Publications > Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 3, no. 4/vol. 4, no. 1
Spring/Summer 1992

Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 3, no. 4/vol. 4, no. 1
Spring/Summer 1992

Download PDF file Contents Baltic CBD conference AEI hosts Lithuanian defense minister Gandhi, Clausewitz and the New World Order Einstein Fellows awards Ecuadorean Indians march Tax resistance in Beit Sahour Nonviolent sanctions in the news Baltic Defense Officials Consider Relevance of Civilian-Based Defense at Vilnius Conference by Roger S. Powers Official consideration of civilian-based defense received a boost this June, when some fifty political leaders, defense specialists, and scholars of nonviolent action from nine countries gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania for a conference on "The Relevance of Civilian-Based Defense for the Baltic States." It was the first time that defense ministry representatives from four different countries—Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Sweden—have come together to consider the potential of civilian-based defense (CBD) for their countries. Other conference participants came from Australia, England, Poland, Russia, and the United States. Among the topics discussed during the conference were the recent experiences of the Baltic states with improvised civilian resistance during their independence struggles, various strategies of CBD, alternative models of adopting CBD, planning and organization in CBD, and international assistance to countries using CBD. Lithuania and Latvia are in the process of drafting their defense concept papers and plan to include civilian-based defense as a component of their overall policies. Estonia is considering that option, but appears to be not as far along in the defense planning process as the other two Baltic states. The Baltic states fought for their independence using nonviolent methods of struggle, including the dramatic confrontations with the Soviet army in January and August of last year (See Nonviolent Sanctions, Winter 1991/92). Now, having gained their independence, they are faced with the problem of defending it. They do not have the resources to build military defenses large enough to counter a Russian military threat. While they may look to alliances and collective security arrangements for assistance, they cannot rely solely on these either. Guerrilla warfare can be used, but it is likely to result in massive civilian casualties. That leaves civilian-based defense. Most defense ministry representatives at the conference seemed to favor the development of defense policies that would combine all of the above options—conventional military forces, international alliances, guerrilla warfare, and civilian-based defense. Some of the reasons expressed for not wanting to rely solely on CBD were: 1) not wanting to give the appearance of being vulnerable to invasion; 2) the difficulty of controlling borders against the Mafia, terrorists, paramilitary groups, drug smugglers, etc. with CBD; and 3) the difficulty of defending maritime fronts with CBD. Einstein Institution representatives acknowledged that civilian-based defense has limitations and may not be sufficient to meet all the Baltics’ defense needs by itself. However, they urged caution in mixing violence with civilian-based defense as the two can work at cross purposes to each other, weakening both. Gene Sharp, senior scholar-in-residence at the Einstein Institution, said that if violent action and nonviolent action are both going to be used in the same struggle, they should be separated in terms of geography, time, targets, purpose, and organization. Baltic representatives also expressed concern about their ability to maintain unity among their civilian populations in the event of an attack. This is especially problematic in Estonia and Latvia, which have large Russian minorities (thirty and forty percent of the population respectively), some of whom oppose Baltic independence. Baltic officials fear that in the event of a Russian attack, the Russian army would find many willing collaborators among these minorities, thereby weakening civilian-based defense efforts. A related concern is that Russian minorities trained for civilian-based defense could use nonviolent resistance to undermine the legitimate Baltic governments instead of defending them. Of immediate concern to the Baltic states is the continued presence of some 120,000 Russian troops on their territory. As one Estonian put it: "World War II is not over for us. We are still occupied and colonized." Reasons offered by the Russians for why they have not withdrawn their troops range from a lack of housing in Russia to the need to protect the interests of Russian-speaking minorities in the Baltics to maintaining access to the Baltic Sea. (Lithuania, however, has offered to build sufficient housing for the troops in Russia within five months if the Russian government will indicate the desired sites.) Christopher Kruegler, president of the Einstein Institution, said that the question of how to get the troops to withdraw should be analyzed strategically. One has to determine what the troops need to perform their mission in the Baltics, and whether what they need can be withheld at an acceptable cost without provoking a larger conflict, Kruegler said. It may be that pressure on the troops to withdraw can be increased through nonviolent action. A statement adopted at the conclusion of the conference said, in part: "The strategy of civilian-based defense can and should be used successfully to guarantee the security of the Baltic states and, in particular, to have Russia withdraw its troops. "The success of civilian-based defense in the Baltic states depends to a great extent on the support of international organizations, individual governmental and non-governmental organizations. One step in this direction is the development of a Baltic Civilian-Based Defense Mutual Aid Treaty to state concrete ways in which such international support would be supplied by signatory nations to any attacked member using civilian-based defense measures." The conference gave Baltic political leaders, defense specialists, and academics a special opportunity to examine the policy option of civilian-based defense in more depth. To what extent they will incorporate civilian-based defense into their overall defense policies remains to be seen. But the very fact that the Baltic governments are giving it their serious consideration means that civilian-based defense can no longer be dismissed as a policy on the periphery. Einstein Institution Hosts Lithuanian Defense Minister by Roger S. Powers Audrius Butkevicius, minister of national defense of the Republic of Lithuania, visited Cambridge, Massachusetts in July as a guest of the Albert Einstein Institution. During the course of his visit he spent many hours with Einstein Institution