Thinking about the Russian war on Ukraine and the future of peace history

Peace &Change, Volume 49, Issue 4, Page 381-392, October 2024.

Abstract

My contribution will explore how the Russian war on Ukraine could impact the evolution of peace history as a field. Drawing on various proposals to end the conflict, it will explain why peace historians should continue to do the work that they normally do such as describing grassroots activism against the war and how Ukrainians have used nonviolent tactics to resist the Russian occupation. But it will also explain why the war reinforces the need to spend more time exploring how the diverse peoples of the world have understood legitimate civic ordering and the acceptable use of violence at specific moments in time—a task necessary to undermine the historical falsehoods that Russians have used to justify their aggression against Ukraine. Finally, my contribution will grapple with the relationship between peace and military history, explaining why peace historians need to become more comfortable addressing what a country like Ukraine needs to do on the battlefield to survive as a nation and build a more just and peaceful world.

This was originally published on Wiley: Peace & Change: Table of Contents.