John Buttrick of Concord can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com.
My whole life has been lived in the shadow of 56 years of U.S. involvement in 19 wars.
Also, members of the American military (and some civilians) have played small but active roles in many other international conflicts over the last 81 years. Throughout these years the U.S. has been enmeshed in a continuing war economy. Now the U.S. has chosen not-so-small support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion. America’s political, financial and military weapons aid to Ukraine is a commitment to a 20th war.
Most wars over the years have sparked debates in the public square to clarify the wisdom, necessity, and morality of America’s involvement. Using reason, emotion, ethics, faith, and patriotism, citizen debates have discussed support for the war, embracing pacifism, declaring conscientious objection, enlisting in non-combat roles, and even leaving the country.
There were protest songs, such as Where Have all the Flowers Gone? Questions were asked such as, “What if a war was declared, and no one came?” Others insisted that picking up a weapon was the brave and responsible choice a young person should make for their country.
However, today the discussion has changed. There is a growing reluctance to question involvement in the Russian/Ukraine war. Even a pacifist friend struggles to reconcile a commitment to pacifism with feelings of anger and aggression toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Politicians, pundits, and reporters portray the war as a quagmire of international law-breaking, aggression, and annexation. There seems to be no way out but to accept the inevitable normalcy of the ways of war.
Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson has written, “War is represented as an unfortunate obligation thrust upon the exceptional nation, the United States, by a dysfunctional world which the United States has a salvationist responsibility to mend, albeit by force of arms.”
The United States justifies its role by claiming to support and adhere to the international legal mandate of waging humane war. However, introducing the concept of “humane war” changes the discussion in the public forum. If a humane war is possible, then there is little need to debate alternatives. Therefore, the conversation now centers upon how a war is conducted: the safety of civilians; protection of hospitals; availability of food, water, and shelter; and treatment of prisoners of war.
In the Ukraine war, for example, reports flood in about the inhumane actions of the Russian military, labeling soldiers “war criminals.” The overwhelming response to the war in Ukraine has been to support a humane war against an inhumane enemy.
But reality disputes the existential possibility of a humane war. Samuel Moyn writes in Humane that the fallacy in the idea of a humane war is it “can obscure the residual violence that it still involves. Around the world, brutal ground war is hardly a thing of the past. Even America’s direct light-and no-footprint engagements today spill too much blood.”
Reports of wars worldwide are accompanied by genocide, refugees, hunger, and despair. Every contemporary war is inhumane. The Russian aggression against Ukraine may stir within us fear, anger, and urges to retaliate. But these feelings should not discourage the public square conversations about non-violence, pacifism, war resistance, alternatives to war, and U.S. complicity in the Russian/Ukraine war.
Non-violence and pacifism are not weapons to be used as leverage to end a specific conflict. They are a way of being, a way of life. They are a way to keep the conversation active and the vision alive.
In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a group of protesters (recently held) hands in a circle singing an antiwar song popularized in the 1960s called “May There Always Be Sunshine.” It is never inappropriate to challenge the ways of war. The vision sometimes may even impact leaders to speak in unexpected ways. David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times words of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, “Today’s era is not of war.” While president, Donald Trump, speaking at the National Defense University, is reported to have said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars.”
The pacifist and non-violence voices have a place, even when a defensive war appears overwhelmingly justified. War is never the way, even when it seems the only way. 81 years and 20+ wars are a good enough reason to challenge the justification of another. Someday, “may there… be sunshine” on home-blooming flowers.