Robert J. Burrowes
IAEWP Vice President for the South Pacific
Around the world activists
who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge to effectively tackle the
multitude of violent conflicts, including the threat of human extinction,
confronting human society in the early 21st century.
I wrote that ‘activists who
are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge’ because there is no point
deluding ourselves that the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane’ – with its compliant international organizations
(such as the UN) and national governments following orders as directed, is
going to respond appropriately and powerfully to the multifaceted crisis that
it has been progressively generating since long before the industrial
revolution.
For reasons that are readily
explained psychologically – see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology
of Materialism, Violence and War’
and, for more detail, see ‘Why Violence?’ and
‘Fearless
Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ – this insanity focuses their attention on securing
control of the world’s remaining resources while marginalizing the bulk of the
human population in ghettos, or just killing them outright with military
violence or economic exploitation (or the climate/ecological consequences of
their violence and exploitation).
If you doubt what I have
written above, then consider the history of any progressive political, social,
economic and environmental change in the past few centuries and you will find a
long record of activist planning, organizing and action preceding any
worthwhile change which was invariably required to overcome enormous elite
opposition. In short, if you can identify one progressive outcome that was
initiated and supported by the global elite, I would be surprised to hear about
it.
Moreover, we are not going to
get out of this crisis – which must include ending violence, exploitation and
war, halting the destruction of Earth’s biosphere and ongoing violent assaults
on indigenous peoples, ending slavery, liberating occupied countries such as
Palestine, Tibet and West Papua, removing dictatorships such as those in
Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, ending genocidal assaults such as those currently
being directed against the people of Yemen and the Rohingya in Myanmar, and
defending the rights of a people, such as those in Catalonia, to secede from
one state and form another – without both understanding the deep drivers of
conflict as well as the local drivers in each case, and then developing and
implementing sound and comprehensive strategies, based on this dual-faceted
analysis of each conflict.
In addition, if like Mohandas
K. Gandhi, many others and me you accept the evidence that violence is
inherently counterproductive and has no countervailing desirability in any
context – expressed most simply by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. when he
stated ‘the enemy is violence’ – then we
must be intelligent, courageous and resourceful enough to commit ourselves to
planning, developing and implementing strategies that are both exclusively
nonviolent and powerfully effective against extraordinarily insane and
ruthlessly violent opponents, such as the US government.
Equally importantly, however,
it is not just the violence of the global elite that we must address if
extinction is to be averted. We must also tackle the violence that each of us
inflicts on ourselves, our children, each other and the Earth too. And, sadly,
this violence takes an extraordinary variety of forms having originated no
later than the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago. See ‘A Critique of Human Society
since the Neolithic Revolution’.
Is all of this possible?
When I first became
interested in nonviolent strategy in the early 1980s, I read widely. I
particularly sought out the literature on nonviolence but, as my interest
deepened and I tried to apply what I was reading in the nonviolence literature
to the many nonviolent action campaigns in which I was involved, I kept
noticing how inadequate these so-called ‘strategies’ in the literature actually
were, largely because they did not explain precisely what to do, even though
they superficially purported to do so by offering ‘principles’, ‘guidelines’,
sets of tactics or even ‘stages of a campaign’.
I found this shortcoming in
the literature most instructive and, because I am committed to succeeding when
I engage as a nonviolent activist, I started to read the work of Mohandas K.
Gandhi and even the literature on military strategy. By the mid-1980s I had
decided to research and write a book on nonviolent strategy because, by then, I
had become aware that the individual who understood strategy, whether
nonviolent or military, was rare.
Moreover, there were many
conceptions of military strategy, written over more than 2,000 years, and an
increasing number of conceptions of what was presented as ‘nonviolent
strategy’, in one form or another, were becoming available as the 1980s
progressed. But the flaws in these were increasingly and readily apparent to me
as I considered their inadequate theoretical foundations or tried to apply them
in nonviolent action campaigns.