staff, discussing how civilian-based defense might be incorporated into Lithuania’s overall defense policy. The defense minister also delivered a lecture at the Harvard Faculty Club on the role of civilian resistance in Lithuania’s independence struggle and future security policies. The lecture was sponsored jointly by the Einstein Institution and the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Speaking through an interpreter, Butkevicius said that Lithuanians may employ some of the same nonviolent methods they used in gaining their independence to defend themselves against attack in the future. "It is our intention to make civilian-based defense part of our defense policy," Butkevicius said. Civilian-based defense is a policy in which a country’s population and institutions are prepared to deny an attacker his objectives through massive nonviolent resistance and noncooperation. Butkevicius recounted some of the events that led up to Lithuania’s declaration of independence in March 1990. In 1987, he said, the Sajudis movement started organizing intellectuals and formulating a political structure that would be in direct opposition to existing Soviet structures. Then a movement of former political prisoners began calling for the return of the remains of some of the 400,000 Lithuanians who had been deported to Siberia in the 1940s and 1950s. In the summer of 1988, Butkevicius led a successful mission to return the remains of 300 of these deportees from Siberia. The movements of Sajudis and the former political prisoners spread to all forty-five districts of Lithuania, Butkevicius said, making it that much easier to mobilize the country against Soviet rule. Another campaign was targeted against the Soviet army, Butkevicius said. Hundreds of thousands of young men who were eligible to be drafted into the Soviet armed forces returned their draft cards to the Soviet authorities. Simultaneously, 1.5 million Lithuanians signed petitions calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. These actions empowered Lithuanians and gave them confidence in the leaders of the independence movement, Butkevicius said. As Lithuania was first to declare its independence from the Soviet Union, it became the center where separatist ideas grew and from which they spread. For example, the action of returning draft cards spread from Lithuania to Latvia and Byelorussia. And banned Russian flags were made in Lithuania for the Russian democracy movement in Moscow. Gorbachev understood this, Butkevicius said, and so tried to undermine Lithuania’s independence from within by getting Russians and Lithuanians to fight against each other. When this failed, he resorted to open military aggression. In January 1991, the Soviet army attempted to crush Lithuania’s independence. In defense of the republic, people came to Vilnius from all over Lithuania to meet the troops with mass defiance, Butkevicius said. On January 13, Soviet troops opened fire on unarmed civilians surrounding the Vilnius television tower, killing fourteen. The army was successful in occupying the television tower and publishing houses, but stopped short of attacking the parliament building, which had been surrounded by thousands of defiant nonviolent Lithuanians. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union a year ago, Lithuania has struggled to consolidate its independence. But the continued presence of 23,000 Russian troops on Lithuania’s territory remains a central concern. According to Butkevicius, the Russians "still do not recognize that Lithuania is an independent country." Butkevicius’ visit to the United States was co-sponsored by the Institute for Defense Analysis, which arranged a lecture and various appointments for him in Washington, DC. In Washington, the Einstein Institution hosted a dinner for the defense minister and his wife, as well as directors and advisors of the Albert Einstein Institution. The dinner was arranged with the assistance of Admiral Gene La Rocque, an AEI advisor and the director of the Center for Defense Information. Gandhi, Clausewitz, and the "New World Order" by Christopher Kruegler (This article is based on a paper presented on June 11, 1992 to the Philosophy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.) Mohandas K. Gandhi is closely associated with certain notions about conflict, all of which are highly principled, well articulated, and consistent with his performance as the most visible leader of a great national liberation movement. They include the notion that conflict is a process that should clarify the truth of contending claims; that the victory of some need not be directly dependent on the defeat of others, but that mutually constructive solutions may often be crafted; that all parties are best served if at least some abjure killing as a means of struggle and if all parties negotiate in good faith; and that the process of conflict itself can be lifted onto a higher plane, redeemed, if you will, by the choice of some to deliberately endure suffering rather than to inflict it. Carl Von Clausewitz is associated with an approach to the problem of conflict which, depending on one’s perspective, is often presumed to be either more base or more pragmatic than Gandhi’s. Clausewitz’s ideas include the primacy of politics and of politically determined objectives; the notion of war as an extension of politics "by other means"; conceptions of offense and defense, center of gravity, economy of force, concentration and dispersion of force, and many other factors and principles designed to help a single protagonist emerge from a struggle as the victor. Many students as well as practitioners of conflict assume that the world is divided between these two giants and that one must simply choose between them, identifying oneself in the process as either an idealist or a realist. The purpose of this article is to argue that such a Manichean approach is both inaccurate and misleading. In the rapidly changing world we inhabit, both our progress and our security depend not only on our ability to pursue principled objectives, but to pursue them with strategic competence. In short, we need both Clausewitz and Gandhi to cope with the problems we face. There has emerged, over the course of the twentieth century, a perspective which I will call strategic nonviolent conflict. This perspective has appropriately and successfully combined the best insights of both the Gandhian and Clausewitzian traditions. In this article, I will do three things. First, I will define "strategic nonviolent conflict" and outline its major tenets. Second, I will show how strategic nonviolent conflict is informed, to good effect, by these supposedly antithetical thinkers. Third and last, I will discuss the explanatory and prescriptive power of strategic nonviolent conflict as an approach to conflict in the context of the so-called new world order. The Conception of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict The paradigm that is referred to here as strategic nonviolent conflict is bounded by seven concepts, which can be stated briefly as follows: 1. Power is derived from the consent and collaboration of the governed. Please note that this is not a statement of democratic theory, but a descriptive statement about the way things actually work. It is not that power ought to be derived from the consent of the governed but that, in instrumental terms, rulers need cooperation and resources in order to maintain themselves. When consent is systematically withheld, the power of tyrants declines in direct proportion. That is not to say that withholding consent is ever easy, but simply to say that it is always a possibility, and that the distribution of power in a society is subject to manipulation and change. 