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What’s the Alternative to Military Action Against Iraq?

By Glen Gersmehl

Many Americans, perhaps a majority, feel uncomfortable with all the talk about preemptive war with Iraq. But we find it hard to move beyond a gut feeling about war to being able to articulate a realistic alternative to military action if diplomacy gets tough. That alternative has been almost completely absent from the public debate about Iraq. Yet it is widely understood around the world as well as in sizable networks in the US. It goes by names like satyagraha, firmeza permanente, "truth force," or active nonviolence. The problem is that few people know much about it, and most need to get past the myths and misconceptions of this alternative before they can consider its possible utility to a problem like “What might we do with Iraq?”

Let’s start with a reality check: A third of the world lives in countries in which since the mid-1980s, social movements of everyday people brought about major nonviolent change that was successful beyond anyone’s wildest expectations except in China. They succeeded against some of the most ruthless regimes of the 20th Century: Marcos in the Philippines, Ceausescu in Romania, apartheid in South Africa. Most were completely nonviolent on the part of the participants. If you stretch the time frame back 50 years to include the liberation of India, the anti-Nazi resistance in Denmark and Norway, and the U.S. civil rights movement, the number of people affected rises to two-third’s of the world’s population. "All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn't work in the ‘real’ world" as Walter Wink emphasizes in his path-breaking book on the subject, Engaging the Powers. Such efforts illustrate what Desmond Tutu expressed in words that became the title of a powerful video series on the subject: Nonviolence is “A force more powerful…”

Our public discussion would be greatly enriched by seeing past the misconceptions of nonviolence to its true strength and sophistication. To do so, most people need to question or suspend some assumptions and spend time clearing away the remains of at least a half dozen barriers to thinking more clearly about conflict and violence in our world, particularly in relation to international issues.

What obscures the potential of nonviolence?

1. Military power isn’t the only kind of power. It is hard to pursue productive responses to current challenges like Iraq or terrorism if our our only concept of power is military power, dominating power, "power over." As in the personal and community arenas of life, nonviolence is not passivity but an entirely different way of struggling against injustice and violence. It offers a very different way of approaching conflict and a whole different grasp of the nature of power, a difference hinted at in such phrases "power with" or "moral power" or Gandhi’s preferred term, satyagraha, which translates literally as "truth force" or "soul force."

While much of the popular understanding of nonviolence is its morality, it is equally about power, about changing things. Effective nonviolence takes as much discipline, leadership, and planning as the use of force. As we shall see, nonviolence also offers a much broader menu of tools and tactics than those available to military force. We’ll say more about the nature and methods of that power (and the notes at the end of this article offer resources for further exploring). First we need to consider a few more barriers and confusions.

2. When your only tool is a hammer, you tend to redefine every problem as a nail. The budget of the United States allocates over 200 times as much money to military options and resources as it does to all our nonviolent response to conflict combined, from State Department conflict resolution efforts and US contributions to peacekeeping operations to the research and training programs of the US Institute of Peace. Even if you add all the money the US spends to address the roots of conflict and violence in the world – programs like the Peace Corps and development aid – the percent of the US budget devoted to nonviolent methods doesn’t come to even two percent of the money spent on military options! Yet it is widely understood that addressing world hunger and development problems is not only a good idea in its own right, but is crucial if we are to address the root causes of violence and conflict in the world. So why does the US trail every industrialized nation in the world in per capital spending on sustainable development?

3. That violence works is a mythology that has been cultivated at every turn in our national life. Consider, for example, the seemingly indisputable notion that the US gained its independence through the Revolutionary War. In fact, our freedom was mostly won by nonviolent means before the fighting even began. The colonists used many tactics later refined by Gandhi, King, and others such as organizing resistance to oppressive British measures like the Stamp Act; boycotting British cloth and other visible symbols of forced dependency and economic exploitation; constructing parallel institutions to strengthen resistance and as sources of identity and precursors to self-government; developing independent sources of information to foster support; and using guerrilla theatre like the Boston Tea Party to fire the imagination of the people and spark further resistance. While these are mentioned in later histories it’s the war that gets all the attention. It later is turned to propaganda to justify military action unthinkable to colonists who decided against a standing army. It took many wars to foster the notion in the US psyche that war is an effective way, an American way.

