Where is your CVC code?
Last week I noted that the nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which are now spreading throughout the region, have generated more interest and positive coverage of nonviolence in the mainstream media than I have seen in my lifetime.
Probably the most surprising praise for nonviolent action came last week from Max Boot, who is a hawk and outspoken advocate for military force. In the conservative magazine Commentary he wrote:
It is fair to say that [Gene] Sharp and [Peter] Ackerman have been indirectly responsible for more revolutions than anyone since Lenin or Mao — and, unlike the avatars of “socialist” upheavals, their work made the world a better place, helping to create numerous liberal democracies. It is hard to think of worthier recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee should act soon — Sharp is no longer a young man and his work deserves recognition while he is still around to enjoy it.
I wonder how Boot reconciles his appreciation for the power of nonviolence to unseat dictators with his support for the war in Iraq, which has led to such incredible suffering and death. I suppose he would argue that Saddam was a unique case where nonviolence would not have worked.
Nonviolent movements, however, have brought down so many dictators around the world in recent decades that there is no reason why Saddam should be considered an exception. Even academic studies, like “Why Civil Resistance Works,” are beginning to demonstrate from a purely pragmatic perspective – with extensive evidence and hundreds of case studies over the last century – that nonviolent action is simply far more effective than using violence in political struggle.
And regarding the Nobel Peace Prize, my hunch from reading interviews with Sharp is that he would not want to take credit away from the people on the ground who risk their lives in nonviolent struggle. As Sharp rightly told the New York Times last week, “The people of Egypt did that — not me.”
If Boot were to argue that Saddam was a unique case where nonviolence would not have worked, he should read this piece by Jack DuVall and Peter Ackerman in 2002, subtitled “How to topple Saddam Hussein—nonviolently”:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&mode=printer_friendly&issue=soj0209&article=020910
Contrary to outdated notions of what the neoconservatives presently stand for, they have now supplemented their militaristic approach to imperialism by arguing the merits of waging nonviolence.
You ask: “I wonder how [Max] Boot reconciles his appreciation for the power of nonviolence to unseat dictators with his support for the war in Iraq”?
The answer is that he does it in much the same way as Peter Ackerman does: he supports both the war machine and peace machine, as long as they both serve the interests of international imperialism.
So how are Boot and Ackerman connected? Well Ackerman is a board member of the leading imperial think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, where Boot formerly served as the Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies. In the past, both have enjoyed attending the Israel’s controversial Herzliya Conference; and Boot is the author of the famous article “How to Surge the Taliban” which he authored with Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan. His later work with fellow neoconservative Kimberly Kagan is noteworthy because she currently serves on the advisory board of Peter Ackerman’s counterinsurgency group, Spirit of America. http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker72.html
If you want a book length explanation of why the neoconservatives work with people like Peter Ackerman (who is a conservative libertarian), read Mark Palmer’s disgusting book Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). In effect Palmer provides what he sees as a remedy to the widely understood limits of the military option (especially “against dictators armed with nuclear weapons”), and of what he considers to be the failure of economic sanctions. (p.28) Part of this “strategic paradigm shift” requires the “elevat[ion of] the promotion of democracy to the number one priority of national security, foreign policy, and international relations.” (p.29) He thus argues for the need for “a new strategy” and the adoption of “a better set of tools” to implement such revolutionary warfare. These he says, “are primarily the implements and tactics of nonviolent protest, strike actions and boycotts, and what used to be called passive resistance.” But unlike many other state department pacifists, Palmer is well aware of how “a small application of military force, or even a credible threat to use it” when used in conjunction with ‘nonviolent’ protests invests the nonviolence with real power. As he writes, occasionally “the tools of democratization will be drawn from military arsenals, to add elements of force to the nonviolent design.” (p.31, p.28)
It is worth remember that if we look back in history to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, it is evident that the ongoing threat of massive public violence had much to do with the successes reaped by the ‘nonviolent’ movement: for two excellent books on this subject see Peter Levy’s Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge (University of Florida Press, 2003), and Lance Hill’s The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
Hi Michael,
I have to disagree with you on all counts here. I suspect that Boot simply sees limitations to nonviolence, like I suggested. The same would go for some advocates of pragmatic nonviolence, who are not pacifists and see exceptions where violence may be necessary. That is true for most people who don’t have a deep understanding of nonviolence and knowledge about its successes.
While I haven’t read Palmer’s book, from your description of it, I don’t see why it’s so disgusting. I think getting rid of dictators is a good thing, don’t you? (And I do share you concern for what comes after a dictator is removed, especially concerning economic justice. Here is a link to an article I wrote on the subject: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/a-conversation-about-nonviolence.)
I also think that nonviolent action is the best way to get to democracy and bring down repressive regimes. I would disagree with Palmer though that nonviolence coupled with violence or the threat of violence is what gives nonviolent action its real power. In fact, I think that nonviolent movements are more powerful the more pure they are. That violence in any form undermines nonviolence by giving the government an excuse to crack down and alienating potential allies. This is why governments, both in the US and abroad, are known to try to instigate violence with agents provocateurs.
And Ladd Everitt, one of our contributors, wrote an article a while back that addressed Lance Hill’s book. Here is the link: http://dev2.wagingnonviolence.org/2010/09/debunking-the-gun-control-is-racist-smear/
To begin with your final point about the article “that addressed Lance Hill’s book”: I just want to point out that the author in question did not actually address content of Hill’s book, he simply dismissed it — in a single paragraph at that. If you are interested I would be more than happy to write a review of the arguments presented in Hill’s book – to be published by Waging Nonviolence at some time in the near future.
With regard to Mark Palmer’s book, my intention was not to show how disgusting his commitment to imperialism was, but to highlight a couple of his points. I would highly recommend that you read his book, but if you don’t have time, on this coming Monday “Swans Commentary” will be publishing my full review of his imperial treatise.
In the Yes Magazine article you refer to, you correctly point out the catastrophic fact that often after nonviolent movements gain power “the plight of those at the bottom” is “in many cases exacerbated.” It is great that you recognize this, and that you add that “the best way to gauge how genuine any democratic transition has been may be to critically examine the extent to which economic relationships have changed since the nonviolent revolution — and, most importantly, how those at the bottom have fared under the new government.” I AGREE.
You also write: “Acknowledging that these transitions to democracy have so frequently failed to democratize wealth will only help us stop such scenarios from playing out again in the future.”
Yet if we acknowledge, as you clearly do, that in many instances of so-called successful examples of nonviolent regime change, economic exploitation continues unabated and may even be aggravated: should we really be encouraging the US government’s efforts to export regime change by manipulating people’s movements? I would say not. The lesson I learn from your Yes Magazine article (that was written in response to Stephen Zunes’ work), is that peace activists must do everything in their power to prevent imperial elites from cynically utilizing nonviolent resistance to promote imperialism.
On the topic of Professor Zunes, it is important to note that he is one of the leading defenders of the US government’s right to intervene in other countries social movements; which is precisely why he serves as the chair of the academic advisory board of Peter Ackerman’s International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. His analysis of the people’s power movement in the Philippines is especially dangerous given the similarity of this historical example to ongoing events in Egypt. Thus in his chapter “The Origins of People Power in the Philippines,” in his coedited book Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective (Blackwell, 1999), Zunes’ analysis remains so firmly wedded to demonstrating the unrelenting power of nonviolent activism that he ignores the history of violent resistance to Ferdinand Marcos.
This is not to say that violence is in any way more effective than nonviolence, only that the threat of its use should be duly considered (and certainly not ignored) if one wants to progress beyond pacifist platitudes and understand the dynamics of social change. Zunes’ only reference to violence came when he suggested that people adopted nonviolent tactics for pragmatic (as well as ethical) reasons, primarily because they had seen “the Marcos government’s ability and willingness to use great amounts of force against a well-organized armed resistance movement during that same period, the Communist Party of the Philippines’ New Peoples Army (NPA).” (p.130)
What remains totally unmentioned in Zunes’ account of Filipino people power is the massive financial and political support that the more conservative/reactionary parts of the people’s opposition movement obtained from the United States foreign policy elites (including the likes of the National Endowment for Democracy and the CIA). This is no small omission for a writer purporting to give his readers the full story about People Power in the Philippines. Furthermore he completely omits any discussion of the violence that was visited with a vengeance upon progressive Filipino activists under Cory Aquino’s reign of ‘democracy.’
Finally to return to your own comment. You write that: “I also think that nonviolent action is the best way to get to democracy and bring down repressive regimes.” By democracy do you really mean a haven for free-market capitalist exploitation? Because this is certainly what the architects of the US government’s ‘democracy promoting’ community are intent on promoting. Although one could hardly say the intent is to replace repressive regimes, as it would more accurate to say they aim to continue to lend their support to repressive government’s as long as they at least make a rhetorical commitment to democracy.
I agree that overthrowing repressive governments and replacing them with actual democracy would be nice. Indeed, it would be great if there was a nonviolent revolution in the United States to oust what is certainly the most repressive government in the world. (This would certainly solve a lot of problems in the rest of the world which are related to repressive governments.) My main problem is only that groups and individuals working hand-in-hand with the US government’s attempts to promote humanitarian imperialism should be identified for what they really are, imperial collaborators, and quickly disowned by progressive activists seeking to promote a more just and equitable world.
Mr. Barker’s use of this thread to make his hundredth or so attack on Stephen Zunes and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) is perhaps an example of his true priorities in engaging in such a discussion. That he lapses so easily into ad hominem attacks on recognized scholars whose work has actually contributed to nonviolent change is something to consider while weighing the credibility of his other claims. He asserts that Dr. Zunes “is one of the leading defenders of the US government’s right to intervene in other countries social movements.” That is in fact the opposite of what Dr. Zunes has said on hundreds of occasions, and Mr. Barker of course offers no quote testifying to that supposed view of Zunes, because it doesn’t exist. Mr. Barker goes on to suggest that that is also the position of ICNC, but again there is zero evidence of that.
That center’s legal status prohibits it from engaging in anything other than educational activities. But if Mr. Barker believes that sending videos and books on request to political activists isn’t educational or amounts to “intervention”, he’d have to take issue with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Education isn’t “intervention”, by either a common sense or international legal definition.
I did write that Professor Zunes “is one of the leading defenders of the US government’s right to intervene in other countries social movements.”
Indeed he is probably the most effective scholar who engages in such activities; not because he says outright that “the US government should be allowed to interfere in other sovereign countries,” but because he does so in a less obvious and more subtle way.
As you well know I have been engaged in “debates” with Stephen Zunes on his misrepresentation of the activities of the ‘democracy promoting’ community for the past few years. And in one of my earliest exchanges with him I wrote:
“… Thus Zunes appears to be attempting to dismiss as conspiracy theorists those people who suggest that US ‘democracy promoters’ are attempting to encourage non-violent revolutionary action. Indeed, the bottom line is that Zunes promotes a highly selective understanding of the history of progressive social change.
“Returning to his GLW [Green Left Weekly] article, he is correct to note that the ‘U.S. government has historically promoted regime change through military invasions, coup d’etats and other kinds of violent seizures of power by an undemocratic minority’. However, he adds that: ‘Nonviolent “people power” movements of the kind supported by ICNC [International Center for Nonviolent Conflict] and other NGOs, by contrast, promote regime change through empowering pro-democratic majorities which the United States and other foreign governments cannot control.’
“Crucially, this gross oversimplication neglects the vital role played by soft power in promoting the hegemony of transnational capitalism: ‘soft’ strategies that were pioneered by liberal foundations like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, which worked hand-in-hand with the CIA to create civil society front groups and co-opt progressive activists all over the world (most prominently during the Cold War). Attempts to come to terms with such manipulative and cooptive tactics will be crucial to the sustainability of the left, and such strategies do not come from “some kind of Bush administration conspiracy” as Zunes implies. As I am sure he well knows, such manipulations of civil society have always had strong bipartisan support from political elites.
“In addition, an obvious contradiction left unaddressed by Zunes is his belief that NGOs funded by neoliberal governments have a right to intervene in target countries, while simultaneously such neoliberal states do not tolerate foreign groups operating within their own territories. Zunes is mistaken to suggest that the NED “and other US government-backed ‘pro-democracy’ efforts … focus primarily on [supporting] conventional political campaigns led by pro-Western parties”. Instead, as Professor William I. Robinson points out ‘democracy promoting’ organisations work together through a combination of both covert and overt strategies to intervene ‘in mass movements for democracy and endogenous democratization processes … through a multiplicity of political, economic, military, diplomatic, and ideological channels’.” http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38356
So here we have another thread that’s devolved into a review of Mr. Barker’s allegations — against groups and individuals like Stephen Zunes — which rest on a defense of a conspiracy theory, i.e. the theory that nonviolent movements in particular countries are engineered or guided by the U.S. government, rather than ignited and carried to success or not by indigenous resisters and activists.
In his post just above, note that Mr. Barker confesses that his allegation that Dr. Zunes is a defender “of the US government’s right to intervene in other countries social movements” cannot be proven by citing anything that Dr. Zunes has said “outright”, but that, according to Mr. Barker, Dr. Zunes has said it “in a less obvious and more subtle way.” In other words, Barker is reading Zunes’s mind. I guess that’s what you’re forced to try to do, if you’re defending a conspiracy theory.
That it’s a conspiracy theory which underlines Mr. Barker’s jeremiad against Stephen Zunes is obvious from his ensuing spicy use of big-money, capitalist-type names like Ford and Rockefeller, the unproven and gratuitous insertion of the CIA as an alleged co-conspirator on some sort of regime change agenda with these foundations, and thereafter yet again his still-unsourced assertion that Dr. Zunes has “a belief that NGOs funded by neoliberal governments have a right to intervene in target countries”. There he goes again: trying to read Dr. Zunes’s mind, to ascribe to him a tell-tale “belief” in nefarious U.S. intervention — since he can’t actually find a clear instance of Dr. Zunes saying what he insists Dr. Zunes really thinks.
In any line of reasoning, credibility cannot won by any claims about another individual’s beliefs without direct evidence that those individuals espouse those beliefs. This is a variation on an even simpler rule: You cannot put words in someone else’s mouth.
Readers might want to reflect on what the resort to this kind of reasoning says about the underlying credibility of the argument that it attempts to support.
Anyone who has read my frequent writings on both strategic nonviolent action and U.S. foreign policy knows that I am vehement and consistent opponent of U.S. imperialism and have never supported in any way shape or form “the US government’s right to intervene in other countries social movements.” He doesn’t make any citations because none exist. He’s just making this up. I’m generally recognized as an outspoken anti-imperialist and progressive, and Barker knows this. He’s just one of these nutty sectarians who seems to believe that if someone doesn’t take his line on everything they must be some kind of capitalist imperialist enemy of the people.
Readers who are interested in what I actually believe can find my complete set of writings on my web site: http://www.stephenzunes.org
Also, if anyone actually bothers to read my chapter on the Philippines in my book Nonviolent Social Movements about the movement which overthrew Marcos, one will notice how Barker completely mischaracterizes it. It does look at the NPA and the armed struggle. I discuss in some detail the differences between the progressive communist-backed Bayan movement and Aquino’s movement, both of which used nonviolent action. The fact I did not include anything about the subsequent(albeit reduced) repression under the Aquino government was not that I was denying it, defending it, or unaware of it, it was simply beyond the scope of this particular chapter. Finally, I didn’t mention U.S. support for the pro-democracy struggle because the U.S. wasn’t supporting the pro-democracy struggle; the U.S. was supporting the Marcos dictatorship until literally the last hours when it was under siege by the mass movement and was unable to survive much longer.