2. In nonviolent conflict, power is manifested in the appearance of methods of nonviolent action. These methods are many and various. They include but are not limited to such behaviors as strikes, boycotts, mass defiance, civil disobedience, the creation of parallel institutions, numerous forms of political and economic noncooperation, protests, international economic and diplomatic sanctions, and the like.(1) The distinctive feature of the methods of nonviolent action is that they do not directly cause overt physical harm to human subjects. The motive behind this crude behavioral distinction between nonviolent methods, which do not cause casualties, and violent methods, which do, is an analytical rather than an ideological one. The costs and therefore the dynamics of a conflict are likely to be different if bodies are not violated by at least one protagonist. 3. The methods of nonviolent action constitute sanctions, because they impose a cost (albeit a different cost than violent sanctions), because they are imposed unilaterally, outside a rule-governed process with a predictable outcome, and because they are often wielded with coercive intent. 4. Because they are sanctions, the methods of nonviolent action are subject to the logic of strategic interaction. The key feature of strategic interaction is that its outcome is indeterminate, because, after all material and objective factors bearing on the outcome have been accounted for, there remain adversaries who are actively and creatively seeking to thwart each other’s objectives.(2) 5. That being the case, strategic performance in nonviolent conflict takes on a great deal of importance. The quality and intelligence of the choices made throughout a struggle may be the most significant factors contributing to the outcome.(3) 6. If strategic performance matters, and if success and failure are therefore variables, just as they are in violent conflict, then it is possible that nonviolent sanctions and policies based on them may offer functional substitutes for policies that currently rely on violent sanctions. 7. If points one through six above are true, then strategic nonviolent conflict ought to be susceptible to further research and development. It ought to be possible to deliberately improve or extend its marginal utility and the range of problems to which it may be relevant. The Emergence of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict We now need to look at the origins and pedigree of some of these ideas. The seminal insight that informs this approach, that power is a function of consent and cooperation, has perhaps its earliest and clearest expression in the work of the sixteenth century lawyer, Étienne de la Boétie. His famous essay, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, goes straight to the heart of the matter. Why do the "few" govern the "many?" Because the "many" let them get away with it.(4) This is not to say that the many may not have good and sufficient reasons to want to avoid paying the costs of active disobedience. While Boétie’s construct has remained true in an absolute sense over the course of four centuries, it is also true that if Boétie himself could see the appalling scale and scope of violent repression in our time, he might never have been able to achieve his basic insight. He might, instead, have leapt to the conclusion that so many post-moderns do, that the will to repression, and not to freedom, is the ultimate and decisive variable in all significant conflicts. We are lucky to have the evidence before us to tell us that this is not so. The methods of nonviolent action, more recently styled "people power," have coexisted throughout our bloody century with the methods of modern warfare, and some have argued that nonviolent action is now in the ascendant.(5) Gandhi, as the most famous practitioner of, and experimenter with, these methods, and Gene Sharp, as the most comprehensive theorist of them to date, have relied heavily on Boétie’s voluntary servitude theory of power to do their work. Gandhi, of course, applied the notion to the demographics of the Indian subcontinent, and found in it a reason to believe that the British could be ejected. Sharp, in his classic work The Politics of Nonviolent Action, undertook to itemize all of the discrete methods by which consent might be withdrawn, and thus turned an abstract proposition into something more like an operational construct.(6) Sharp’s more radical contribution, however, has been to portray nonviolent actions as sanctions, rather than as harbingers of conciliation between estranged parties. He does this by way of an empirical observation, rather than a theoretical claim. Once we begin to look at cases of nonviolent action, real fights in which these methods are used, what do we find? We do not find episode after episode in which the nonviolent actors love their enemies and seek to lift the conflict onto a higher plane of human interaction, although that approach is sometimes taken. We find, instead, a preponderance of contests in which embattled peoples improvise what they take to be cost-effective means for defending or advancing their vital interests, usually at the expense of their opponents.