4. War is often portrayed as patriotic and the product of our highest democratic ideals when, in fact, it is profoundly undemocratic. It is a truism that leadership in military units is not democratic, but we mean more than that. War has often undermined progress toward democracy in society which is one of its most dangerous features. Resistance to Britain by nonviolent means in the middle part of the 18^th Century was deeply entwined with struggles of poor and working people for better treatment and laws that would give them a better chance at sharing in the American dream. Their power was growing and colonial elites were getting nervous. In words that could have been written in mid-1991 or late 2001, Howard Zinn concludes, “The military conflict itself, by dominating everything in its time, diminished other issues, made people choose sides in the one context that was publicly important…. Ruling elites seem to have learned through the genera-tions – consciously or not – that war makes them more secure against internal trouble” (People’s History, 79).

5. War tends to foster and provide cover for authoritarianism; it is nonviolence that is democratic. While everyone predicted that the “war on terrorism” would result in increased government surveillance, civil liberties experts and citizens alike have been dismayed at the surprisingly broad and intrusive new powers now in the hands of the military as well as law enforcement. And among the contested features of the Homeland Security bill passed in November of 2002 were provisions unrelated or only marginally related to security such as the power to hire nonunion workers and other means that would weaken workers rights. But the problem is more serious. These effects of militarism – reducing democracy and fostering authoritarianism – also works to undermine the heart of what makes the nonviolent alternative effective, the democratic social cohesion that takes nonviolence beyond the merely prophetic or symbolic gesture to being “A force more powerful…”

6. Contrary to the assumption that military power may be crude but at least it works, US military action throughout history has been notably counterproductive. Think of the places where the US has used its military power directly, or by training and arming proxy forces: Iran, Guatemala, and the French in Vietnam in the 1950s, Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia in the 1960s, Chile, Cambodia, and Angola in the 1970s; Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in the 1980s; Iraq, Colombia, and Turkey in the 1990s. The results of such interventions have so often been counterproductive that the CIA coined a term for it – blowback – which became the title of the one of the best in a stream of books to analyze the phenomenon (a book that virtually predicted the 9-11 tragedy a year before it occurred). Those cases that have been “successful” have often had unintended consequences or laid the foundation for future problems.

7. There is an unconscious double standard in comparing military action and nonviolence. When a few people are injured or killed or there are complications in a nonviolent action or movement, it is quickly asserted that nonviolence doesn’t work. Yet a war can kill tens of thousands of people and produce horren-dous entanglements and no one says, “this proves violence doesn’t work!”

8. Don’t ask at the last minute. It isn’t helpful to pose the question, “How would nonviolence solve this problem?” when most of the opportunities to use it are already gone. Let’s examine a common challenge to our alternative: “How would nonviolence deal with Hitler?” The problem is that this question ends with the unspoken words “in 1939 or 1940.” The real question is “What might the world have done in 1931 and 1925 and 1918?” Moreover, when we start addressing more conflicts in their earlier stages, we will also strengthen our ability to craft creative responses to the more difficult question of what to do when a Hitler has risen to power. Fortunately for us, despite the similarities in personality or behavior one might find between Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein, their relative power in their region and the world couldn’t be more different.

Active Nonviolence on International Issues Like Iraq

The tradition of nonviolence offers many insights and lessons relevant to a US response to Iraq or terrorism. Most have been utilized both by governments and by popular movements. Here are a few examples:

• Use restraint. Excessive force backfires.

• Work to discover the roots of conflict and to craft ways to interrupt, not feed, the "cycle of violence."

• Don’t create enemies; in particular, don’t make it any easier for dictators or terrorists to recruit adherents or rally citizens whose interest is in throwing off their shackles not defending their oppressors.

