> I do think its interesting how much more pacifist older scifi seems to be then modern scifi

Optimism is powerful, but it usually comes with impatience. We've shown an ability to decrease the prevalence of war globally, but the fact that improvements have taken longer than a generation and have not been monotonic or absolute makes it very hard to maintain a belief in the possibility of future improvements. The pace of change in the world can't keep up with the emotional rhythm of human optimism, disappointment, and disillusionment.

Also, many well-meaning people fight to tear down optimism because they identify it with complacency. Other well-meaning people fight to tear down optimism because they want people to focus on a different problem, so they want them to believe that there can be no progress on X without progress on Y.

As a result it is fashionable to deny that anything done in centuries of human struggle has made any positive difference in the world. How that is supposed to motivate anybody to add their own efforts to the struggle is left as an exercise for the reader I guess.

Hell, it was Asimov who coined, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

I think you're using great big rose-tinted glasses there.

Consider classics like "The Cold Equations", where the institutional solution to space stowaways is to execute them, without so much as bothering to put up a warning sign first.

Yes. I should have said "some".