(7) Furthermore, we find that the people using nonviolent sanctions are by no means always, in the language of Hollywood, the "good guys." From Ian Paisley’s Northern Ireland in which strikes and popular defiance are used as an adjunct to cruel and divisive sectarian violence, to the American South of the 1950s and 1960s, when nonviolent forms of noncooperation were widely used to prevent the attainment of civil rights, nonviolent methods have been used for dubious or even hateful purposes. This sounds like a depressing observation, but it should not be, because it enables us to imagine more accurately a mode of conflict in which there are many variables which can be examined, tested, manipulated, and improved upon. The character and motivation of the actors are clearly among them, but are not definitional with respect to whether an act is "nonviolent" or not. We now have a vastly expanded universe of cases for analysis, and all we are lacking is an explanatory framework in which to conduct this analysis. Where is there a logic that will help us understand, for example, why Solidarity in Poland seemed to achieve nearly all of its objectives in the summer of 1980, but was so easily repressed in the autumn of 1981? How important was civil society’s use of organized nonviolent struggle in the period from 1989 to 1991, in the struggles of East Central Europe and the successor states to the Soviet Union? Why did the Chinese students and the Civilian Crusade in Panama, despite extremely sophisticated and well-prepared nonviolent tactics, seem to fail decisively to overcome the forces ranged against them? What is the instrumental consequence of mixing violent with nonviolent sanctions, such as in the intifada or in certain periods of the South African liberation movement? Enter Clausewitz. It seems to me that the logic that can best approach these questions, and help to answer them productively, is the logic of classical strategic thought. Gene Sharp steers us in this direction by framing the entire third volume of his major work around Clausewitzian concepts and propositions. Most helpful of all is the wholesale appropriation into the nonviolent arena of the standard levels of military strategic analysis, which can be broadly construed as policy (sometimes called grand strategy), operational planning, strategy itself, tactics, and logistics. Once we stratify the relevant tasks and decisions necessary in a nonviolent conflict according to their appropriate levels of analysis, the problematic for waging nonviolent conflict, as well as for explaining its successes and failures, becomes much clearer. To illustrate this point, and to return to the principal theme of this paper, we can look briefly at a single Gandhian campaign, the 1930–31 Indian Independence Movement, to see if Clausewitzian concepts really apply, and if they are helpful in explaining the outcome. If so, then we have begun to justify the claim that the two perspectives are not only compatible, but mutually reinforcing as well. Gandhi as Strategist, 1930–31 Beginning with the famous Salt March, the 1930–31 Independence Campaign exhibits the following six distinctive features, each of which is compatible with a Sharpean or a Clausewitzian approach to nonviolent conflict. First, the Indian national movement, for the first time in its history, announced a simple, clear, compelling, and unambiguous objective, namely, political autonomy from Great Britain. It is to the clarity of this objective that much of the resulting mobilization of perhaps five million civilian resisters can be ascribed. Most significantly, the aim of this campaign would be measurable: once the action stopped, India would be independent or not. Performance could be evaluated in relation to a tangible goal. Second, unity of command was explicitly vested in Gandhi himself, in his role as campaign strategist. This meant that, unlike most mass mobilizations, the Indian movement could make quick decisions in response to an unfolding situation, and, presuming good intelligence was available, match the British adversaries stroke for stroke. The disadvantage of this arrangement, of course, was that Gandhi’s personal foibles and limitations also became those of the movement, to a large extent, as do those of ranking generals in military conflicts. Third, the 1930–31 campaign underscores the importance of having a prepared, resourceful fighting organization as a base from which to wage conflict. The Indian National Congress (INC) was such an organization, and was deliberately developed for the role over at least a decade leading up to the campaign. The fact that the INC performed with skill and esprit in the years in question was no accident, nor was it simply a product of charismatic leadership, cultural predisposition, or any other illusive or magical force. Fourth, the broad masses were brought into the fray not just by their vested interest in the objective, or the force of their leaders’ personalities or effective organization, but also by a key policy. To participate in and contribute to the national struggle, an individual was not required to subscribe to the entire Gandhian universe of ideas, including absolute nonviolence as a way of life, vegetarianism, constructive work, and so on. Rather, Indian patriots were required only to adhere to a specific code of nonviolent discipline for the duration of the campaign. That the masses as well as many skeptical Congressmen responded to this approach speaks to the importance of formulating functional policies rather than ones driven by debatable abstractions or exclusive social doctrines. Fifth, the methods and tactics chosen for the campaign, while they were creatively diverse, all shared three things in common. They were simple and understandable (such as boycotting foreign cloth) so that their relationship to the objective was clear. They were easily replicable (such as the manufacture of illicit salt), and they could be conducted across a wide spectrum of comparative personal risk, so that broad low-risk participation and exceptional heroism could both be accommodated. The net effect of this tactical mix was that for most of 1930, the repressive resources of the British Empire were greatly over-stretched, and the economic base necessary to continuing rule was seriously threatened. If clarity of the objective, unity of command, a prepared organizational base, inclusive criteria for participation, and wide dispersion of tactical encounters are among the positive aspects of this effort, then a sixth and final "lesson," if you will, must be acknowledged on the negative side of the balance sheet. The mistake of this campaign, and it is a mistake of generalship on the strategic dimension, rather than a flaw of character or a failing of purpose, is one that can be characterized as premature accommodation. The British offered Gandhi a roundtable conference ostensibly for the purpose of discussing constitutional issues at a point in time, we now know, that they thought their own economic position was deteriorating rapidly. Gandhi, the general, was aware of his own forces’ weariness after nearly a year and a half of hard struggle. This, plus his own predilection for conciliation, allowed him to jump at the offered bait. Despite admonitions to his followers to keep their powder dry, Gandhi went off to the London conference having agreed to disband all direct action as the price of participation in the conference. When the British then successfully employed divide-and-rule tactics at the conference, they succeeded in restoring the status quo ante. Gandhi returned to India with no constitutional concessions to a tired, disillusioned movement that had marched to the slogan "Independence or death!" Many