Technology for nonviolent struggle

An examination of occupations by military forces since World War II and implications for social defence.

A study of the political effects of introducing social defence, including effects on diplomacy, the economic system and political structures.

An analysis of spying (“intelligence services”), how it might operate against a social defence system and how it might be resisted.

An examination of what and how information might need to be collected as part of a social defence system; in other words, an examination of social defence intelligence services.

Most of these research projects would require years of investigation. Their scope is not revealed by these brief descriptions. This list hints at the vast amount of research that could be carried out into social defence. Indeed, given that the military spends billions of dollars each year on research, it can be anticipated that a full-scale social defence system might spawn a similar mass of research. Therefore, the 24 projects listed here from de Valk’s book would only be the barest beginning of a full-scale social defence research effort.

Most of the 24 projects are social rather than technological: they deal largely with history, psychology, politics, ideology, strategy and policy. Only three — the third, fourth and fifth as listed — provide any focus on technology. This gives an indication of the relative neglect of the technological dimension in the nonviolence field. Indeed, searching through writings on nonviolence, there is remarkably little attention to technology, so it is worth mentioning those few writers who deal with it.

The earliest and most important was novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley, whose ideas are described in the prologue. Then there is leading peace researcher Johan Galtung, who has made specific suggestions for specific technological developments that would aid a social defence system, especially in his 1968 paper “On the strategy of nonmilitary defense: some proposals and problems.” He suggests, for example, that research could be done into how to design a country’s physical equipment so that it can be sabotaged appropriately. Since Galtung’s ideas are so insightful, it is worth quoting his entire account on this point.

The task would not be to blow up a factory completely,

but to remove that minimum part which would cause maximum uselessness

. Which part this is and how much will have to be removed would be a subject of meticulous calculation, where the availability of substitutes, or substitute uses of the remaining parts of the factory, would play a great role. Such calculations are well within the reach of modern, computerized societies. Thus, in an airplane it would probably not lead to the removal of the propeller (since the engine could then be used for other purposes), but of some small, highly specialized part of the engine, and so on. In the tertiary sectors of society, it would generally be easier since these sectors (except transport and communication) are mainly concerned with symbolic activity, so that the removal or destruction of files, codes, manuals of procedure, membership files, population data, means of financial tranactions, etc., should cause a high degree of uselessness. Transport and communication are also relatively easily reduced in efficiency. But in the primary sector it would generally be less easy, since the facilities here are more like territory. However, pits can be undermined and fields can be rendered useless by chemical means — and better technology could make both strategies time dependent, so that even though the destruction would be irreversible for the time being, it would still only be temporary. It might be argued that all the enemy then would have to do, would be to sit down and wait for usefulness to recur — but the counter-strategy against that again would be to calculate the timing of destruction as well as recovery, or to have options for repeated destruction.

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Richard Wendell Fogg raised a few relevant points, for example noting the importance of broadcasting to the population of an aggressor’s country.[3] Eminent nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp devoted a page to general comments about the need to question standard assumptions about large technological scale and centralised control over energy, food, production and transport; he suggested that attention should be paid to technology with the aim of diffusing social power.[4] Aside from these authors, though, little had previously been done before my own work. The contrast with the enormous military research and development programmes is striking.