If You Want Peace, You Must Prepare for Peace

A realistic antiwar movement cannot just oppose war; it must counter the underlying conditions that give rise to war.

Hello folks, Derek here with the eighth entry in Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’ special Foreign Exchanges series on the antiwar/non-violence movement as a political tradition. As I mentioned in the preface to his introductory piece, this series is being offered as a special for paid FX subscribers. I hope those who are interested in the piece will consider subscribing to FX to support Daniel’s work as well as everything else that goes on here. Please subscribe today:

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The entries devoted in this series to Domenico Losurdo’s Non-Violence: A History Beyond the Myth would suggest that he is a biting critic of non-violent/antiwar thought. As discussed, Losurdo showed how many pacifists of the abolitionist movement opted for violence in the service of defeating slave holding states. Additionally, Losurdo thought absurd Tolstoy's belief that wars between states would eventually vanish from history, just as dueling between individuals was beginning to vanish during the Count's time. Losurdo was also quick to point out that, prior to World War I, Gandhi defended the participation of Indians in Britain’s war efforts, such as in the Boer War. And as with his more famous book, Liberalism: A Counter History, Losurdo’s Non-Violence shows how Western advocates of perpetual peace often had little problem with American and European imperialism. In this sense Losurdo takes up Lenin’s insight that the end of World War I would see a transition involving “a turn from imperialist war to imperialist peace” as demonstrated by the League of Nations and its Mandate System.

Yet the conclusion to Non-Violence does make a case for what he describes as a “realistic non-violence in a world prey to nuclear catastrophe.” Here I will discuss just one of his realist approaches to non-violence. Losurdo argues that to be credible, anti-violence advocates must understand that, to quote Thomas Hobbes, “the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.” This is to say that antiwar activists must target the underlying social and militaristic conditions that give rise to warfare, such as the arms race, policies of war, preparations for war, and the installations of military bases.