Pole A: Militarist score 0
Credible force as the basis of foreign policy. Common argument for it: peace depends on deterrence, and a country without defense capability negotiates at a disadvantage.
POLITICAL POSITION · DIMENSION 5 OF 12
Diplomacy: militarist or pacifist
Diplomacy is the dimension that records the role a person gives to military force in relations with other countries.
What it is
Diplomacy is the dimension that records the role a person gives to military force in relations with other countries. At the Militarist pole, military capability and the use of force are legitimate and necessary tools of foreign policy; at the Pacifist pole, force is rejected or admitted only in extreme cases, and conflicts are settled by negotiation, mediation and international law.
What the dimension covers
- military spending and capability
- alliances and deterrence
- use of force in conflicts
- mediation, sanctions and multilateral bodies
The two poles
0 · MilitaristPacifist · 100
Pole B: Pacifist score 100
Negotiation and law as the rule. Common argument for it: war has a human cost that no goal easily justifies, and an arms race feeds the conflict it claims to prevent.
How the instrument measures it
The Evidence instrument (schema evidence-pol-1) records this dimension as a number from 0 to 100: 0 is the Militarist pole, 100 is the Pacifist pole. The number comes from your answers to the questionnaire or from a result imported from another instrument by URL; either way it is a self-assessment, computed in your browser, and nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you. With no answer for this dimension, it stays unknown (UNKNOWN), never 50.
| No. | Statement | Agreeing points to |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Conflicts between countries should be settled by negotiation and mediation, even when it takes years. | Pacifist |
| 17 | A country is only taken seriously internationally if it has strong armed forces. | Militarist |
| 29 | The country should cut arms exports, even at a loss of revenue. | Pacifist |
| 41 | Raising military spending should be a priority, even when other areas need resources. | Militarist |
Formula p = (resposta - 1) / 4 if agreeing points to Pacifist; p = 1 - (resposta - 1) / 4 if it points to Militarist; placar = 100 * media(p)
There are 4 original statements, with opposite directions to reduce the effect of agreeing with everything. Answers run from 1 to 5 (1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neither agree nor disagree, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree); "Don't know" does not score. Each answer becomes a position between 0 and 1, the score is the mean position times 100, and confidence combines coverage (how many of the 4 statements scored) and consistency (how far answers point the same way): high from 0.75, medium from 0.50.
In the Evidence portable format, this dimension is the diplomacy parameter of the profile URL. Scale, evidence states and limitations are in the instrument method; the terms are in the glossary.
Why it is a separate dimension
It differs from Foreign intervention: there the question is whether and why to act in other countries; here it is by what means. A country can arm heavily and intervene nowhere, or intervene only through diplomacy.
Compare with Foreign intervention and Foreign trade.
Frequently asked questions
Does being a pacifist mean having no armed forces?
No. The Pacifist pole records a preference for non-military means; many pacifist positions accept defending one's own territory. Political philosophy distinguishes several kinds of pacifism.
Where can I see military spending data by country?
SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) maintains a public military expenditure database by country and year. That is country data; the dimension records a person's preference.
What does a score of 50 on Diplomacy mean?
That the answers ended halfway between Militarist and Pacifist, through balance or through a mix of answers in both directions. It is not the same as moderation or the political center, and it says nothing about the other 11 dimensions.
Is my result sent or published?
No. The computation runs in your browser, nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you, and the result page is not indexed by search engines. Political opinion is sensitive personal data under Brazil's LGPD (art. 5, II, and art. 11).
Literature and references
- PacifismStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: kinds of pacifism and the objections to each.
- WarStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: just war theory and its critics.
- SIPRI Military Expenditure DatabaseMilitary spending by country and year, with published method.
Reference readings on the topic. None of them validates the Evidence instrument, and no text, question or weight was copied from them.
Conceptual sources of the instrument
The weight of military force in foreign policy: armed power as a central tool (militarist) or negotiation, mediation and arms reduction (pacifist).
Other dimensions
- Related dimensionForeign interventionNon-interventionist · Nationalist
- Related dimensionForeign tradeProtectionism · Globalism
- PreviousImmigrationAssimilation · Multiculturalism
- NextForeign interventionNon-interventionist · Nationalist