people had made great sacrifices, and now had little to show for it. The movement entered a dormant phase, with no significant large-scale actions for the next few years. Nonviolent conflict, just like violent conflict, is sometimes lost not because one set of methods is inherently less powerful than another, or because the protagonists are not brave or tenacious or saintly enough, or because they do not have the ideal leadership. Sometimes nonviolent action fails because strategic blunders are made. The fact that we can characterize them as such probably means that mistakes, or at least certain types of mistakes, are, to some extent, predictable. I am convinced that the Chinese students, in June 1989, did not love freedom any less, or understand nonviolent action less profoundly, than, say, the "people power" defenders of Corazon Aquino’s election three years earlier. Nor was the embattled Marcos any less capable of repression on a grand scale than his Chinese counterparts. How can we explain the different outcomes? In Clausewitzian terms, the Filipinos concentrated their most powerful sanctions at two decisive points: pre-existing tensions and splits among the dictator’s own security forces, and his already-strained alliance with the United States. The Chinese pro-democracy forces, by way of contrast, failed to disperse their resources in the face of overwhelming tactical firepower. They could have declared victory and left Tiananmen Square after their first successful attempt to defend it. Instead, they stayed, avowedly to raise a clarion call to the nation. But the nation, and much of the world, perceived the encounter on June 4, 1989 to be so decisive that the campaign was as good as over. The students had gone beyond their own culminating point of success. The point of these comparisons is not to make facile armchair judgements about the choices of people who have been in the forefront of the struggle for democracy in our time. Rather, it is to suggest that strategy, while not all-important, is certainly very important. Clausewitz believed that strategy was subordinate to policy. It is on the level of policy that nations and groups decide whether to fight at all, what objectives to fight for, what costs they are willing to bear, and what costs they are willing to inflict in pursuit of their goals. The choice for conflict, whether violent, nonviolent, or mixed, is a political choice, and a moral choice. Once that choice is made, however, acting upon it with strategic and tactical competence becomes a moral obligation, in and of itself. This is where the Gandhian and Clausewitzian paradigms of conflict meet, and where each of their special insights reinforces those of the other. Gandhi and Clausewitz in the "New World Order" The concept of a "New World Order" is a highly problematic, but probably unavoidable one. It is hard to find an academic or policy oriented conference in the field of international affairs these days that does not somehow revolve around this concept. The phrase has many uses, but they seem to fall into two basic types, descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptively, "new world order" (NWO) is a phrase that asks us to think about how things actually are now, in the aftermath of the Cold War. What is the new balance of power? What new powers will emerge as significant with the further decline of bipolarity in the international system? What economic alliances will form? What will be the mechanisms of control within the emerging order? This perspective assumes that "world order" is something that is, and our job is to determine what it is. Prescriptively, NWO is a collective term for certain values that its proponents argue ought to be part of any order worthy of the name. They include such things as self-determination, democracy, collective security, human rights guarantees, market economies, and the like. This branch of the discussion sees the emergence of the NWO as something subject to purposive political action. It is something we ought to be consciously building. In this view, to meet the great challenge and opportunity of our generation, we ought to construct the best political home for humanity that we can possibly imagine, and not be ruled by the scars and fears that are the reasonable results of the past few generations’ experiences. The only thing that everyone appears to agree on is that something fairly fundamental has changed in the past few years, and that not since 1945 has there been so much change in the structure of global politics. Early optimism that perhaps we were headed for a reduction of international conflict in the new era no longer appears to be justified. Peace has not "broken out," but rather, some longstanding conflicts have been reconfigured. Local, regional, ethnic, religious, territorial, economic, ecological, and ideological disputes of all types may flourish in the new environment, and their participants will have at their disposal all of the means that modern technology has produced with which to advance their interests. The central question of this article has not been whether Gandhi’s ideas or those of Clausewitz will be more useful in the present and future. Rather, it is whether we can imagine a perspective toward conflict that combines them both, and that renders the process of conflict more humane, efficient, and functional by so doing. Descriptively, many of the arrangements that currently comprise the international system are the product of strategic nonviolent conflict, even though many examples are far from being resolved yet. From Rangoon to Santiago, from Soweto to Palestine, predominantly nonviolent conflict is the order of the day. We might even go so far as to say that trying to understand the coming decade without understanding strategic nonviolent conflict will be like trying to understand the 1960s or 1970s without grasping the fundamentals of guerilla warfare or international terrorism. We are in the era of people power. This requires of realists that they come to grips with the reality and the manifestations of nonviolent power, and it requires of idealists that they accept the moral imperative of wielding nonviolent power with ever greater strategic competence. Notes 1. See Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), Vol. II for a catalogue of 198 more-or-less discrete methods, classified as methods of "protest and persuasion," methods of "noncooperation," and methods of "intervention." While this list is an important part of Sharp’s contribution, it is very important not to view it in isolation from strategic theory. That would be like trying to wage war by talking only about bullets. 2. For Edward N. Luttwak, this is the very essence of strategy. Without a "reacting enemy," he argues, strategy is "mere administration." Strategy (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 8. 