• Seek broad international support (which it seems the US did only as a way to pave the way for military action).

• Utilize and work to strengthen international institutions to give legitimacy to our response, to help erode the sources of support for dictators and terrorists, and to give them less of an “enemy.”

• Make use of non-governmental resources through track two diplomacy, third-party mediation, etc.

• Put more attention and resources into preventive than corrective measures; in particular, make strengthening US and multilateral means to end hunger and support sustainable development a number one priority; in short,

• Work to stop dangerous or criminal activity, not force a war that creates more problems than it solves.

Such insights have been central to strategies that have shown success in the most challenging arenas of conflict today, from school violence, domestic abuse, and prison reform to international violence. But these insights account for only part of what the nonviolence perspective has to offer. There is also a whole range of nonviolent strategies that have not been utilized by governments, or only rarely, such as human rights accompaniment, civil disobedience, and nonviolent intervention. They are effective when by human instinct or nonviolent analysis a people’s movement grasps the power dynamics of a situation, and commits to take action, understanding that political leaders, even dictators, derive their power from the people and that there are more ways to withdraw that power than to command it. This is the fundamental contribution of nonviolence theory to the debate of what to do with Iraq, allowing us to transcend the false choice of military options or governmental diplomacy, or of domination versus passivity or appeasement.

One can examine campaigns both large and small that shed light on how nonviolence might function in a situation like we face in Iraq, illustrating the important elements of the power of mobilized popular resistance (not just governmental action) in opposing unjust power. Take, for example, the 1991 coup attempt shortly after the collapse of communism in Russia. Coup leaders had control over tens of thousands of tanks, planes, and artillery and four million soldiers. Yet a hundred thousand unarmed citizens were able to surround the White House (the Russian parliament building), protect Boris Yeltsin, and prevent the coup from succeeding. Similarly, the Danish and Norwegian resistance to Hitler used direct action such as sabotage of rail lines and factory equipment. More fundamental to its success was widespread withdrawal of support by many sectors of society from defiance by educators that caused Quisling to say “You teachers have destroyed everything for me!” to strikes and boycotts that led Nazi leaders to recommend withdrawal by 1944! Many more cases could be cited from the well-known Philippine “People Power” movement that toppled Marcos in 1986 to little-known examples like the unarmed civilians who interposed themselves between government forces and the Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara in the 1970s and stopped a potentially disastrous conflict. LPF’s Wall of Hope exhibit portrays 120 additional examples from every area of the world throughout history.

In each case, success came not to the side with superior military power, but to the movement that with genuine popular support and, when traditional democratic means proved unsuccessful, extended those means to active nonviolence: organized, committed, creative, savvy nonviolent engagement including withdrawing of the basis of their opponent’s strength. The alternative of nonviolence alone offers the possibility of both commitment to the humanity of oneself and ones opponent and complete commitment to achieving ones goals.

Scores of movements and organizations around the world (including at least a dozen in the United States) are using nonviolent intervention in international conflicts. Many of these groups have been active for several decades and have amassed considerable expertise in the specifics of training for, organizing, leading, and implementing effective nonviolent action. Both scholarly and media reports have examined the effectiveness of groups like Peace Brigades International and the Christian Peacemaker Teams working in conflicts in the West Bank, Chiapas, Colombia, and elsewhere (the last third of the bibliography gives the web sites of these and other groups and offers references to thirty case studies, articles, and books).

In addition, several groups in the US have been working in recent years to conceptualize and bring into being full-fledged alternatives to military action along the lines of Gandhi’s Shanti Sena, or Badshah Khan’s Peace Army. The most ambitious project of this type is Nonviolent Peaceforce which is well along the way to fielding a force of several hundred people (growing to several thousand by 2010), fully trained in nonviolent intervention, with full logistic support, able to intervene in conflicts anywhere in the world.

