Politics (1991) 1 I(1) pp43-48 PEACE TOLITICS’ PETER BAEHa Introduction PEACE ‘POLITICS is a concept which most political theorists wiU find bizarre. One reason for this is the close association between the idea of politics and the state. Since the state, in one influential usage, is defined as that formation which legitimately monopolises the agencies of force and coercion, ‘peace’ politics sounds an incongruous, even contradictory,notion. Another reason for the apparent oddity of the expression ‘peace’ politics is the oft-stated antipathy between politics and virtue. George Kennan is only the most recent exponent of this view in his comments about V6clav Havel and other champions of the ‘peaceful revolution’ occurring in Czechoslovakiaand elsewhere. For Kennan, people like Havel, however admirable their integrity and sincerity, nonetheless display: ... a certain naiveti6 about politics generally ... an obliviousness to the fact that politics is by its very nature, everywhere, even in the democratic setting, a sordid and messy atlhir, replete with disturbing moral dilemmas, paidid compromises, departures of every sort from the ideal -yet necessary @man, 1990, p.4). In such a context, ‘peace politics’, with its ethical charge, will naturally smack of utopianism. It is therefore of considerable interest to come across a book which promises to shed light on what peace politics might entail. That promise is only partially redeemed by James Hinton, the University of Warwick historian who has doubled since 1983 as a fkquent Chair of CND’s campaigns’ committee. His book, however, invites the reader to think ~therelationshpbetweenBn~hyeacemovementsandEnglish~ti~and in this it has indubitable value..’ The Legacy of Tmperialist Pacifism’ By ‘peace politics’, Hinton wishes: ...to emphasise that peace movements involve not only protests and visions, but also political effort and inteligence in oombining these and bringing them to bear on existing s w of power ... ohe mnstant goal of peace politics has been to build bridges between utopian thinking and effective action m the world as it is‘ (px). Politics is about power. It is about influence. It is about the power to influence social life. Yet, curiously, Protests and Viswns accords only a fraction of its pages to what might be deemed the political effects of British peace movements. Indeed, from one angle (made explicit on p.205) Hinton’s book is a record of the failure of those movements to realise their objectives (for instance, to stop the deployment of cruise missiles in 1983-4). That angle is partly a consequence of a book which demands that the peace movement face rationally its defeats and fhstmtions, but it is also a result of idee fi=ce: the concept of ’impeditst pacifism’. Hinton’s argument runs as follows. During the twentieth century, B ri~h peace movement activity has been characterizedby a doctrine seriously detrimental to its capacityfor strategic, European-wide action. The doctrine in question has admitted of a number of permutations but it has mostly turned on a grandiose sense of 43