The more I struggled with
this problem, the more I found myself reading ‘The Collected Works of
Mahatma Gandhi’ in a library
basement. After all, Gandhi had led a successful 30 year nonviolent liberation
struggle to end the British occupation of India so it made sense that he had
considerable insight regarding strategy. Unfortunately, he never wrote it down
simply in one place.
A complicating but related
problem was that among those military authors who professed to present some
version of ‘strategic theory’, in fact, most simply presented an approach to
strategic planning (such as using a set of principles or a particular
operational pattern) or an incomplete theory of strategy (such as ‘maritime
theory’, ‘air theory’ or ‘guerrilla theory’) and (often largely unwittingly)
passed these off as ‘strategic theory’, which they are not. And it was only
when I read Carl von Clausewitz’s infuriatingly convoluted and tortuously lengthy
book On War that I started to fully understand strategic theory. This is
because Clausewitz actually presented (not in a simple form, I hasten to admit)
a strategic theory and then a military strategy that worked in accordance with
his strategic theory. ‘Could this strategic theory work in guiding a nonviolent
strategy?’ I wondered.
Remarkably, the more I read
Gandhi (and compared him with other activists and scholars in the field), the
more it became apparent to me that Gandhi was the only nonviolent strategist
who (intuitively) understood strategic theory. Although, to be fair, it was an
incredibly rare military strategist who understood strategic theory either with
Mao Zedong a standout exception and other Marxist strategists like Vladimir
Lenin and Võ Nguyên Giáp understanding far more than western military
strategists which is why, for example, the US and its allies were defeated in
their war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Some years later, after
grappling at length with this problem of using strategic theory to guide
nonviolent strategy and reading a great deal more of Gandhi, while studying
many nonviolent struggles and participating in many nonviolent campaigns
myself, I wrote The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian
Approach. I wrote this
book by synthesizing the work of Gandhi with some modified insights of
Clausewitz and learning of my own drawn from the experience and study just
mentioned. I have recently simplified and summarized the presentation of this
book on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation
Strategy.
Let me outline, very simply,
nonviolent strategy, without touching on strategic theory, as I have developed
and presented it in the book and on the websites.
Nonviolent Strategy
You will see on the diagram
of the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel that there are four primary components of strategy in
the center of the wheel and eight components of strategy that are planned in
accordance with these four central components. I will briefly describe the
four primary components.
Before doing so, however, it
is worth noting that, by using this Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, it is a
straightforward task to analyze why so many activist movements and (nonviolent)
liberation struggles fail: they simply do not understand the need to plan and
implement a comprehensive strategy, entailing all twelve components, if
they are to succeed.
So, to choose some examples
almost at random, despite substantial (and sometimes widespread) popular
support, particularly in some countries, the antiwar movement, the climate
justice movement and the Palestinian and Tibetan liberation struggles are each devoid
of a comprehensive strategy to deploy their resources for strategic impact
and so they languish instead of precipitating the outcomes to which they
aspire, which are quite possible.
Having said that a sound and
comprehensive strategy must pay attention to all twelve components of strategy
it is very occasionally true that campaigns succeed without doing so. This
simply demonstrates that nonviolence, in itself, is extraordinarily powerful.
But it is unwise to rely on the power of nonviolence alone, without planning
and implementing a comprehensive strategy, especially when you are taking on a
powerful and entrenched opponent who has much to lose (even if their conception
of what they believe they will ‘lose’ is delusional) and may be ruthlessly
violent if challenged.
For the purpose of this
article, the term strategy refers to a planned series of actions
(including campaigns) that are designed to achieve the two strategic aims (see
below).
The Political Purpose and
the Political Demands
If you are going to conduct a
nonviolent struggle, whether to achieve a peace, environmental or social
justice outcome, or even a defense or liberation outcome, the best place to
start is to define the political purpose of your struggle. The political
purpose is a statement of ‘what you want’. For example, this might be one of
the following (but there are many possibilities depending on the context):
To secure a treaty
acknowledging indigenous sovereignty between [name of indigenous people] and
the settler population in [name of land/country] over the area known as [name
of land/country].
