The historical indictment against pacifism includes the charge that disarmament efforts during the interwar years restricted Western preparedness, allowing Germany and Japan to gain a decisive military advantage that emboldened aggression. Eugene V. Rostow blamed the naval disarmament agreements of that era for “inhibiting the possibility of military preparedness … through which Britain and France could easily have deterred the war.” Norman Podhoretz asserted that the interwar disarmament process “resulted in cutbacks by the democratic side and increases by the totalitarian side.” The presumed lesson of history is that disarmament leads to weakness and invites aggression, while military build-ups bring strength and provide security. There is another lesson from history, however, that was widely accepted in the years after World War I: multilateral disarmament can help to prevent war, while military build-ups generate destabilizing arms races and create pressures for militarization. For peace advocates – internationalists and pacifists alike – the struggle against arms accumulation has been an essential part of the strategy for peace. Beginning in the interwar era and continuing especially during the cold war, the demand for disarmament moved to the center of the peace agenda.

The theory of disarmament as a strategy for peace rests on the assumption that large military establishments and excessive levels of weaponry increase the tendency of governments to use military force as the primary instrument of statecraft.