Governments have rarely taken the lead in such efforts. Yet iff citizens would support such experiments with even a tiny fraction of our tax dollars allocated for military options, such efforts would demonstrate what we’ve seen in virtually every part of the globe, in every historical era, and in every arena of life: that citizen movements discussing, planning, training, and taking effective nonviolent action can bring about justice and reconciliation. In the process, they would demonstrate the practical as well as ethical superiority of “A Force More Powerful…” as a means to bring lasting change, not just one more turn in the cycle of violence.

How would this work in Iraq? Successful nonviolence strategy is not a bag of tricks that can be applied irrespective of the situation but must grow out of the experience and culture of each movement. However, we can note a few insights from what has been learned from the past. First, at least some nonviolent efforts must be separate from UN weapons inspections (to reduce the ability of Iraq to play one off against the other). Second, we need to respect the situation of Iraqis themselves to take the lead and set the pace. Third, outsiders can play a positive role; for example, nongovernmental groups skilled in nonviolence can share information and training on nonviolence among the majority that dislikes and is oppressed by the regime of Saddam Hussein (with the internet and various mass media, this task is getting easier). As in the Philippines, it should include case studies and training in the methods, skills, and costs of nonviolence. Fourth, organizations and governments should be prepared to offer support as requested by those on the inside (an obvious parallel is South Africa since the Hussein regime is even more dependent on the sale of oil for its survival than South Africa was on trade). Finally, even if it came to dealing with a deadlock between Hussein and UN weapon inspectors, it would be instructive to compare the costs and benefits of a military invasion to intervention by an unarmed, uniformed, nonviolent peaceforce accompanied by media cameras and reporters.

This crisis offers not only the danger of war but also an arena for us to forging more adequate responses to inter-group and international conflicts and injustice (and a spur to improve the way we handle conflicts in our families and workplaces). To do so requires that we move beyond the misconceptions and distortions of nonviolence, to see it as a social not merely an individual moral response, and to remember that nonviolence requires many of the same qualities that make for military success: accurate information, organization, creativity, leadership, training, courage, restraint. What has been lacking in most discussions of a possible war with Iraq is any portrayal of the depth and coherence of this perspective on power and conflict that might help us imagine and craft responses that offer the possibility of working, and working better than violence. We Christians have the spiritual resources and moral incentive to be at the forefront of such efforts.

Sources and Further Directions: A Bibliography

William Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful (St. Martin’s, 2000), the companion volume to the celebrated video series narrated by Ben Kingsley, the PBS series examines six large-scale, successful nonviolent movements on five continents. The videos are .95 for all six parts from Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 800-257-5126. The book examines a number of additional case studies and provides useful background, extensive analysis, and photos

Elise Boulding, Cultures of Peace (Syracuse Univ. Press, 2000), wonderful essays by one of our best thinkers

Building Peace: 35 Inspiring Stories from Around the World (ECCP, IFOR, 1999, available at a discount from Fellowship of Reconciliation, www.forusa.org) a very well produced volume of case studies

Ken Butigan with Patricia Bruno, From Violence to Wholeness (Pace e Bene, 1999), the best manual on the spirituality and practice of nonviolence geared for congregation use -- distributed by LPF with a 60-page LPF supplement

Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski, The Power of the People (New Society, ‘87), a wonderful illustrated history of nonviolence

Richard Deats, Martin Luther King, Jr.: Spirit Led Prophet, a brief, well-written survey stressing King’s nonviolence and spirituality (New City, 2000), James M. Washington, ed., I Have a Dream, the best brief MLK anthology (HarperCollins, 1995)

“Filling in the Missing Pieces…” (Lutheran Peace Fellowship, 2002), a list with web addresses of several dozen of the most useful articles on war with Iraq, and the underlying political, social, and moral issues: www.LutheranPeace.org

John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997), a well-developed analysis, and Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), a personal account

Pam McAllister, You Can’t Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage (New Society, 1988, 1991), two collections of terrific stories on women and nonviolence from all over the world -- McAllister also edited Reweaving the Web of Life (New Society, 1982), a rich anthology of essays on women and nonviolence

