Eugene V. Rostow blamed the naval disarmament agreements of that era for “inhibiting the possibility of military preparedness . . . through which Britain and France could easily have deterred the war.” Norman Podhoretz asserted that the interwar disarmament process “resulted in cutbacks by the democratic side and increases by the totalitarian side.” The presumed lesson of history is that disarmament leads to weakness and invites aggression, while military build-ups bring strength and provide security.
There is another lesson from history, however, that was widely accepted in the years after World War I: multilateral disarmament can help to prevent war, while military build-ups generate destabilizing arms races and create pressures for militarization. For peace advocates – internationalists and pacifists alike – the struggle against arms accumulation has been an essential part of the strategy for peace. Beginning in the interwar era and continuing especially during the cold war, the demand for disarmament moved to the center of the peace agenda.
The theory of disarmament as a strategy for peace rests on the assumption that large military establishments and excessive levels of weaponry increase the tendency of governments to use military force as the primary instrument of statecraft. When military power is the principal tool of foreign policy, decision makers tend to view international issues through the prism of military action. As the popular saying goes, when your primary tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
Weapons makers and military elites generate pressures for maintaining arms production regardless of actual security conditions. Arms build-ups by one state often prompt reciprocal build-ups by another. This feeds an arms race dynamic and increases political tensions that can lead to war. The case for disarmament also rests on social justice grounds. Economist Seymour Melman argued that the presence of a “permanent war economy” distorts industrial decision making and diverts resources from human needs and civilian innovation toward unproductive military purposes.
Said Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his 1984 Nobel Peace Prize speech, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And . . . just a fraction of what is expended so obscenely . . . would make the difference in enabling God’s children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.
THE END OF “ PACIFISM ”
