The non-violent tactics of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are pushing at an open door. Even the Pentagon has begun to look at their value in situations of conflict and political impasse.
In the news today is the essentially non-violent struggle of the opposition in
One shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events. The twentieth century is rightly described as the bloodiest century of mankind. But it was also the most creative in terms of alternatives to violence — not only Martin Luther King and Gandhi (with the anti-British Pathans joining his movement, an
historical development somehow overlooked today by the NATO armies in Afghanistan), but also the work of Chief Albert Lithuli and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, Archbishop Helder Camara in Brazil and Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta in East Timor. There were the 1950s marches against nuclear weapons that helped persuade President John Kennedy to push for the Test Ban Treaty, and later the massive protests against the Vietnam War.
There is no way one can put a precise finger on it. But there has been a sea change in Western society’s attitude to war. Despite the headlines there are fewer wars now than ever before in history. The number of wars conducted between the democracies since the end of World War Two is zero. The industrialized, richer, democratic nations have mostly abandoned armed conflict as a way of conducting their relations with other countries. The wars in
Even in the poorer countries where warfare is more rife, war is waged by a remarkably small group- mainly criminals, bullies and warlords, often easily defeated by UN-type military intervention, combined with outside political pressure, except in rare cases like Afghanistan where the Pathans have a deep and almost unique inbred culture of resistance. In only the
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If the militaristic atmosphere of past ages is beginning to change one shouldn’t be surprised at the greater role that non-violent campaigns have played over the last sixty years. And they tend to be successful, too.
A recent study by Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, reported in Harvard’s quarterly “International Security”, finds that large-scale non-violent campaigns of civilian resistance have achieved success 53 per cent of the time. In contrast terrorist campaigns achieved their objectives only 7 per cent of the time.
Success comes from many factors, not least persistence. But it also comes from an enhanced domestic and international legitimacy and alienation of the target regime, as happened in the
This happened in the
One can point to numerous situations where non-violence could be usefully be made to work today. But no situation is riper for it than the Israel-Palestine dispute. If the Palestinians could drop their guns and stones and organise an effective non-violent movement they would find a million Israelis supporting them.
Warfare, as John Mueller has written, was once regarded as “natural, inevitable, honourable, thrilling, manly, invigorating, necessary, glorious, progressive and desirable.” It could well be that this era is approaching its close and non-violent resistance is becoming the main tool of radical, even revolutionary, change.
Jonathan Power can be reached at JonatPower@aol.com