Moral Disarmament: Reviving a Legacy of the Great War

Abstract

The first Nobel Peace Laureate Frédéric Passy criticized co-laureate Henri Dunant and the Red Cross Movement when he wrote, “You do not humanize war. You get rid of war by becoming more human.” Dunant’s sharing of the prize with Passy came as a shock to peace activists throughout the world because Dunant had not been involved in any peace movements, and it had been assumed that this prize had been reserved for peace efforts. Peace activists saw Dunant’s work as completely unrelated to peace because the Red Cross Movement and the resulting international humanitarian law did not aim to prevent war. Indeed, the principle of humanity, which forms the bedrock of international humanitarian law and essentially all other principles that fall under that umbrella, aims only at limiting superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering during armed conflict, not at preventing war. As commentators have observed, international humanitarian law and its core principle of humanity in a way perpetuate war by giving combatants greater hope of surviving hostilities, thereby enabling recruitment and the following of orders. All of this will come as somewhat of a shock to commentators who essentially exalt Dunant for his contributions to global peace. To be clear, this assertion is not the same as Pufendorf’s outright rejection of international humanitarian law for being against the design of nature that only delays the return to natural peace. Instead, this article asserts that IHL and its principle of humanity are not optimal bases for pressing for disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament. Passy’s quote against IHL and the principle of humanity invites us to consider whether we must look at war and disarmament from a much broader human context if we eventually are to make significant progress.