I wonder about the similarities and/or differences between Baker's book and Buchanan's. I'm not likely to buy either one, and it'll be a while before the library gets copies. I'm sure they agree on some points and differ on others, and I'd imagine that the points of agreement may be more-or-less persuasive, or at least worthy of consideration.

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You can be a pacifist without having to claim that everyone has to be a pacifist, and especially without having to prove that past events would have turned out better if everyone on one side of a conflict were pacifists while those on the other side remained belligerent.

(If everyone on both sides of a conflict should embrace pacifism, of course, there would be no problem at all. I'm reminded of my mother's angry objection to my refusal to be drafted for Vietnam: "What if everybody thought like you do ~ then what? We'd all be killed!" Such a reaction, of course, is based on the assumption that only "we," the human beings on our side, are included among "everybody.")

Pacifism may be "about" the very public and communal experience of warfare, but it's really and most basically a personal spiritual stance. Insofar as pacifism can play a role in the public arena, nonviolent resistance to evil is the key element, and it ain't easy. Stringsinger is right: pacifism is decidedly not "passive-ism."