Bill Moyer, Doing Democracy (New Society, 2001), the most useful overview on social change and social movements

Michael Nagler, Is There No Other Way: The Search for a Nonviolent Future (Berkeley Hills, 2001), a stimulating new overview for the general reader

Gene Sharp, Politics of Nonviolent Action (3 volumes, Porter Sargent, 1973), volume 2 offers a detailed elaboration of 198 distinct tactics and strategies of nonviolence while volumes 1 and 3 include many stories of nonviolence in action

Donald Shriver, An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics (Oxford, 1995), an exceptionally insightful, lucid, and unpretentious study that features five extended case studies

Glen Stassen, ed., Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War (Pilgrim, 1998), a wide-ranging anthology covering from threat reduction and conflict resolution to direct action

William Ury, ed., Must We Fight? From the Battlefield to the Schoolyard – A New Perspective on Violent Conflict and Its Prevention (Jossey-Bass, 2002) an thought-provoking, brief collection of essays

The Wall of Hope, an exhibit of 120 nonviolent movements throughout history used at scores of schools and conferences. A free kit on how to develop a Wall includes the full text, tips, photos, and sources: lpf@ecunet.org (206) 720-0313

Walter Wink, editor, Peace Is the Way (Orbis, 2000), the best anthology on nonviolence we’ve seen: endlessly insightful; Wink’s Engaging the Powers (AugsburgFortress, 1992),is one of the most useful book on this subject. a more concise version with fewer stories and examples is The Powers that Be (Doubleday, 1998)

Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion (Oxford, 2001), a wonderful new full-length biography; Eknath Easwaran, Gandhi the Man (Nilgiri, 1972, 1978, 1997), a fine brief biography emphasizing Gandhi’s spiritual roots. Especially useful collections: Thomas Merton, ed., Gandhi on Nonviolence (New Directions, 1964); Homer Jack, ed., The Gandhi Reader (Grove, 1994); web sites: www.mkgandhi.org www. GandhiInstitute.org www.gandhiserve.com

Stephen Zunes, et al, Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell, 1999), an excellent survey of examples around the world

What obscures the potential of nonviolence?

“Budget Game” in PeaceNotes, Spring 2002 (LPF) and available on its web site, www.LutheranPeace.org Figures are from the US Budget, FY 2003, (US Government Printing Office), print and CD form, Office of Management and Budget and at www.whitehouse.gov/omb See especially, “FY 2003 International Affairs Summary” and “DoD Account Tables.” For commentary and critiques see www.interaction.org www.bread.org www.nationalpriorities.org www.cdi.org

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback (Henry Holt, 2000) analyzes the costs of an overly-militarized foreign policy; follow-up article on 9-11 in The Nation, Oct. ’01: www.thenation.com Also Jonathan Kwitney’s Endless Enemies (Congdon and Weed, 1984), a credible survey of US cold-war policy; as a Wall Street Journal reporter for a decade, Kwitney’s credentials are unimpeachable.

Frances Moore Lappe, et al, World Hunger: Twelve Myths (Grove, 1998), a good overview of causes and solutions; David Bread for the World, annual Hunger Report of analysis and data (www.bread.org); Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach, eds., Globalize This! (Common Courage Press, 2000), 26 brief essays on the challenge of globalization

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (HarperCollins, 1980, 1995, 1999), a celebrated effort to rediscover our country’s history from the point of view and experience of everyday people: “history from below.” See also Walter H. Conser, Jr., et al, eds., Resistance, Politics, and the American Struggle for Independence (Lynne Rienner, 1986)

Stephen Zunes, Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2002), the best of the books on the current situation combining historical background, policy analysis, and alternative options

Active nonviolence in the international arena

1. A sampling of articles relevant to the issues raised in this section (links to all of them are on the LPF web site):

Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, "With weapons of the will: How to topple Saddam Hussein, nonviolently," www.sojo.net

David Cortright and George Lopez, "Disarming Iraq: Nonmilitary Strategies" Arms Control Today, 9-02, www.armscontrol.org

