The Strategic Silence of Europe's Greens: Pacifism, Cognitive Constraints, and the Ukraine War

Despite robust historical evidence that nonviolent resistance achieves significantly higher success rates than armed struggle, European Green parties, traditionally rooted in pacifist principles and structural opposition to militarization, have abandoned strategic pacifism in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine (2022). This presents a notable paradox: when geopolitical crisis would theoretically justify pacifist alternatives most powerfully, none of Europe's major Green parties articulated, elaborated, or theorized strategic nonviolence as a concrete policy option, nor did they even articulate much of a pacifist critique in the first place. Instead, their political responses have oscillated between two sterile poles: unconditional or conditional support for weapons provision (compromising their foundational identity), or abstract declarations of peace and diplomacy lacking operational strategic proposals. This raises a central research question: What mechanisms render pacifist alternatives politically "unspeakable" when geopolitical crisis would theoretically justify them most powerfully? This research investigates the mechanisms underlying this "strategic silence" through a comparative analysis of three European Green parties: Germany's Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, France's EELV, and Italy's Europa Verde, during 2022-2025. Rather than attributing this silence to a single causal factor, I propose that three analytically distinct yet empirically converging barriers operate as cognitive filters rendering strategic pacifism politically "unthinkable" or "unspeakable": (1) ideological-historical legacies differentiating the genealogies of these parties, (2) institutional dynamics shaping coalition constraints and parliamentary autonomy, and (3) national political cultures establishing boundaries of discursive legitimacy around defense and militarization. The research employs a qualitative-comparative methodological approach, centered on systematic analysis of documentary sources (parliamentary speeches, party statements, European Parliament debates, 2022-2025) through a coding scheme articulated across three analytical categories: (1) articulation of pacifism, (2) positioning on the war, and (3) dominant ideological frame. The systematic application of 17 operational codes enables tracing the temporal evolution and institutional variation (national parliaments, European Parliament, official statements) of Green positions, revealing how cognitive and institutional constraints shape the spectrum of political alternatives rendered discursively available to parties. I hypothesize that strategic pacifism will be rendered invisible not through explicit repudiation but through institutional isomorphic pressure and national-cultural delegitimization, with parties retreating to abstract principles while embracing "tragic realism," framing weapons support as reluctant necessity rather than principled choice. This framework contributes to theories of party adaptation under crisis and the relationship between institutional position and the "speakability" of political alternatives within constrained choice environments.