” is presented as impervious to negotiation, reason, or compromise (an obvious example is Saddam Hussein). Such demonization often serves as a justification for our own violence and militarized policies.

When we see our “enemy” as incapable of reason, we then need not bother with negotiations, compromises, and other alternatives to brute threat and force. Such dynamics often are likely to be disastrous and to fail to resolve the conflicts. Perpetual conflict and having on-going “enemies” serve the interests of those whose power and wealth is enhanced by wars and (especially) preparation for wars. None of this implies anything positive about Putin. However, it is problematic pragmatically to ignore ways to resolve conflicts without militarized policies because of this demonizing. It is also problematic morally to assume the worst of one’s adversary and not to be suspicious of one’s own government’s motives in escalating conflicts that lead to profits for powerful forces in one’s country.

A key problem, in the view of the pacifist, is how nations deal with conflict. War and preparation for war and threatening war are our biggest enemies of all. To the extent that the current Trump administration seems to want to work for peace in Ukraine, their efforts should be welcomed. However, we dare not weaken our critical faculties but rather continue our scrutiny of the actual effects of unfolding policies and priorities. I remain skeptical of all of the leaders of the American Empire. A kind of “peace” in Ukraine that will contribute to more conflict with China or in the Middle East will not be a very positive step. Consistent attention to core pacifist convictions will help us not be misled by our national leaders.

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