(Radical) pacifism and governmental force (army, police, etc.) Reading some comments on this subsite I ended up a couple of days ago reading this secular article on the topic of self defence in Buddhism and this question on the site here. Now, based on this I seem to have deduced that there are three positions:


Egocentric pacifism: You may hurt and maybe even kill others if it is to defend yourself, provided it's not out of hatred or similar emotions. E.g. stopping an intruder forcefully is fine.
Radical pacifism: You may not hurt others, even if you're "being rendered limb from limb".
Utilitarianism: You may hurt and maybe even kill others if it's for the greater good and not out of hatred or similar emotions.


Now, historically I only know of a few groups that practiced radical pacifism, and one of the most famous groups (the anabaptists/Mennonites) concluded that it was impossible for a Christian to be a worldly ruler (ignoring the radical anabaptists and the mess in Münster).

This got me wondering:


In countries like Cambodia (97% Buddhists) and Thailand (93% Buddhists) does radical pacifism have any consequences at all at the government level?
Or is (radical) pacifism just an insignificant minority position in Buddhism?


In other words, what I am mostly just asking is how Buddhism approaches issues of the power of governments to wield a mighty sword (army, police) versus the pacifism that is often taught by Buddhists.
I think this would take a political scientist to answer but I'll try to give a few thoughts on this. 

I listened to a podcast a while ago where Owen Flanagan was arguing that Buddhism was ill suited to form part of any political philosophy. Whereas a country may be Buddhist from a democratic perspective when it comes to the political sphere that country will operate with a different political philosophy such as monarchy, oligarchy etc... So whether a Buddhist does or doesn't subscribe to radical pacifism would be irrelevant in Buddhist countries as the political philosophy isn't actual based on Buddhism. I'm not agreeing or diagreeing with this - my knowledge of global political structures isn't strong enough to support that stance. However it was an interesting assertion and relevant here I think.

Also for many people the Dalai Lama is the Buddhist political leader that they are most familiar with and his attitude to political force is complex. For instance he has given messages of support to the armed forces - while that not directly advocating violence it isn't radical pacifism either.

In short although I do think that radical pacifism is a valid Buddhist position I don't believe it is a position that political figures hold whether in Buddhist countries or being Buddhist themselves. Very happy to be proved wrong on this of course.