Just out in The New York Review of Books is an essay by Brian Urquhart on recent work by the British journalist and political thinker Timothy Garton Ash. This includes a 2009 volume from Oxford University Press, Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, the result of an Oxford University project on civil resistance.
Urquhart spends quite a bit of time exploring the limitations of civil resistance movements, and their mixed record of success historically. He’s doubtful that such movements are likely to be wholly nonviolent:
Civil resistance is seldom, if ever, a force that acts entirely on its own. As Adam Roberts explains, there is “a rich web of connections between civil resistance and other forms of power,” sometimes including force, violence, or the threat thereof.
Yet he concludes quite eloquently, with Garton Ash, that civil resistance of some kind is going to be necessary to overcome the barriers that continue to prevent the democratic capitalist order from meaningful action on the environmental crisis:
Garton Ash also reminds us that while serious progress has been made in the art and method of radical political change, we cannot count on the automatic survival and growth of democracy, nor indeed on the self-correcting capacity of a predominantly capitalist system. We also face urgent global problems to which we have scarcely started to look for solutions. The popular political involvement that was the lifeblood of civil resistance movements, as well as determined and courageous leadership, is now desperately needed nearer home.
Just wondering if anyone thinks it is significant that Timothy Garton Ash is a former governor of the British version of the National Endowment for Democracy, a group called the Westminster Foundation for Democracy?
For criticism of the international ‘democracy promoting’ establishment, see http://www.iefd.org/
Indeed Michael, conspiracies abound!
FFS
I’d rather that people who want to promote democracy—uncritically or not—do so nonviolently, rather than the until-recently more popular alternative.
Justin: I am not too sure what you mean when you say “conspiracies abound!” Are you referring to the way in which imperial elites work hand in hand with ‘democracy’ activists to promote imperialism?
Nathan: are you really saying that you would rather promote low-intensity democracy (though imperialism) via lots of nonviolence (and don’t forget there will always need to be lots of violence as well) rather than just by lots of violence. Do we really want the same form of exploitation that works so effectively in the US to be exported all over the world? Furthermore, I don’t see many US citizens calling for a foreign country to start nonviolently exporting it’s own brand of exploitation to the United States?
Michael, I think the questions you’re raising are really important. Certainly, promoting nonviolence abroad should go hand-in-hand with promoting a more nonviolent society at home and everywhere else. As you’ll see from this site, we do a lot of both. However, I think it’s clear that in situations like Egypt under Mubarak, or South Africa under apartheid, no progress is going to be made whatsoever until the repressive regime is gone and a space of genuine civil discourse can emerge. I don’t think it’s fair to ask people to sit and wait under a dictatorship until the perfect model for “high-intensity democracy” (to borrow your terms) is discovered or expounded. In the meantime, low-intensity democracy seems to me better than none.
In any case, promoting nonviolent action should be simply a means for people to empower themselves on a grassroots level, and I agree that we need more of it here as much as anywhere.
Michael, sorry I was obviously far too oblique.
I was making fun of your bizarre conspiracy theories. I’ve read them before. They are idiotic.