Personal or Civil use of force v military use of force

The classic "what if" thrown at pacifists, anti-militarist, and other assorted peaceniks, is to ask what they would do if someone broke into their home and violently assaulted their family. Would they stand by passively offering no resistance? If they concede that they would feel compelled to use force to resist such invasion and threat, then that is taken that they really accept the use of force and therefore accept the existence of a military establishment, and, in the event of conscription, the requirement for them to take part in military activities.

That is a massive conflation that equates military force with the personal or civil use of force. It is perfectly possible to approve of and support the use of personal or civil force whilst being thoroughly against the use of military force. The three are vastly and distinctly different – but not to the military mind. 

There appears to be a militarist presumption that for a pacifist to be consistent they must never use force in any situation whatsoever, that they must be completely passive at all times. This is an extreme delimitation of what counts as pacifism. A delimitation that favours acceptance of the military use of force as a consequence of the acceptance of the use of force in any situation whatsoever. 

Pacifism is against the use of military force: a very specific and highly organised form of collective and premeditated force. It is not against the personal use of force in extreme circumstances, nor against the use of civil force as required to maintain a well ordered and secure society.

There is a vast leap from accepting that the use of personal or civil force may be necessary on some occasions to accepting the necessity for the maintenance of a permanent military establishment with its vast cost, insatiable demands for ever more sophisticated weaponry, and the resultant political temptation to deploy them for what might be deemed worthy ends by those in power.  

Max Webber distinguished between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility. Responsibility provides the context in which deviation from conviction may be necessary. 

For a Christian pacifist, no matter how ardently they feel compelled by the New Commandment (John 13:34) or Great Commandment (Mark 13:30-31) or by the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-47)(Luke 6:27-36), the duty to protect others, especially the defenceless, the vulnerable – those unable to resist violence or coercion – may compel the use of force in their protection. It may even lead to legal jeopardy due to not intervening with reasonable force when your could have done. 

Those whose conviction may arise from non-Christian grounds would face the same dilemma: no matter how fervently held the pacifist conviction will be trumped on occasions by the need to protect those for whom they may be held to be responsible.

In a world where no-one threatened or used coercive force there would be no need to respond with any form of force. It would be possible to be blissfully but pointlessly pacifist. But the benefit of threatening to use violence because of the coercive fear it induces, gives power to those willing us it for their own ends. The hold that street gangs or para-military organisations have over communities makes only too clear the effectiveness of intimidation. Violence only need to be employed occasionally for it to be affective. Knee cappings by the IRA, or occasional stabbings by street gangs, re-enforce the hold such groups have, establishing and policing boundaries over the coerced communities and ensuring compliance out of fear. 

Life is messy. Thugs, bullies and men of violence (it is usually men) have always existed and will always exist. Self defence, the use of counter force if attacked, is usually not only understandable but necessary for survival, or to avoid submitting to coercion.

Historically slaves or sailors who resisted being whipped, or children and teenagers who resisted being caned, were deemed to be rebellious and out of control if they used counter-force: submission to violence was required. Before it was made illegal, caning, especially in boys boarding schools in the UK, was even semi-ritualised, often public, and almost a right of passage.

Submission to the threat of violence is still required in the face of lawful authority. Policing is only benign to a point, then it becomes coercive. In extreme circumstances, lethally so. 

Attempts are made to provide frameworks for the civil use of force because countering intimidation and violence is part of policing society. The United Nations conventions outline the basic principles framing the use of force and firearms in law enforcement.

However, pacifism is not about the use of force in self-defence or about the civil use of force. It is about the collective, military use of force. Force which is used predominantly for political ends. 

Quakers have understood that distinction between the personal use of force or civil use of force on the one hand, and military force on the other; an understanding shaped by having lived through the awfulness of the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century:

I speak not against any magistrates or peoples defending themselves against foreign invasions; or making use of the sword to suppress the violent and evil-doers within their borders – for this the present estate of things may and doth require, and a great blessing will attend the sword where it is borne uprightly to that end and its use will be honourable … but yet there is a better state, which the Lord hath already brought some into, and which nations are to expect and to travel towards. … (Isaac Penington, 1661: Quaker faith & practice 24.21)

But the underlying principle that distinguished such personal or civil use of force from the military use of force was that, as Quakers, we do not take part in wars, but seek to be peace-makers. This was clearly stated in 1660:

Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world. … (Declaration to Charles II, 1660: Quaker faith & practice 24.04)

Quakers are not so much pacifists but peace-makers. Their vision is of a world that becomes more peaceful as more people come to live out the Peace Testimony: they are a vanguard creating an expanding space of peaceful living, leading by example, being an influence on the world by living in that "better state" which others, even nations, are expected to "travel towards". Pacifism tends to be a negative response of non-participation. Peace-making is more positively orientated. That is why Quakers engage across the spectrum of violence through such projects as the Alternatives to Violence Project and the Friends Peace Teams, not simply by non-participation in military activity.

The typology of violence helps distinguish between self-inflicted, interpersonal and collective violence and their sub-divisions. Of these, war is the one which pacifists refuse to take part in or to support. It is where individual conscience conflicts most acutely with collective action. 

War, and the roots of wars are complex. They are almost a uniquely human creation, although they may be an enlargement of a potentials found across nature. The Quaker understanding has always been that we should engage in addressing the roots of war – as various and as specific as they may be – whilst steadfastly refusing to take part. Since the early twentieth century they have also felt compelled to attend to the harms that wars inflict.

The pacifist mindset presumes a default state of peace. By contrast, the militarist mindset presumes a default mindset of potential warfare. For the militarist peace is seen as an interlude between wars which must be used to rebuild capacity, to re-arm, to re-stock. The resultant military-industrial complex drains economies. It is no accident that the economies that grew most post World War Two were the two peace orientated economies of Germany and Japan, or that even now they rate as the world's third and fourth economies. 

Bertram Pickard – one of the core subjects of my studies – was the Secretary to the Quaker Centre in Geneva and effectively the Quaker representative to the League of Nations between 1926 and 1940. He went on to become part of the United Nations secretariat in Geneva (1946–55) after working as part of UNRRA. He struggled with the reality of maintaining a pacifist stance amidst the complexity of international affairs. He wrote about this specifically in his booklet The Peacemaker's Dilemma, which was one of several items by him in Irene's archive. He had been involved in the conscientious objector's movement during the First World War.