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What the Greens Misunderstand About the Ukraine Conflict

As a policy, the Greens decision to not support military assistance to Ukraine is a deeply flawed one. As a political position it is self-defeating, too.

At the end of September, the Australian Greens elected David Shoebridge their new leader. Shoebridge had previously been the party’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and defense, and he retained those responsibilities. While he has always been a combative politician, he immediately created controversy by stating it would be the Greens’ policy to oppose providing further military assistance to Ukraine. Extraordinarily, in a meeting with a number of Ukrainian-Australian community groups this week he left a further sour taste by informing them to not “burn any bridges” by criticizing the Greens.

Shoebridge has said that the party is one of “peace and non-violence,” but within this perspective comes a number of often naïve assumptions about international relations and how states manage conflict. It leads to an odd scenario whereby in proclaiming to be advocates of peace and nonviolence the Greens end up supporting belligerents over victims. 

There are some common traits that “pacifist” parties exhibit that are worth analyzing to understand the Greens’ position. 

The first is that they see violence as a self-perpetuating system. War creates a cycle of fear, militarization, and retaliation. The participants become trapped in an escalating security dilemma – each interpreting the other’s actions as a threat. Therefore peace requires breaking this cycle through restraint, negotiation, and disarmament. This may seem rational on the surface, but it doesn’t account for bad faith actors who believe solely in domination and cannot be trusted to honor any negotiated deal. This is the type of state Ukraine is facing with Russia. 

Alongside this, there is a distrust of the distinction between offensive and defensive power. There is a belief that all military power is essentially used for offensive purposes to varying degrees. Based on that assumption, states which arm themselves in defense – or become a part of an alliance system – are creating the conditions for aggressive actions to occur. Yet this assumes that larger states will naturally respect the sovereignty of their smaller neighbors if they are not armed. This, again, is a misunderstanding of Russia, which views weakness, not strength, as an incentive to escalate. 

What pacifists often believe is that nonviolent resistance is an underutilized alternative to military resistance. There have, of course, been instances where........

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