The Preferential Option for Nonviolence in Just War Theory: Opportunities for Just War & Pacifist Collaboration
by Thad Crouch
The Disagreements
At the 25th anniversary conference of the Consistent Life Network in 2012, the new, young, rising star, Aimee Murphy — of the then one-year-old Life Matters Journal — gave a speech. When it ended, a seasoned CLE activist aggressively laid into Murphy’s opposition to “aggressive war” rather than taking a pacifist position against all war.
A decade earlier, a year after the 9-11 terrorist attack and mere months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the youngest member of Pax Christi Austin (a chapter of an international Catholic non-violence organization) urged fellow members to support a presentation using Just War Ethic arguments against the invasion at an interfaith peace event. The membership adamantly opposed him, despite his arguing that it would be faster, easier, and more practical than attempting to convert pro-war Austinites into nonviolence advocates within the available time frame to mobilize them against an impending war.
Among life-long committed leaders of the CLE, debates over active nonviolence or pacifist positions vs ones allowing for wars described as just, defensive, or non-aggressive can become intensely heated. But there’s at least one important criterion of just war theory that, when applied as rigorously as intended, points to significant common ground on which pacifists and just war theorists can work together to promote nonviolence in practice.
Just War Doctrine
The Christian version of Just War doctrine began with Augustine of Hippo, a philosopher who converted to Christianity shortly after it became the Roman Empire’s official religion. Augustine saw war as a tragedy that occurred in a sinful world that, under certain circumstances, could be needed to protect life and restore order. As he pondered circumstances in which Christians might morally participate in war, he found criteria from Marcus Tullius Cicero, a first- century Roman senator and philosopher – though Augustine disagreed with Cicero’s idea that impugned honor could justify war for Christians.
The most important criterion of Just War for this discussion is:
Last Resort: To justify engaging in war, all other bloodless means to resolve the conflict must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.
The Opportunity: Just War’s Preferential Option for Nonviolence
The requirement that bloodless means must be found to be ineffective before “just war” can apply means a preferential option for nonviolence.
That means that those who don’t know about active nonviolence are unqualified to declare just war.
In order to apply and implement just war doctrine, one must understand the power of nonviolence. To effectively apply the just war theory, persons, religious bodies, and governments must have acuity with understanding, applying, and implementing the power, the effectiveness, and the limits of nonviolence. Those who equate nonviolence with being passive are unqualified to discuss just war theory.
They must also understand the limits of violence as a problem-solver.
New Knowledge of Nonviolence
Eons of history are filled with examples of nonviolence that have proven effective. For example, there’s the overthrow of British rule in India/Pakistan; the Solidarity Movement in Poland; and the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.
Gene Sharp’s three volume set, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, 1973, lists 198 nonviolent tactics. In his 1992 book, Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink lists over ninety examples of effective nonviolent actions spanning from Before the Common Era to 1991. Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall go into great detail about around 40 cases in A Force More Powerful.
Yet something both newer and more convincing has happened than a list of nonviolent tactics that can work with a list of successful historic nonviolent examples: a study.
In the award-winning Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Erica Chenoweth & Maria J. Stephan go beyond listing nonviolent victories and tactics. They apply statistical analysis to 323 conflicts involving more than a thousand active participants that attempted both violent and nonviolent means to either overthrow an illegitimate dictator or oust a foreign military occupation between the years 1900 and 2006. Here are just a few of their findings:
Nonviolent campaigns were twice as effective as violent ones, with violent campaigns victorious 25% of the time and nonviolent ones 50% of the time.
- Nonviolent campaigns were eight times more likely to result in democracies five years after conflicts than armed insurrections.
- Violent campaigns are significantly more likely to relapse into civil war within 10 years than nonviolent campaigns.
Erica Chenoweth explains this in a one hour and twenty minute video.
The 21st Century New Opportunities to Apply the Old
If we marry the centuries-old Preferential Option for Nonviolence with these new statistics, then new possibilities arise:
Consider that it becomes much more difficult to show that 198 bloodless options to resolve conflicts have been exhausted or shown to be impractical or ineffective when in at least the two examples of ousting dictators or occupying armies are more likely to succeed by organized strategic campaigns of adaptable nonviolent tactics than by warfare.
Consider that any person or committee with legitimate authority to decide that nonviolent means are impractical or ineffective must now be educated in the application of effective organized strategic, adaptable, campaigns making the use of 198 nonviolent tactics before choosing violent tactics.
Consider that any persons that are entrusted with authority to possibly decide that nonviolent means have been found impractical or ineffective are now unqualified to do so if they do not possess a proven acuity to apply effective organized strategic, adaptable, nonviolent campaigns to real world conflicts.
Consider that nonviolent peace activists have new 21st Century opportunities within the Just War Preferential Option for Nonviolence to teach these tactics and strategies to Just War adherents and legitimate government authorities.
Consider that now those who want to advocate for rigorous adherence to Just War principles can learn and apply these proven nonviolent tactics and strategies to resolve more conflicts nonviolently without renouncing their option to Just War, and thus, make war rarer and rarer over time.
Consider all the conversations possible between Just War advocates and nonviolence-only advocates that can be mutually beneficial.
Consider with whom you can engage in that conversion this year.
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For more of our posts on applying nonviolence, see:
Making a Nonviolent Revolution: Review of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
Culture of Conscience: Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?
Applying Pacifist Insights to Abortion
Instead of Division, Schools of Thought
Beyond the Human – Plus Everyday Peace Actions
Two things:
1. The 2012 Chenoweth & Stefan study I cited limits its focus to overthrowing dictators and ousting armies of occupation. Those are categories clearly fail to address all reasons for organized political violence and therefore limit validity in application to resolving other goals political conflicts. One wonders what we might learn with similar analysis applied to other types.
2. In hindsight, I should have purchased, “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know” a later 2021work by Chenoweth. It was reviewed in this very blog by John Whitehead and recommended above in a post entitled “Making a Nonviolent Revolution: Review of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know”
John wrote:
“Chenoweth cites a variety of quantitative studies, many of which she conducted with collaborators, to support her claims about civil resistance, including civil resistance’s superiority to violence. Of 627 campaigns that occurred between 1900 and 2019 and that aimed to overthrow governments or create new nation-states, over 50% of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded within a year of the campaigns’ point of greatest popular participation. In contrast, only about 26% of violent campaigns during this period succeeded.”
I love where this ends up, although it’s a bit jarring to me that it begins with a strongly implied criticism of what could be taken as purism (or alternatively, consistency) in opposing violence – especially since the main thrust of the piece is more of a gentle lesson for just war theorists. But maybe that’s the point. I definitely see the value in appealing to shared values as a starting point when trying to move the needle toward greater support of nonviolence. And that’s essentially what this post does in relation to just war theory, such that by the end it becomes clear that there’s little to no practical difference between real-world applications of JWT and pacifism – as long as the full rigor of even one of the JWT criteria is upheld, let alone all of them (and also as long as pacifism is understood in terms of active nonviolence and not strawmanned as passivity).
Still, at the end of the day, I must maintain that it’s impossible to shoehorn either a practical or theoretical justification for mass killing of human beings into a consistent ethic of life (which after all is consistent opposition to killing human beings!) without leaving a gaping hole in it.
Pray for Peace – but don’t expect results in your lifetime.
Work for Peace and Justice – but don’t expect results in your lifetime.
Take to the streets for Justice – but don’t expect results in your lifetime.