Crimea – Engaging Peace

This is the second of three posts comprising Part III of a series of posts in which Dr. Ian Hansen shares his thoughts on nonviolence.

See also Part 1a, Part 1b, Part 1c, Part 2a, Part 2b, Part2c and Part3a.

Libya anti-Gaddafi protest, July 6, 2011
Photo by Mbi3000, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Iran, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine and even Syria all reflect examples of uprisings that had a major nonviolent campaign as the lynchpin of popular revolt and managed to change the relations of power in some way. But none of these uprisings stayed Gandhi-style nonviolent, and it seems these revolutions all had aftermaths ranging from the dubious to the disastrous.

Still, held up against totally violent revolutions that succeeded in overthrowing preceding governments–like those in China 1949, Russia 1917 (the October one), and Cambodia 1975—these dubious nonviolent revolutions look relatively good, if only because the aftermath of the violent revolutions was so hyperbolically horrific.

Even the extreme carnage in Syria (and the specter of a new Cold War between great powers over Ukraine’s Crimea) does not weigh down the partially nonviolent group as much as the Cambodian genocide, Stalin’s purges, and the Great Leap Forward weigh down the violent group. Of course, I have just cherry-picked anecdotal examples here. Chenoweth and Stephan (authors of Why Civil Resistance Works) try to root the contrast of more violent versus less violent uprisings in a systematically principled selection of comparison groups, but they come to largely similar conclusions.

But what about those nonviolent revolutions which Chenoweth and Stephan count as somewhat successful but after which the relations of power have hardly changed at all? Or the cases in which the original relations of domination grew even more entrenched since that revolution? I will discuss one of these cases in the final post in part 3 of this series and in my final series on nonviolence.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

By guest author Alfred L. McAlister, Ph.D.

Part 1 of this series addressed the current crisis in Crimea from the perspective of the ploys used to gain popular support for military aggression. These include:

Map of Ukraine with Crimea highlighted. Image (map) by Sven Teschke, from Wikimedia Commons. Used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Invocation of a moral obligation
Advantageous comparisons with worse actions by other nations, and
The demonization of enemies.

Let’s hope that history does not repeat itself now–that Western leaders don’t invoke debatable moral justifications for a military response to the crisis in Crimea, such as the need to preserve national reputation, prove the strength of our resolution to defend freedom abroad, or to punish Russian misdeeds to make an example that will deter acts of aggression elsewhere.

Let’s hope we don’t hear palliative contrasts between Western-led multilateral military action and Russia’s unilateral move, or portrayals of Russians as bestial characters only able to understand force as a means of negotiation.

If we do hear those kinds of arguments for an aggressive response to the conflict in Crimea, let’s be prepared to reject them. Let’s make peaceful negotiation backed by economic sanctions, no matter how long it takes or imperfect the results, the only option we accept for resolving international conflict unless our national interests are gravely and immediately threatened.

By anticipating the ways of thinking that spread war fever, we can “inoculate” ourselves against them and begin to make popular support for offensive warfare by democratic nations–like ancient plagues–a part of our past and not our future.

Dr. Alfred McAlister’s essay, “War Fever: How Can We Resist?” will be published this spring in the International Handbook of Negotiation and Mediation, edited by Mauro Gallucio (Berlin: Springer).

Does Nonviolent Resistance Work? Part 3b

Russian war fever: Will it spread? (Part 2)