Figuring his political career was over, Kucinich launched into a lengthy period of self-reflection and emerged as a committed pacifist.

FORBES

They are torn by leadership disputes and, since entering the federal government for the first time in 1998, have lost much of their appeal as a somewhat wacky, pacifist protest party of the left.

ECONOMIST: Germany

It took some searching to find a single precedent, William Jennings Bryan, a pacifist who had resigned as secretary of state in 1915 because he believed American policy favoured joining the war in Europe.

ECONOMIST: Cyrus Vance

The armed forces now talk a lot about flexibility, though this is not so much a voguish notion as a reflection of the difficulty of imagining threats to a country that is almost instinctively pacifist.

ECONOMIST: A philosopher redesigns an army

When drafted in 1942, he overcame his pacifist scruples and joined the navy as a junior officer.

ECONOMIST: James Michener

Of course, if you happen to be a pacifist by conviction, you probably hate all that Alexander stood for as well as what he did in war, but, if the premise of war be granted, he was surely a formidably great generalissimo.

FORBES: Two Great Historians On Alexander the Great, Part One

For openers, he was a pacifist who refused to serve in World War II, instead registering in 1942 as a conscientious objector.

WSJ: Benjamin Britten | Known but Not Loved | Sightings by Terry Teachout

After only five months on the job, and in a shaky coalition of Social Democrats and semi-pacifist Greens, he has uncomfortably emerged as the first defence minister since 1945 to send German forces abroad to fight.

ECONOMIST: Rudolf Scharping, measured German warrior