The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
― Omar N. Bradley, US General of the Army and First Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Like our criminal justice and economic systems, American foreign policy is also a product of a domination-oriented approach. Responding to those who harm others by subjecting them to institutionalized violence, our criminal justice system is morally indefensible, and inefficient at protecting us, imposing substantial economic and social costs to families, local communities, and society. Equally problematic in all of these ways is the institutionalized violence with which we conduct our foreign policy.
Just as there are individuals whose harmful behavior necessitates a response that is humane and effective, on the global stage there are many governmental players that are harmful to the populations they rule and to international stability. In dealing with hostile regimes Naturalistic Humanism favors a measured approach. Ideally deployment of violent force can be avoided completely, however, to protect vulnerable populations that are being harmed force may become necessary.
In such situations unconditional pacifism is tantamount to watching someone getting beaten to death and doing nothing. Instead of unconditional pacifism, Naturalistic Humanism supports pragmatic pacifism – the understanding that, while it is always preferable to avoid violence, sometimes violence cannot be avoided. In such circumstances, the greater the degree of violence used to solve a problem the more likely that the solution will fail, or at best, be temporary.
The different circumstances following the first and second world wars provide a relevant illustration. The First World War ended in Germany’s surrender to the allies who fought bitterly for their victory. In addition to requiring its surrender, the allies forced Germany to accept punitive demands that quickly led to widespread impoverishment. The Allied victory however was short-lived.
With Germany defeated, and demoralized, the seeds of the next conflict took root. In less than 15 years the Nazi party would come to power and, along with the Japanese, ultimately trigger a worldwide conflict even more violent than the first. Again the allies prevailed except this time instead of only seeking punitive reparations, as leader of the allies the US set out to rebuild the infrastructure and economy of its former advisories. The result was that former adversaries Germany and Japan became the United States strongest allies in Europe and Asia respectively.
Other post WW2 circumstances necessitated a level of diplomatic restraint and maturity previously absent from international politics. In the years immediately following WW2 the US and its cold war rival the Soviet Union possessed the atomic bomb — a weapon so devastating that its use could set back civilization millennia.
These circumstances ushered in a new age of both sides feeling obliged to keep conflicts limited and non-escalatory. The combination of rebuilding our former adversaries and rising to the challenge of managing our increasing ability to release unimaginable destructive power has resulted in humankind avoiding a major world conflict for nearly eighty years, albeit sometimes by the narrowest of margins.
Entering the age of nuclear weapons challenges us to recognize that waging war as a viable route to resolving conflict must be a thing of the past, save we gamble with the future of all humankind. Our current foreign policy is reliant on our being the world’s pre-eminent military power. Annually, we spend about 39 billion dollars on nonmilitary foreign aid compared with 877 billion in military spending — a ratio of over 22 to 1. We can only imagine how changing this ratio might impact our security and global stability.
What if we waged peace instead of war? What if prior to committing our resources to destroying our adversaries we offered to invest on a similar scale to address their problems? What if, instead of paying billions to defense contractors the US bribed their way to “diplomatic solutions?”
For the US there is apparently no limit on what we will spend on a military operation. The Afghan and Iraqi wars together are estimated to have cost the US between 5.8 to 8 trillion dollars[1]. Is it not possible that trillions of dollars could have been spent more effectively and without the estimated 900,000 deaths and multiple times that number of wounded or injured?
Obviously every situation will be different and no one solution will fit them all. And undoubtedly even if we wage peace, with the same zeal that we wage war, it may not always work. However, without committing to peaceful solutions the same enthusiasm and resources we currently direct toward military solutions we have no way of accurately knowing.
Until we commit as much time, energy, and money to solving problems nonviolently as we have been willing to commit to violent approaches it is unlikely that we can achieve the peaceful, stable and prosperous world essential for humankind to survive.
[1] https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar