Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System. - book reviews

If we are ever seriously to consider total, permanent disarmament, a model of defense must be developed for use against the few aberrant humans able to convince large (or small) numbers of their citizens to commit mass murder. That model will most likely be something close to the ideas outlined in this book. This "post-weapons defense system" will require putting our own lives on the line. This may be disheartening, but it happens in every brushfire war around the world, and happens to young men and women facing a military draft.

Gene Sharp assumes that conflict is inherent in the human condition and that the desire for security is appropriate and just. He pragmatically assesses "people power" as if it were more than the spontaneous outpourings of nonviolent rebelliousness that recently toppled regimes in the Philippines and Eastern Europe. As a technique, civilian-based defense has proven itself in limited ways, but never (yet) as the primary, planned response to nation-state violence. While Sharp makes no claims that civilian-based defense is foolproof, he points out that the military alternative is at least as fallible, and certainly more destructive. --David Grant

Related books and a newsletter that we have reviewed include Sharp's National Security Through Civilian-Based Defense (WER #5 1, p. 20); The Politics of Nonviolent Action (CQ #34, p. 27); and Civilian-Based Defense: News & Opinion (WER #66, p. 137). --David Burnor

* Coercion does not here mean submitting under threat or use of superior force. Instead, "coercion" here is the forcing or blocking of change against the opponents' will. The opponents' ability to act effectively has been taken away from them, but they still retain sufficient power to hold their positions and to capitulate to the resisters' demands. In short, "nonviolent coercion" as a mechanism of nonviolent action occurs when goals are achieved against the will of the opponents, but short of the disintegration of the opponents' system. Nonviolent action becomes coercive when the nonviolent resisters succeed directly or indirectly in withholding to a major degree the necessary sources of the opponents' political power: authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions.

* What methods can defenders use in order to withdraw the sources of power needed by foreign aggressors and internal usurpers? What do they need to do in the face of expected repression? A closer analysis of the technique of nonviolent action may provide some answers.

Nonviolent action is so different from milder, peaceful responses to conflict (such as conciliation and arbitration) that several writers have pointed out that it has instead significant similarities to conventional war. Nonviolent action is a means of combat, as is war. It involves the matching of forces and the waging of "battles," requires wise strategy and tactics, employs numerous weapons," and demands of its "soldiers" courage, discipline, and sacrifice. Nonviolent action may understandably also be called nonviolent struggle," especially when strong forms of this technique are employed against determined and resourceful opponents who respond with repression and other serious countermeasures.

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