David Grant, “Large Scale Unarmed Peacekeeping,” www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org

David C. Korten, "From Empire to Earth Community," www.futurenet.org/iraq/kortenempire.htm

Michael N. Nagler, "Building a New Force," YES! magazine, fall 2002, www.yesmagazine.org

Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, “Armed Conflict and Nonviolent Intervention,” www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org

Jim Wallis, "Disarm Iraq without War," Sojourners, www.sojo.net

2. Web sites of groups with significant programs of nonviolent intervention of various types include:

Christian Peacemaker Teams: www.prairienet.org/cpt

Global Exchange: www.globalexchange.org

Nonviolent Peace Force: www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org Note especially “Frequently Asked Questions about the Nonviolent Peaceforce” and the 300-page Feasability Study cited below

Peace Brigades International: www.peacebrigades.org

SIPAZ: www.sipaz.org

Witness for Peace: www.w4peace.org/wfp

Other useful sites include: www.forusa.org www.aeinstein.org www.usip.gov www.aforcemorepowerful.com www.paceebene.org www.LutheranPeace.org www.afsc.org www.pepm.org www.GlobalPeaceServices.org

3. Especially useful book-length discussions included the volumes above by Ackerman, Baum, Lederach, McAllister, Moyer, Nagler, Sharp, Shriver, Stassen, Zunes, as well as more specialized studies like the following:

Robert J. Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach (SUNY, 1996)

Howard Clark, Civil Resistance in Kosovo (Pluto Press, 2000) untold story of nonviolent action in the former Yugoslavia

Souad R. Dajani, Eyes Without Country: Searching for a Palestinian Strategy of Liberation (Temple Univ., 1995)

Eknath Easwaran, A Man to Match His Mountains (Nilgiri, 1986), on Badshah Khan, hero of nonviolence in Islam

Graeme MacQueen, ed., Unarmed Forces: Nonviolent Action in Central America and the Middle East (Toronto: Science for Peace, 1992) an early, brief and still useful survey

Liam Mahony and Luis Enrique Eguren, Unarmed Bodyguards (Kumarian, 1997), on human rights accompaniment

Ronald McCarthy and Gene Sharp, Nonviolent Action: A Research Guide (Garland, 1997), 700-pg annotated bibliography

Philip McManus and Gerald Schlabach, eds., Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America (New Society, 1991), a superb anthology with examples from every part of the continent

Yshua Moser-Puangsuwan and Thomas Webber, eds., Nonviolent Intervention Across Borders (Univ. of Hawaii, 2000) the best overview of options from accompaniment and humanitarian intervention to reconciliation and interposition

Christine Schweitzer, et al, Feasibility Study (Nonviolent Peaceforce, 2002, available at www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org), an impressive 300-page USIP-funded analysis addressing strategy, tactics, activities, personnel, training, etc.

Daniel Smith-Christopher, Subverting Hatred (Orbis, 1998), nine essays on nonviolence perspective in the world’s religions

Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa (Africa World Press, 2000), a long overdue interpretation

William Vogele, eds., Protest, Power, and Change (Garland, 1997), an encyclopedia of nonviolent action

Thomas Weber, Gandhi’s Peace Army: The Shanti Sena and Unarmed Peacekeeping (Syracuse University Press, 1996), the little-known story of Gandhi’s considerable efforts to address the issues raised in this article

Walter Wink, When the Powers Fall (Augsburg Fortress, 1998), a brief stimulating exploration

Glen Gersmehl serves as national coordinator of Lutheran Peace Fellowship and director of the Peace & Justice Resource Center. His peace education and organizing experience led to his being invited to serve as one of two dozen delegates from around the world meeting in India to plan nongovernmental organization activity in the UN Decade for Peace. Glen earned a graduate degree in conflict and international security from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government following ten year’s work as an organizer and educator in the highest crime areas of NY City and Oakland. An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics, see www.LutheranPeace.org To share reactions with the author contact ggersmehl@hotmail.com