Dustin Ells Howes

The Failure of Pacifism and the Success of Nonviolence

Although pacifism and nonviolence bear a close relationship to one another historically, pacifism is the ideological assertion that war and violence should be rejected in political and personal life, whereas nonviolence refers to a distinct set of political practices. Unlike other modern ideologies such as liberalism and socialism, pacifism has never gained widespread acceptance among a significant portion of humanity and seems to remain a minority position among most of the peoples of the world. Even among those who use nonviolent techniques, the conventional wisdom that physical violence is necessary under certain circumstances often prevails. However, a growing body of empirical evidence shows that the methods of nonviolence are more likely to succeed than methods of violence across a wide variety of circumstances and that more people are using nonviolence around the world. At the same time, both the effectiveness of military and material superiority in achieving political ends and the incidence of warfare and violence appear to be waning. In a remarkable example of convergence between empirical social science and political theory, explanations for the effectiveness of nonviolence relative to violence point to a people-centered understanding of power. This research can provide a basis for a reinvigorated and pragmatic brand of pacifism that refocuses the attention of political scientists on the organization, actions, and loyalties of people as opposed to technologies of domination and destruction.

The Just War Masquerade

Imagine a map representing the relationships and connections between all of the various views on warfare and violence in political theory and philosophy. Our first inclination would be to place just war theory and pacifism close to one another. Both would seem to belong in a quadrant where thinkers assert that moral precepts can play a critical role in restraining the practice of war. Both seem to be equidistant from theories of war that claim, to the contrary, that violence is distinctively amoral or characterized by a logic that cannot be restrained. Perhaps the separation between just war theory and pacifism would be only one of degree: Just war theory allows for war only under stringent circumstances (jus ad bellum) and even then it must be practiced according to certain rules (jus in bello). Pacifism is a more extreme claim, which demands that we never participate in war or that it is always immoral when we do. Yet the differences between just war theory and pacifism would seem to be less noticeable than their common aim of reducing the incidence and severity of warfare and their origins in common philosophical and religious traditions.

Terror in and out of power

This article explores the relationship between terror, power and the rule of law. First, tracing Burkes use of the term terror back to ancient Greek usage, I argue that being terrified is incommensurable with the experience of acting together with others. In this way, terror and power are distinct. However, most acts of terror aim to terrify some people while inoculating others from terror. Witnesses to the terror of others may feel empowered by the destruction of the power of others. Second, the rule of law and terror seem incommensurable because causing terror often involves violating the law. However, modern political thought is founded on the idea that the law itself ought to be terrifying. That the terror of non-state actors appears random and the terror of the law has hardly been noticed in recent commentary on terrorism indicate that the rule of law produces an interesting audience effect. In order to sustain power and legitimacy while practising terror, governments use the rule of law to divide audiences up into terrified criminals and innocent witnesses. The practice of terror as an ‘open secret’ also produces similar audience effects. Finally, despite these connections between power, terror and the rule of law, I argue that terror is always technically out of power, even when practised by states. Terror is the true weapon of the weak because it always admits a failure to foster human connections with certain people and groups. Nonviolence is a weapon of the weak in the sense that it instantiates new, unencumbered power.