The promised new world order is predictably a disaster. Nonetheless, the very magnitude of the disaster, graphically symbolized by Bosnia and Somalia, has many Christians asking whether nonviolent means of conflict resolution and pacifism render us impotent and irrelevant.
The loose coalition that resisted U.S. interventionism is fracturing. The political landscape is hard to read as progressives such as Minnesota's Paul Wellstone advocate some form of military response to deter Serbian aggression and Jesse Jackson endorses the U.S. intervention into Somalia.
Divisions are common within the peace community. A secular peace organization in Minnesota invited a Yugoslavian expert and protester to brief its members on Bosnia and then withdrew the invitation when they learned the former pacifist favored bombing Serbian weapons arsenals.
It is also a time of deep soul-searching for Christian communities, including my own, for whom nonviolence is a defining feature. Some people reject recourse to violence under all circumstances while others see "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia as analogous to Hitler's death camps and/or the mass starvation in Somalia as unacceptable and avoidable through the prudent use of force.
Debates about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of military or humanitarian interventions are emotionally charged because they challenge both our political wisdom and the spiritual foundation of many of our communities. As we struggle to find our way, I would urge that we neither expect nor seek consensus as to what constitutes a faithful response to crises such as Bosnia and Somalia. I hope we can share our views and the process and outcome of our discernment passionately but with humility.
Jesus' community challenged a destructive "holiness code" which in first-century Palestine allowed powerful groups to define themselves as faithful over against others whom they considered less worthy or sinful. The definers and enforcers of the "holiness code" were separatist, elitist, and self-righteous. Each of these sins is present in the past and present conduct of Christian peacemakers. It would be ironic if as we struggle to respond faithfully to crises, many of which are rooted in a politics of separation and religious intolerance, we should ourselves be guilty of similar intolerance.
WHAT FOLLOWS ARE 10 observations that I hope can help us assess present challenges to Christian pacifism and nonviolent conflict resolution.
First, legitimizing the use of military force to resolve international crises is dangerous. In the midst of problems that seem to defy solutions, there is a great temptation to believe in the utility of violence. In frustration, many people tend to see violence as a "last resort" without asking how many approaches have yet to be tried--and without recognizing a long historical record in which military "solutions" have failed to resolve fundamental conflicts that surface later with greater and more deadly force.
Militarization of our minds, economies, and approaches to conflict resolution threatens our world with destruction. By way of example, respected environmental groups estimate that we have approximately 40 years to make a difficult transition to sustainable societies. This transition depends on a solar-based energy future, alternatives to the consumer culture, overcoming poverty, and dramatic shifts away from military spending, military definitions of security, and military responses to international conflict.
Second, there is a history to and/or evolution of each crisis. The escalation of a crisis is preceded by a failure or lost opportunity to intervene nonviolently in ways that could diffuse a conflict. Each failure marks a turning point at which violence escalates and nonviolent resolution of a conflict becomes more costly, less likely, and perhaps impossible.
For example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, concluded that opportunities for a nonviolent resolution of the conflict in Nazi Germany had passed. This was, among other things, a confessional issue for the churches. Lost opportunities placed Bonhoeffer in a situation with no good choices. At this point he prayed for the defeat of his country and joined the plot to murder Hitler.
Third, the pervasive violence and destruction in Iraq, Haiti, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, our nation's cities, and other major areas of conflict generally confirm rather than discredit the worldview, perspectives, and programs of Christian pacifists and others committed to nonviolent conflict resolution. Today's crises were born out of yesterday's policy failures. We should not allow those most responsible for present crises to tell us self-servingly that nonviolence doesn't work. A great deal of violence could have been avoided if the principles and programs of nonviolent peacemakers had been followed throughout the Cold War period.
Fourth, these principles and programs should remain central to the peace community's emerging agenda. They include: refusing to arm dictators; curbing weapons sales; forsaking destabilizing covert operations and deadly interventions; drastically cutting military expenditures; strengthening international institutions; obeying international law; and pursuing greater economic justice. These remain central pillars of a more peaceful world.