To stop violence against
[children and/or women] in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To end discrimination and
violence against the racial/religious minority of [name of group] in [name of
the town/city/state/country].
To end forest destruction in
[your specified area/country/region].
To end climate-destroying
activities in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To halt military production
by [name of weapons corporation] in [name of the town/city/state/country].
To prevent/halt [name of corporation]
exploiting the [name of fossil fuel resource].
To defend [name of the
country] against the political/military coup by [identity of coup
perpetrators].
To defend [name of the
country] against the foreign military invasion by [name of invading country].
To defend the [name of
targeted group] against the genocidal assault by the [identity of genocidal
entity].
To establish the independent
entity/state of [name of proposed entity/state] by removing the foreign
occupying state of [name of occupying state].
To establish a democratic
state in [name of country] by removing the dictatorship.
This political purpose
‘anchors’ your campaign: it tells people what you are concerned about so that
you can clearly identify allies, opponents and third parties. Your political
purpose is a statement of what you will have achieved when you have
successfully completed your strategy.
In practice, your political
purpose may be publicized in the form of a political program or as a list of
demands. You can read the five criteria that should guide the formulation of
these political demands on one of the nonviolent strategy websites cited above.
The Political and
Strategic Assessment
Strategic planning requires an accurate and thorough
political and strategic assessment (although ongoing evaluation will enable refinement of this assessment
if new information emerges during the implementation of the strategy).
In essence, this political
and strategic assessment requires four things. Notably this includes knowledge
of the vital details about the issue (e.g. why has it happened? who benefits
from it? how, precisely, do they benefit? who is exploited?) and a structural
analysis and understanding of the causes behind it, including an awareness of
the deep emotional (especially the fear) and cultural imperatives that exist in
the minds of those individuals (and their organizations) who engage in the
destructive behavior.
So, for example, if you do
not understand, precisely, what each of your various groups of opponents is
scared of losing/suffering (whether or not this fear is rational), you cannot
design your strategy taking this vital knowledge into account so that you can
mitigate their fear effectively and free their mind to thoughtfully consider
alternatives. It is poor strategy (and contrary to the essence of Gandhian
nonviolence) to reinforce your opponent’s fear and lock them into a defensive
reaction.
Strategic Aims and
Strategic Goals
Having defined your political
purpose, it is easy to identify the two strategic aims of your struggle. This
is because every campaign or liberation struggle has two strategic aims and
they are always the same:
1. To increase support for
your campaign by developing a network of groups who can assist you.
2. To alter the will
and undermine the power of those groups who support the problem.
Now you just need to define
your strategic goals for both mobilizing support for your campaign and for
undermining support for the problem. From your political and strategic
assessment:
1. Identify the key
social groups that can be mobilized to support and participate in your strategy
(and then write these groups into the ‘bubbles’ on the left side of the
campaign strategy diagram that can be downloaded from the strategy websites),
and
2. identify the key
social groups (corporation/s, police/military, government, workers, consumers
etc.) whose support for the problem (e.g. the climate catastrophe, war, the
discrimination/violence against a particular group, forest destruction,
resource extraction, genocide, occupation) is vital (and then write these
groups into the columns on the right side of the campaign strategy diagram).
These key social groups
become the primary targets in your campaign. Hence, the derivative set of
specific strategic goals, which are unique to your campaign, should then be
devised and each written in accordance with the formula explained in the
article ‘The Political Objective and
Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’. That is: ‘To cause a [specified group of people] to act in the
[specified way].’
As the title of this article
suggests, it also explains the vital distinction between the political
objective and the strategic goal of any nonviolent action. This distinction is
rarely understood and applied and explains why most ‘direct actions’ have no
strategic impact.