I would suggest that you go back and reread your own chapter, as you have clearly forgotten what you published — although this is understandable since it was published more than a decade ago. I did not “completely mischaracterize” your chapter on the Filipino people power movement; instead, what I did was provide a criticism of what you wrote. Yes you mention the NPA in a passing comment when you noted the existence of a “well-organized armed resistance movement” which was the Communist Party of the Philippines’ New Peoples Army (NPA). But I expected analysis as well, something that was not evident in your chapter.
Likewise, anyone reading your chapter will notice that you only briefly mention the role played by unions in the people’s movement (in a few scattered sentences), but that is it. No critical commentary, and certainly no emphasis on the manner by which external support in the millions of dollars was channeled — through the AFL-CIO’s Asian-American Free Labor Institute (from the National Endowment for Democracy) — to reactionary unions in a deliberate effort to counter the radical challenge posed by the militant Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU-May First Movement). In fact, if one was inclined to believe your crude caricature of the people-power movement, masquerading as history, one would barely realize that it was the unions, most especially KMU, that played a central role in organizing the uprising against Marcos.
Finally, in your comment you write: “I didn’t mention U.S. support for the pro-democracy struggle because the U.S. wasn’t supporting the pro-democracy struggle…”
Stephen Zunes are we both talking about the same country here? I am talking about the Philippines; what about you?
The U.S. most certainly was supporting the pro-democracy movement in the Philippines; this is no secret (except from you and some of your less-informed readers), and it is fully documented in the National Endowment for Democracy’s annual reports from the 1980s. Indeed, in your chapter you even describe one U.S.-backed group as playing a “pivotal” role in the Filipino people power movement – although of course you don’t mention the massive support it received from the U.S. “democracy promoting” community.
It was no secret that the U.S. government was very concerned about growing popular discontent with the Marcos regime (from the early 1980s onwards), thus they were very interested in helping prevent a genuine representative of the people from coming to power. Cory Aquino, a prominent oligarch, thus provided the perfect presidential candidate to ensure that the immensely strong people power movement would have no genuine influence on the Filipino government formed when President Marcos was removed from power. Aquino of course was part and parcel of the U.S.-backed aspects of the pro-democracy movement which undermined (and eventually destroyed/murdered) the more progressive parts of the people power movement.
Here is my full critique of Professor Zunes’s chapter:
“Blinded by People-Power: Stephen Zunes on the Ousting of Dictators,” Swans Commentary, March 14, 2011.
http://www.swans.com/library/art17/barker74.html
It’s a shame that Michael Barker has finally found this blog. Dude, take your conspiracies elsewhere.
Hi Justin.
Since you have bothered to leave a comment which disparages my work as consisting of conspiracies, I would be grateful if you could also make the effort to point out the worst example of my alleged use of conspiracies of explain historical events.
Please do pick my most problematic article (all of which can be found on my web site); and if you can successfully demonstrate that it is based on conspiracy and not just on a logical argument presented by a concerned citizen, then I will not only write an article to retract the said article, but I will also promise to stop leaving further comments on Waging Nonviolence.
I will look forward to hearing from you.
Best Wishes, Michael.
Nonviolence and violence are not mutually exclusive. Some of us believe there to be situations where violence may be the only option.
I disagree with Max Boot’s support of the invasion of Iraq–but I still don’t have to be suspicious of his supporting the power of nonviolent protest in another situation.
The primary factor of peace is communication. Communication. That means listening in every instance, not immediate rejection of someone else’s thoughts because they belong to the “other” outside group. So therefore they’re wrong. Stop talking to them because they’re wrong.
Is that truly peaceful?