Fifth, serious challenges to our pacifism or nonviolent means of conflict resolution arise from many sources, including present events in Bosnia, Somalia, and Iraq. However, much of our soul-searching is in relation to misconduct by the United States, both historically and in terms of present U.S. goals and objectives. I do not mean to downplay the horrible conduct of Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. I do mean to counter the serious effort under way to project U.S. military power as an essential vehicle for human rights and justice within the "new world order." Such a view is naive, dangerous, and ahistorical.
It is the United States that leads the world in weapons sales. Our nation has squandered and continues to squander vital human, economic, and technological resources on excessive military expenditures. Nonviolence and pacifism are viewed with suspicion by many oppressed peoples because of their experience of abusive U.S. military and economic power. Those who attribute moral purpose to U.S. military actions should remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the contras, murdered priests and religious, dictatorships supported, and democracies undermined.
In this context Somalia needs to be understood as a tragedy of the Cold War, including U.S. support for a repressive dictatorship. The United States acknowledges no need for repentance, and once again U.S. troops have been ordered into action through presidential decree.
Sixth, the U.S. "humanitarian intervention" into Somalia served many non-humanitarian purposes. These include, among others: defense of U.S. military interests, reinforcement of unilateral initiatives, and promotion of U.S. economic interests.
The U.S. military in the post-Cold War period, as documented in Brave New World Order, is fearful of budget cuts and eager for enemies. The Pentagon, for example, named Iraq a potential budget-enriching foe months before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It is instructive that within the Pentagon, Desert Shield was referred to as "budget shield." The National Catholic Reporter noted recently (12-18-92) that the "U.S. military [is] gung ho for humanitarian missions," including Somalia, because they help justify large military expenditures.
Unilateral intervention in Somalia served the military's institutional interests in another way as well. The United States is eager to legitimate such actions while preventing or distorting the formation of international institutions that might prove capable of challenging the world's lone military superpower.
Finally, can any of us be surprised that four U.S. oil companies have a major stake in the pacification of Somalia? The Los Angeles Times reports that U.S. firms "are sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres of the [Somali] countryside."
Seventh, whether or not one believes intervention using force or threatened force can ever be justified in places like Somalia or Bosnia, the peace community should be principled in its opposition to any unilateral military initiatives by the United States. The United States has no moral legitimacy or legal right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of another country.
Eighth, although internationally approved sanctions -- including the use of force or threatened force--are preferable to unilateral initiatives, they are not without problems. The first problem is that by default we are talking about the United Nations. The present decision-making structure of the United Nations is undemocratic. This helps explain why although the United Nations condemned both the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the U.S. invasion of Panama, and although the World Court condemned U.S. support for the contras in Nicaragua, it is Iraq that is subject to bombings and sanctions and not the United States.
At a time when we desperately need international organizations to respond effectively to global economic, environmental, and political problems, the United States and its Western allies are using international institutions as vehicles for their power. This is a problem that goes well beyond the United Nations.
For example, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the North American Free Trade Agreement are international organizations and/or agreements that are dominated by Western countries and enormously destructive to the lives of people throughout the Third World. We should be sobered by the fact that the same nations that claim the moral right to intervene militarily in other countries also direct the global economy--which, over the past decade, witnessed the largest transfer of wealth in human history from the Third World poor to the First World rich.
Ninth, Christian pacifists and other Christians committed to nonviolent conflict resolution should work to develop, strengthen, and or reform international institutions and organizations capable of conflict avoidance and resolution. Analysts such as Randall Forsberg argue that U.S. military spending could be reduced up to 80 percent by the year 2000 if the United States would embrace a cooperative approach to security. A cooperative approach, Forsberg argues, would save huge quantities of money and resources, help stop the global proliferation of weapons and weapons industries, and reduce the incidence and scale of war.
We cannot afford to stand outside the arenas in which collective security is debated, shaped, or ignored. Nor can we write off the United Nations, which while often abused by powerful countries has demonstrated its potential for lessening violence in places like Namibia and El Salvador. We must insist that the United States both pay its debt to the United Nations and stop crippling international peacekeeping efforts.
As followers of Jesus many of us understand our obedience to the state as provisional and selective. This does not mean we are anarchists. We believe in law and in some form of enforcement authority. However, in word and deed we have demonstrated that our ultimate allegiance is to God. Our obedience to and participation in the laws and institutions of the state are determined by whether obedience and participation are consistent with our faith. I would suggest similar behavior relative to international organizations: We should seek to influence them through nonviolent action and make obedience to them provisional in light of our faith.
