Trace the evolution of peace movement across world

Introduction

Peace movements around the world have experienced cycles of mobilization. Associated with these cycles have been fluctuations in the amount of attention peace movements devote toward negative peace versus positive peace. During times of international tensions and war, peace movements tend to grow. Not surprisingly, wartime yields a disproportionate focus on the task at hand—stopping organized violent responses of the rival nations toward one another. Yet even during wars, some wings of a peace movement's focus extend beyond ending the current hostilities toward building more permanent amicable relations among societies.

Trace the evolution of peace movement across world

Regardless of their focus, wartime peace activists are often vulnerable to accusations on the home front that, at the very least, they are undermining the war effort by lowering the morale of their nation's soldiers. Sometimes, peace activists are accused of aiding and abetting the “enemy.” Hence, during popular wars, the number of regular participants in peace movements may decrease as the amount of peace movement activities paradoxically increases (Wittner, 1984).

Once a war ends, peace activism tends to shift toward prevention. With the horrors of war fresh on people's minds, peace activists advocating working toward positive peace are briefly granted greater legitimacy. However, even during “peacetime,” many peace movements tend to concentrate on the weapons of destruction rather than on the political and economic arrangements that are conducive to war. Whether their goal is terminating a weapon system (negative peace) or eliminating the causes of war (positive peace), opponents often accuse peacetime activists being idealists, well-meaning but naive.

Cycles of Peace Movements

Peace movements around the world have experienced cycles of mobilization. Associated with these cycles have been fluctuations in the amount of attention peace movements devote toward negative peace versus positive peace. During times of international tensions and war, peace movements tend to grow. Not surprisingly, wartime yields a disproportionate focus on the task at hand – stopping organized violent responses of the rival nations toward one another. Yet even during wars, some wings of a peace movement’s focus extend beyond ending the current hostilities toward building more permanent amicable relations among societies.

Trace the evolution of peace movement across world

Regardless of their focus, wartime peace activists are often vulnerable to accusations on the home-front that, at the very least, they are undermining the war effort by lowering the morale of their nation’s soldiers. Sometimes peace activists are accused of aiding and abetting the ‘enemy’. Hence, during popular wars the number of regular participants in peace movements may decrease as the amount of peace movement activities paradoxically increases.

Trace the evolution of peace movement across world

Once a war ends, peace activism tends to shift toward prevention. With the horrors of war fresh on people’s minds, peace activists advocating working toward positive peace are briefly granted greater legitimacy. However, even during ‘peacetime’, many peace movements tend to concentrate on the weapons of destruction rather than on the political and economic arrangements that are conducive to war. Whether their goal is terminating a weapon system (negative peace) or eliminating the causes of war (positive peace), opponents often accuse peacetime activists of being idealists, well-meaning but naive.

Trace the evolution of peace movement across world

Peace Movements

‘Peace Movements’ may be used in two ways. On the one hand, a peace movement is a specific coalition, or purposeful grouping, of peace organizations that, together with elements of the public, seek to remove a threat of war or to create institutions and cultures that obviate recourse to violence. On the other, it is the organizational infrastructure to do so. Usage is usually clarified by context. Peace organization constituencies (supporting members and friends) are people with shared commitment to common values and traditions, like religious nonresistance (the conscientious, absolute, individual rejection of war), or to a program such as world federalism. 

Trace the evolution of peace movement across world

Such groups form coalitions in order to enlist public support in response to salient issues. If the issue is war or a specific war threat, peace coalitions take the form of antiwar movements. In nearly 200 years of organized peace effort, specific peace movements have affected national policies, international institutions, and popular attitudes. Taken as a whole, they can be viewed as a single, evolving, and increasingly transnational social movement. Its conceptualization is a result of interaction between its historical experience and the formal analyses of war, peace, and social movements. The conceptualization of peace movements has resulted from the dialectical interaction of movement self-reflection on its own experience and subsequent scholarly analysis. The small peace societies begun in 1815 proselytized for attitudinal changes that would obviate warfare. Their memberships broadened, and American and British peace advocates (active members of peace societies) even solicited support on the European continent. By 1899 there were about 100 linked societies, among which some were well funded. The largely elitist leadership constituted a kind of peace establishment.

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