3. For a thorough development of this argument, see Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict, forthcoming, Praeger Publishers, 1993. 4. Étienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, (New York: Free Life Editions, 1975). 5. Based on data from the Minorities at Risk study, Ted Robert Gurr contends that the magnitude of "nonviolent protest by ethnopolitical groups" doubled from the late 1940s to the 1980s. "Minorities at Risk: The Dynamics of Ethnopolitical Mobilization and Conflict, 1945-1990," prepared for the International Studies Association Meetings, Vancouver, April 1991. 6. Sharp, Politics, Vol. II. 7. It has been estimated that in eighty-five percent of all known cases of nonviolent action, the protagonists were not apparently committed to a philosophy of principled nonviolence, but were pursuing a more pragmatic path. Peter Ackerman, "Strategic Aspects of Nonviolent Resistance Movements," Ph.D. dissertation, Tufts University, 1976. Douglas Bond’s 1985 dissertation, "Alternatives to Violence: An Empirical Study of Nonviolent Direct Action," University of Hawaii, comes to the same conclusion. 1992–93 Einstein Fellowships Awarded Three Einstein Fellowships have been awarded for the 1992–93 academic year Margaret E. Scranton, associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is doing research on "Nonviolent Opposition in Panama." She is studying the National Civic Crusade of Panama and its role in the opposition to the Noriega government, including its sponsorship of various examples of nonviolent struggle. The project will assess the factors that contributed to the limited achievement of the NCC and attempt to generalize beyond the case to draw some conclusions about nonviolent action against dictatorships. Li Fang is a senior professor at the Academy of Social Sciences in China, currently on leave as a visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at the City College of New York. He is conducting a historical and analytical study of "Nonviolent Struggle in China." Glenn T. Eskew’s fellowship is being renewed for a second year. A doctoral student of history at the University of Georgia, he is writing a dissertation entitled "‘But for Birmingham’: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle." Eskew is analyzing the effectiveness of nonviolent sanctions in transforming race relations through a study of Birmingham, Alabama from 1940 to 1990. The Einstein Institution Fellows Program supports research, writing, and systematic reflection on nonviolent action. Its primary goal is the advancement of knowledge about the strategic uses of nonviolent action in relation to problems of political violence. The Fellows Program offers support to scholars conducting research on the history, characteristics, and potential applications of nonviolent action. It also supports practitioners in the preparation of accounts, documentation, and analysis of their experiences in the use of nonviolent struggle. The deadline for proposals is January 1. For more information, write to: Dr. Ronald McCarthy, Fellows Program Director. Ecuadorean Indians March for Land and Life by Philip McManus In an historic, 225-kilometer march that ended on April 23, twelve hundred Indians from Ecuador’s Amazon jungle pressed their demands for legal recognition of their territories (around 4.5 million acres) and for a constitutional reform recognizing Ecuador as a multi-cultural and multi-national state. Quichua, Achuar, and Shiwiar Indians, many in face paint and wearing brightly-colored feather headdresses, began the march from the province of Pastaza in the Amazonian basin in northeast Peru. Some walked a week from remote jungle communities just to get to the departure point. When they arrived in Quito thirteen days later, latecomers and highland Indians had brought their numbers to more than 3,000. They were received by President Rodrigo Borja who announced "a formal and public commitment" to hand over legal titles to their ancestral territories within two weeks. He referred the demand for constitutional reform to the Congress which has jurisdiction in such matters. Long-standing demands for legal recognition of these traditional Indian lands have been thwarted by a combination of military, governmental, and agricultural interests. In the face of growing development pressures, the Indians say that their culture and way of life will be ever more threatened unless they achieve legal protection. Recently several factors have combined to strengthen the Indians’ position: increased unity and organizational strength among the Indians; the international focus on ecological destruction of the Amazon and, as a result of the 500th Anniversary of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, on indigenous issues in general; and the political climate created by the national elections that were held in Ecuador on May 17. The march, which was organized by the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza, represented 20,000 Indians living in 148 communities. Public support for the Indians’ demands grew as the march progressed from the steamy jungle up to the Panamerican Highway that runs through the Ecuadorean highlands. For most of the Indians it was their first experience out of the jungle. In addition to the fatigue caused by the steady pace of the march, they faced a harsh adjustment to the cold, thin air and to the unfamiliar food of the mountains. But in each town where they stopped they were welcomed by Indians and mestizos alike who offered them food, shelter, and other support. After some initial harassment by military authorities, the march proceeded peacefully until its triumphal entrance into Quito where the Indians were met with enthusiastic applause by local residents. In their meeting with President Borja and members of his cabinet, Indian leaders explained the urgency of their demands, not just for themselves but for the well-being of the entire country. "We come on behalf of Life," said Luis Macas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador. "As long as those territories are not legalized, we will be visitors in our own lands." Referring to the ecological destruction of the Amazon caused by oil and lumber companies and unrestrained agricultural development, Valerio Grefa, president of the Confederation of Nationalities of the Ecuadorean Amazon, compared the country’s situation to being on an airplane with a mechanical problem. "If the airplane crashes, everyone dies," he said. For his part, President Borja welcomed the Indian leaders and announced that he was directing the appropriate government agencies to consult with the groups that will be effected and to draw up the precise boundary lines. At the invitation of the Indian leaders, he then went outside to address the mass of marchers. The Indians responded joyfully to the announcement that their lands would be legalized. But wary of the quick promises