Finally, whether and under what conditions we accept "humanitarian intervention," including the use of force, will likely be determined by our understanding of Jesus and the cross. It is at this point that I and others agonize over what to say and do. Some people who may agree with most or all of what I wrote above may disagree with everything that follows. Some will point out, perhaps rightly, that what I am about to say is inconsistent and contradictory. I know that I do not have the "right" answers, but I feel I should share how I answer for myself these difficult questions concerning faith and violence.
The biblical prophets offer us the helpful insight that violence is rooted in systems, and that those of us who are relatively well-off are often beneficiaries of such violence. Amos, for example, condemns the wealthy in Israel who "store up violence and robbery in their strongholds" (3:10). This insight leads to a rightful condemnation of institutionalized violence.
However, it can also be used to legitimate violent means of confronting injustice. Because of our participation in violent systems, the argument goes, we are already stained with the sin of violence. Therefore, there is no pure choice between violence and nonviolence.
I confess that I find this argument convincing. However, the example of Jesus and my commitment to be a follower of Jesus leads me to reject its pervasive logic. Most killing in today's world is done in the name of God or gods. I worship a God that embraced redemptive suffering rather than inflict death on others. Therefore, I embrace nonviolent means of conflict resolution and believe it is incompatible for Christians to serve in the military or to take another person's life.
As Christians we are to embrace redemptive suffering in our own persons. It is inappropriate, however, for us to turn our eyes from the suffering of others or to label suffering imposed on others as redemptive. We cannot in the spirit of Jesus, for example, cite a principled commitment to nonviolence as a reason to do nothing about "ethnic cleansing." Nor can we condemn violent responses to ethnic cleansing if we are not challenging it through nonviolent means.
Pervasive violence challenges but is not a judgment against the way of Jesus. It is a judgment against unjust systems and against the ineffectiveness of my nonviolent peacemaking that results in great violence to others. Just as the tragedy of Somalia calls our complicit nation to repentance, so, too, our inability to muster appropriate nonviolent responses to conflicts of this kind calls us to repentance.
If we are unwilling or unable to intervene nonviolently, risking our own lives in defense of others, then Gandhi's insight seems correct that violence is better than cowardice. Or stated another way, our cowardice or lack of preparedness makes violence inevitable.
The nonviolent movement has often "spoken truth to power" through symbolic actions, stressing fidelity over effectiveness. I believe that in the context of Bosnia and Somalia symbolic actions of protest or solidarity are not enough. Symbolically pouring blood is a poor substitute for a real presence in Somalia or Bosnia where blood is flowing and where our actual blood may need to be shed.
It seems to me that Christian pacifists and others committed to nonviolent conflict resolution cannot rule out the use of military force to liberate detention centers in Bosnia unless we are actively seeking to dismantle such centers through nonviolent means. And while I condemn the unilateral U.S. intervention into Somalia, we cannot rule out the need for internationally sanctioned humanitarian intervention, including that which uses or threatens the use of force, because we are not there in sufficient numbers and with adequate organization working for nonviolent resolution of the conflict.
IN THE COMING DECADE, we must build international organizations capable of nonviolent conflict resolution in places such as Bosnia and Somalia. The seed of what is needed is present in the examples of Witness for Peace, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and other groups who literally stand with the victims of violence and train others in nonviolent conflict resolution.
However, our failure to have mechanisms in place, through the United Nations or agencies that we create, whereby we can move 20,000 or 100,000 nonviolent, international peacemakers into Somalia to distribute food and help negotiate a settlement, or to help liberate concentration camps in Bosnia, is a judgment against Christian pacifism and Christian nonviolent protest. With such mechanisms in place, we can delegitimize violence in all its forms. Until then our voices are necessarily muffled.
The task before us is therefore pastoral as well as organizational. The most precious resources we have for our journey into uncharted waters are the strength of our communities and the Spirit of God that implores us to move from violence to wholeness and healing.
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer was a nonviolence activist, a member of the Community of St. Martin's in Minneapolis, and the author of Brave New World Order: Must We Pledge Allegiance? (Orbis Books, 1992) when this article appeared.
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