You can read appropriate sets
of strategic goals for ending war, ending the climate catastrophe, ending a
military occupation, removing a dictatorship and halting a genocide on one or
the other of these two sites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategic
Aims and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation
Strategic Aims.
The Conception of
Nonviolence
There are four primary
conceptions of nonviolence which have been illustrated on the Matrix of Nonviolence. Because of this, your strategic plan should:
1. identify the particular
conception of nonviolence that your campaign will utilize;
2. identify the specific ways
in which your commitment to nonviolence will be conveyed to all parties so that
the benefits of adopting a nonviolent strategy are maximized; and
3. identify how the level of
discipline required to implement your nonviolent strategy will be developed.
This includes defining the ‘action agreements’ (code of nonviolent discipline)
that will guide activist behaviour.
It is important to make a
deliberate strategic choice regarding the conception of nonviolence that will
underpin your strategy. If your intention is to utilize the strategic
framework outlined here, it is vitally important to recognize that this
framework is based on the Gandhian (principled/revolutionary) conception of
nonviolence.
This is because Gandhi’s
nonviolence is based on certain premises, including the importance of the
truth, the sanctity and unity of all life, and the unity of means and end, so
his strategy is always conducted within the framework of his desired political,
social, economic and ecological vision for society as a whole and not limited
to the purpose of any immediate campaign. It is for this reason that Gandhi’s
approach to strategy is so important. He is always taking into account the
ultimate end of all nonviolent struggle – a just, peaceful and ecologically
sustainable society of self-realized human beings – not just the outcome of
this campaign. He wants each campaign to contribute to the ultimate aim, not
undermine vital elements of the long-term and overarching struggle to create a
world without violence.
This does not mean, however,
that each person participating in the strategy must share this commitment; they
may participate simply because it is expedient for them to do so. This is not a
problem as long as they are willing to commit to the ‘code of nonviolent
discipline’ while
participating in the campaign.
Hopefully, however, their
participation on this basis will nurture their own personal journey to embrace
the sanctity and unity of all life so that, subsequently, they can more fully
participate in the co-creation of a nonviolent world.
Other Components of
Strategy
Once you have identified the
political purpose, strategic aims and conception of nonviolence that will guide
your struggle, and undertaken a thorough political and strategic assessment,
you are free to consider the other
components of your strategy: organization, leadership, communication, preparations,
constructive program, strategic timeframe, tactics and peacekeeping, and
evaluation.
For example, a vital
component of any constructive program ideally includes each individual
traveling their own personal journey to self-realization – see ‘Putting Feelings First’ – considering making ‘My Promise to Children’ to eliminate violence at its source and participating
in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ to preserve Earth’s biosphere.
Needless to say, each of
these components of strategy must also be carefully planned. They are explained
in turn on the nonviolent strategy websites mentioned above.
In addition to these
components, the websites also include articles, photos, videos, diagrams and
case studies that discuss and illustrate many essential elements of sound
nonviolent strategy. These include the value of police/military liaison, issues
in relation to tactical selection, the importance of avoiding secrecy and
sabotage, how to respond to arrest, how to undertake peacekeeping and the 20
points to consider when planning to minimize the risk of violent
police/military repression when this is a possibility.
Conclusion
The global elite and many
other people are too insane to ‘walk away’ from the enormous violence they
inflict on life.
Consequently, we are not
going to end violence in all of its forms – including violence against women,
children, indigenous and working peoples, violence against people because of
their race or religion, war, slavery, the climate catastrophe, rainforest destruction,
military occupations, dictatorships and genocides – and create a world of
peace, justice and ecological sustainability for all of us without sound and
comprehensive nonviolent strategies that tackle each issue at its core while
complementing and reinforcing gains made in parallel struggles.
If you wish to declare your participation in this
worldwide effort, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to
Create a Nonviolent World’.
Given the overwhelming
violence that we must tackle, can we succeed? I do not know but I intend to
fight, strategically, to the last breath. I hope that you will too.
Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has
done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings
are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His
email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
