Technology for nonviolent struggle

Governments have two great advantages when it comes to promoting nonviolence: legitimacy and resources. Legitimacy is perhaps the most important. If just one government in the world decided to promote nonviolent struggle, it would provide an example and inspiration to people everywhere. The resources controlled by governments are important too: money, workers, laws, policies. These resources are used now to sustain military systems. Clearly the same resources would have a giant impact if devoted instead to nonviolent struggle. But legitimacy is vital in the use of resources too: laws will be obeyed only if most people consider them legitimate; government employees can easily strangle policies if they do not think them legitimate.

The great power of government, via legitimacy and resources, is the reason why so many groups look to government to solve their problems. This applies to peace movements as well as many others. Many of the campaigns of peace movements over the decades have been aimed at changing goverment policy. Intense lobbying is carried out; rallies are held to demonstrate the strength of public commitment; demands are made for government action, such as a “nuclear freeze” or an end to foreign intervention. But in most cases these efforts have had little success. Governments are seldom responsive to peace movements and have seldom shown any interest in nonviolent struggle. There are several reasons for this.

Most fundamentally, states and militaries are sustained by each other, as noted in chapter 2. The foundation of state power is a monopoly over what is considered legitimate violence, exercised by the military and the police. Even when the threat of foreign aggression is negligible — as in geographically remote countries such as Fiji or New Zealand — military establishments are maintained and fear of enemies is fostered. Militaries are far more likely to be used internally, against the people who are supposed to be defended, than against foreign aggressors. This is most obvious in the case of military dictatorship.

Since the military is an integral, indeed essential, part of the state, it is inherently unlikely for the state to fully endorse popular nonviolent struggle as an alternative to the military. Popular nonviolent struggle might, after all, be used to challenge the status quo.

This assessment of the link between the state and the military is useful at a general level, but it gives too mechanical a picture. The state is not a unified entity: it contains the government (elected or otherwise), the legal system and various state bureaucracies to run or regulate functions such as welfare, education, industry and transport, among others. It is quite possible for different sectors of the state to promote different goals. Some governments have sponsored studies of social defence; some teachers in government schools have developed peace studies; some government departments have promoted self-reliance; and so forth. It is certainly possible for parts of the state to sponsor nonviolent struggle.

The problem is that nonviolence has a very low profile compared to military approaches. The military is well and truly entrenched, partly because of its structural relation to state power.

Peace activists often hope to sway political leaders by the logic of their arguments. This seldom has much impact, since politicians are much more influenced by power considerations. After all, the threat of global nuclear war has never been enough by itself to persuade politicians to implement nuclear disarmament.

Peace activists also try to apply pressure to political leaders through letter-writing, rallies, mobilisation of voters and civil disobedience. This has a much greater impact than just logical arguments. Nevertheless, there are limitations in the strategy of applying pressure. Political leaders are subject to other pressures, such as lobbying by supporters of the military. Promises are easy to make and easy to break. When community activists seek to get the government to take action, they do not take control of the agenda themselves. Their effort is to get someone else (the government) to take action, not to take action themselves.

Finally, even when governments do take action, they are not likely to promote a process of community mobilisation. They are more likely to sponsor research, which may just delay the day when action occurs. They are likely to provide support for figureheads — such as prominent investigators — rather than for community-level activists.

The experiences with government sponsorship of research into social defence illustrate the above generalisations. Supporters of nonviolent action have devoted much effort to persuading governments to investigate social defence. Occasionally there have been successes. The governments of Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have sponsored studies.