Moral Disarmament: A Legacy of the First World War

Abstract

The first Nobel Peace Laureate Frédéric Passy criticized colaureate 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 because Dunant had not been involved in any peace movements. Moreover, peace activists saw his 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. As contemporary 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. Passy’s quote invites us to consider whether we must look at war from a much broader human context – separate from the principle of humanity – if we eventually are to rid the world of war. In extending Passy’s idea to nuclear disarmament, this Paper resurrects from the inter-war period the human-centered principle of moral disarmament and explores its usefulness as a “new” foundation in working towards nuclear disarmament, instead of or in addition to the humanity-centered approach adopted by the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. After all, the International Court of Justice determined in its 1996 Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons advisory opinion that nuclear weapons are not generally prohibited notwithstanding the destructive nature of nuclear weapons and the existence of the principle of humanity and international humanitarian law. The reference to “moral” here goes beyond the standard sense of what is ethical by encapsulating a focus on disarmament through society’s development, both economically and from a human dimension.