and slow delivery of politicians, they set up camp in a city park and announced that they "will not return home with their hands empty." On May 13, the Indians received land titles to 2.8 million acres of their ancestral lands. However, they did not receive all they had asked for. The military insisted on maintaining exclusive control of a 25-mile wide strip along the border with Peru as a security zone, rejecting the Indians’ proposal that it be limited to 1.25 miles in width. Moreover the government made no concessions on its traditional insistence to unrestricted proprietary rights to sub-surface resources. (Pastaza province has substantial proven oil reserves.) The Indians also demanded that the Constitution be reformed to declare Ecuador a multi-cultural and multi-national state in order to protect the rights of the numerous Indian nationalities. While the president of the Congress promised to call a special session to consider their petitions, most observers believe there is little likelihood that it will receive the necessary two-thirds vote. Nonetheless the land titles represent a major achievement in the indigenous struggle for the right and the wherewithal to insure their survival and to preserve their cultural identity. A Matter of Justice: Tax Resistance in Beit Sahour by Virginia Baron Since the start of the intifada (uprising) in 1987, the Palestinians living on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have used strikes, boycotts, barricades, stones, demonstrations, and many other methods of attracting attention to their cause. A significant but little reported movement has transformed one town into a model of resistance. That town is Beit Sahour, a mainly Christian town on the West Bank, right next to Bethlehem. When the intifada leadership urged Palestinians to refuse to pay taxes in 1989, the entire town decided to stop paying taxes. The consequences were severe. Many people lost all of their household goods, their cars, the contents of their shops and small businesses, even their children’s bicycles, when their belongings were confiscated by the Israeli military authorities. Still, the spirit of this unusual town could not be killed. Most of the town’s residents still refuse to pay their taxes, saying they will not pay for occupation when what they get for their money is prisons, detention centers, the Israeli army, school closings, curfews, etc. One of the initiators of the tax resistance movement was Elias Rishmawi, a pharmacist whose shop is also a gathering place in the center of the town. Until the intifada, he always paid his taxes "down to the last agorat." It was not because he approved of the way taxes were assessed, or of the occupation authorities who collected them, but because they were a part of life. But in January 1988, Rishmawi, along with some others in Beit Sahour, stopped paying taxes. In the first case of its kind, Rishmawi and other pharmacists were tried and sentenced by a military judge on a taxation matter. The judge gave the tax department the right to return the four pharmacists to prison unless they paid the sum of 5,000 shekels ($2,500) toward their tax bill, which they refused to do. So Rishmawi and the others served their prison terms but their case was not dropped. Five months later, a truck rolled up in front of the Rishmawi pharmacy carrying five tax department officers, four porters, and fifty soldiers who declared the area a closed military zone. The entire contents of the pharmacy were put into iron containers and carted away to an outdoor storage area where the medicines deteriorated in the heat. The case of Elias Rishmawi and others against the Israeli government, which questions the legality of taxation methods, is still going on after four years. It calls for implementation of the Hague regulations of the Geneva Convention which state that under international law, occupiers do not have the right to levy new taxes. When one hears the names given to everyday taxes people must pay to get a driver’s license or a car registration renewed, or a birth certificate, it is almost laughable, except that it means time and money for Palestinians who must go through a long process to take care of the simplest matters. There is the glass tax (for broken windows), the stones tax (for damage done by stones), the missile tax (for Gulf War damage), and a general intifada tax, among others. These are specially tailored taxes for the Palestinians. According to research published by the West Bank Data Base Project, an Israeli-funded organization, occupation has been a profit-making endeavor for Israel. In 1987 alone, a Data Base report states, the Israeli equivalent of US$80 million of Palestinian tax money were directed to Israeli public expenditure. Even the Israeli Knesset members have raised objections because they are not supplied the figures for West Bank/Gaza expenditures. Taxes have been formulated by military orders, placing the Palestinians under what amounts to continual martial law. Under this system, officers from the rank of major and up in the Israeli army can issue orders that become laws. Legal justification can be given to any act of the occupying power. In this way, the military have recreated and reformed the tax system and there is no process of appeal under military law. In the four years since he was first taken blindfolded to the Ramallah military court, Elias Rishmawi has become an expert in international tax law because he has spent so much time studying the ramifications of his own case. He and others have now initiated a new test case that will come before the Israeli Supreme Court. The new case maintains that international law takes precedence over all other laws, and according to the Hague regulations all revenues collected must be returned to the occupied territories for the benefit of the local population. Since the authorities have failed to do this, those bringing the case charge that the Israeli government has acted illegally. There are many other points involved but one that is particularly significant is the evidence of inequality between income taxes levied in Israel and in the occupied territories. Research has shown that the Palestinians pay 151 percent higher personal income taxes than Israelis. Attorneys for the case are Avigdor Feldman, an Israeli civil liberties lawyer, and Mona Rishmawi, who is presently serving as legal officer for the Middle East and North Africa on the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, an impressive team who hope to break new ground with the case. The plaintiffs have requested international and human rights organizations, churches, and NGOs to find means to show their support for the enforcement of international law in this case. Over one hundred Palestinians, from Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Hebron, four West Bank towns, have joined to bring this case before the court. "We’re not asking for miracles. We’re just asking for equal justice," Elias Rishmawi says, with some confidence, and with hope that changes are possible. Nonviolent Sanctions in the News DUSHANABE, Tajikistan, May 13 (Reuters) — Muslim and democratic opposition demonstrators in Tajikistan, describing government concessions as inadequate, demanded yesterday that President Rakhmon Nabiyev resign. Thousands packed into a central square in this capital city, keeping up pressure on Nabiyev after seven weeks of unrest in which more than 100 people have been reported killed in the former Soviet republic. (Boston Globe) UNITED NATIONS, May 30 — Brushing aside last-minute Serbian appeals for a delay, the United Nations Security Council voted overwhelmingly today to follow the Bush Administration’s lead and impose tough economic sanctions on the Yugoslav Government in an effort to make it promote peace in strife-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina. (NY Times) BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, June 14 — Two protests, one a solemn procession led by Orthodox priests, the other a joyful gathering of mostly young people ringing cow bells and alarm clocks, threaded their way through the Serbian capital today issuing essentially the same message to the Government of President Slobodan Milosevic: "Resign." (NYT) SOWETO, South Africa, June 16 — The African National Congress began an open-ended campaign of public protest today with a day of rallies, work stoppages and threats of a crippling general strike by the summer’s end if the white minority Government does not move more quickly to give blacks full voting rights. In what black leaders conceded was a high-risk return to the unpredictable theater of the street, Nelson Mandela, the president of the Congress, said the "mass action" campaign would continue until the Government agreed to terms for creation of an interim government and an elected assembly to write a new South African constitution. Addressing 30,000 supporters packed into a soccer stadium in this sprawling metropolis of black slums south of Johannesburg, Mr. Mandela implored his followers to ignore growing calls by impatient blacks to mount a guerilla war against the white suburbs. (NYT) BEIJING, June 20 — Pro-independence protests in Tibet have multiplied in the last few months, despite harsh repression, and for the first time there are reliable reports of significant unrest in the Tibetan countryside. (NYT) PALERMO, Sicily, June 27 — They came from across the land by train, plane and ferryboat, bearing bright banners and sharp anger, filling this Mafia fief with protest and urging that Sicilians break the compact of silence that sustains and shields the mob. (NYT) BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, June 28 — In what many people described as the biggest demonstration here since the end of World War II, tens of thousands of Serbs gathered near Government buildings today and called for President Milosevic to resign. (NYT) NEW YORK, June 29 — Tens of thousands of gay men and lesbians marched down Fifth Avenue yesterday in the annual gay pride celebration, marking the 1969 riots that gave rise to the gay rights movement. The New York City parade and marches in at least 11 other cities around the nation featured a variety of participants, including representatives of AIDS organizations and ethnic gay groups. The parades mark the Stonewall riots, which began when police raided a New York City gay bar in 1969. (BG) HARARE, Zimbabwe, June 29 (Reuters) — Malawi’s prodemocracy alliance claimed victory yesterday in its call for a boycott of one-party elections, but the government said 80 percent of voters turned out. A member of the Interim Committee for a Democratic Alliance said many voters stayed away from the weekend parliamentary poll after the boycott call to back demands for political reforms. (BG) NEW DELHI, July 3 — Still struggling to invigorate and recast its old socialist economy, India has been hit with a trucking strike that threatens to bring virtually all commerce in this land of 843 million people to a halt. India’s 1.5 million trucks have been parked in truck stops, gas stations, fields and garages as their owners demand an end to arbitrary road taxes, transport fees and police extortion. (NYT) VALENCE, France, July 6 (Reuters) — Farmers lifted barricades yesterday that had stranded several thousand train passengers in southeastern France for 24 hours and that had compounded travel havoc caused by a blockade of main roads by truck drivers. The truckers, angry with the government over new driving regulations, continued the barricade of over 100 roads that they began last Monday. (BG) PARIS, July 8 — A 10-day protest by truckers who blocked traffic on scores of French highways petered out today under pressure from heavily armed riot police. But the real loser may be the Socialist Government, which has emerged from the dispute with its image badly bruised. (NYT) NEW YORK, July 15 — Aiming an angry message at Washington and a shrill plea to Democrats gathering just blocks away in Madison Square Garden, more than 10,000 people marched from Columbus Circle to Times Square yesterday in a rally that was part disco and part wake as marchers demanded better health care for Americans with AIDS. (NYT) PITTSBURGH, July 27 — The 70-day-old strike that has shut down this city’s two daily newspapers has eroded people’s patience. But as several thousand copies of the papers reappeared today, support seemed to build for the union strikers in this city, where unionism is almost a religious denomination. In a show of solidarity today, striking drivers linked arms and blocked trucks trying to deliver the first editions of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Press published since May. (NYT) JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 3 — In what organizers hailed as a resounding and comparatively peaceful black "referendum" in support of ending white rule, millions of South Africans began a two-day general strike today that stilled large portions of industry and turned urban centers into ghost towns. (NYT) PRETORIA, South Africa, Aug. 6 — Tens of thousands of African National Congress supporters marched peacefully to the seat of white South Africa’s power yesterday, where they raised the ANC flag 200 yards below the office of President F.W. de Klerk. It was the largest ANC demonstration ever in this Afrikaner city, the country’s administrative capital with the crowd estimated at 50,000 by reporters. (BG) SEOUL, Aug. 6 (AP) — Police yesterday arrested about 150 students who demonstrated in central Seoul to demand the withdrawal of 39,000 US troops stationed in South Korea. The protest near the US Embassy marked the first day of a two-week campaign by radical student and dissident groups to promote unification of South and North Korea. (BG) Download PDF file