by George Lakey, Director of Training for Change

Nonviolent action is a broad term that includes 3 very different applications.[1] A typical list of "peace services" mixes them up, and includes examples of social change (World Peace Brigade's planned Freedom March into Northern Rhodesia for independence), social defense (Puerto Ricans defending the island of Culebra from target practice by the US. Navy), and third-party nonviolent intervention (Shanti Sena stopping Indian riots between Hindus and Muslims).[2]

Social change is the most popular application of nonviolent action, and best known. Usually the campaigners have reform goals: they are seeking change in policies or conditions but not a change in the power structure. Every year there are thousands of nonviolent social change campaigns around the world, led by farmers, women, unions, students, and others. Sometimes, however, nonviolent action is used for revolution. In South Africa the African National Congress acted to replace the white monopoly of political power with a new system. The Solidarity movement in Poland used nonviolent action to throw out the Communist dictatorship, and the Philippines dictator Marcos also fell to "people power." In 1970 a movement in East Pakistan acted to secede from West Pakistan. When West Pakistan tried to repress the movement, tens of thousands of East Bengali refugees fled to India. The Indian Shanti Sena organized a march of 50,000 refugees to return to East Pakistan as "a nonviolent liberation force," and tried to recruit international volunteers to join the march.[3]

Social defense may not be as widespread, but it seems to be growing in recent years. In this application, nonviolent action is not used to change, but instead used to defend the status quo. In India, villagers have been fighting to save the forests by using nonviolent action. In Thailand, farmers fight dams which threaten to flood their rice paddies. Greenpeace defends the life of the seas through international nonviolent action. The Sahara Protest Action (1959-60) sent three teams of Africans, Europeans and Americans across the desert into French West Africa to interrupt French nuclear tests. This is environmental defense.

There are also many cases of community defense. In southern France the Community of the Ark led an extended campaign in the 1970s against the extension of a military base at Larzac. In the 1980s major campaigns were waged by Japanese at Zushi and Miyakejima against building U.S. military bases.[4] At Oka near Montreal, Canada, Mohawks successfully defended their ancestral land in 1991 against the planned expansion of a golf course by the town.

Another version of social defense is using it on a national level, either against invasion from outsiders or against a coup d'état from insiders. In Russia in 1991, for example, much of the KGB, army, and Communist Party leadership decided to seize the state. They arrested top leader Gorbachev, took over the media and mobilized tanks. They also ran into such major non-cooperation from the people that the waverers in the middle turned against them and they lost their coup. Similar events happened in Argentina in the mid-1980s; a million people demonstrated in Buenos Aires, the fence-sitters turned against the military plotters, and civilian government remained.

National-level social defense -- called by researchers civilian-based defense (CBD) -- is now being incorporated into the defense planning of some governments (Sweden and Austria, for example). These governmental defense planners mainly are interested in resisting invasions, and have put research and development funds into creating nonviolent strategies that will prevent a military occupation from succeeding in their countries. Even though this application (civilian-based defense) is among the least-known uses of nonviolent action, it has probably received the most funding for research, because of governmental interest.

International action for national defense happened after Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Warsaw Pact in 1968. The War Resisters International coordinated four international teams to leaflet simultaneously against the invasion in Warsaw, East Berlin, Prague, and Moscow. In this decade there have been discussions of a mutual security pact along nonviolent lines between the Baltic countries as part of their interest in civilian based defense.

Third Party Nonviolent Intervention (TPNI) is the intervention of a third party into the arena of the conflict with the intention of reducing the level of violence, by using methods of nonviolent struggle. Mediation and arbitration are also done by third parties, but they are not Third Party Nonviolent Intervention. There are some key differences between TPNI and mediation. Third party nonviolent intervention

• is unilateral (does not require both parties to participate in structured interaction);
• assists the struggle to continue; the intervenor's success lies not in agreement being reached, but in the conflict continuing on a less violent basis,[5]
• uses the technique of nonviolent action to affect directly the field of physical conflict.[6]

Four forms of TPNI (pronounced Tip-nee) can be identified so far: accompaniment, interposition, observation/monitoring, and modeling.

1. Accompaniment. Protective accompaniment has recently become sufficiently developed as a technology so that a specialized agency offers this service in several countries. Peace Brigades International (PBI) has since the early 1980s sent to El Salvador and Guatemala volunteers who go with human rights activists threatened with assassination. The international volunteers put the local activists in a glare of publicity which reduces the chance of assassination, and not one of the activist leaders has been killed while accompanied by PBI. In 1989, during a wave of killings of lawyers in Sri Lanka, the national bar association invited PBI to send a team there to do the same, and, while death threats continued against the lawyers, none of those accompanied by PBI was killed. The author was a member of the first team. Other organizations with experience in accompaniment include Christian Peacemaker Teams, Witness for Peace, and Project Accompaniment (Canada).

2. Interposition is used when two forces are moving into battle (or preparing to) and a third force intervenes -- usually physically -- to prevent or reduce the violence. In 1986 Philippines dictator Marcos was shaken by the pro-democracy campaign and General Ramos decided to rebel with the troops under his personal command. The Ramos troops took cover in an army base, and Marcos sent the main force of the army to Ramos to destroy the rebels. The Catholic radio station broadcast urgent messages to the people to go to Ramos' base as well. Tens of thousands converged between the two armies and stopped Marcos' forces in their tracks through nonviolently and forcefully confronting the soldiers.

In the spring of 1994 the South African elections were expected to involved a high degree of violence. The author traveled to Johannesburg as part of a training team to teach interposition skills to South African "citizen peacekeepers."

Maude Royden's vision of a Peace Army (1932-39) apparently included interposition: intervening, for example, in the fighting between Japan and Chinese in Shanghai.[7]

3. Observation/monitoring is increasingly used in election situations where violence is expected. Rather than interpose themselves between violent individuals or groups, observers/monitors are expected to carry cameras, notebooks, and in other ways provide a physical reminder that "the whole world is watching," thereby restraining the violence. Northern Irish used observing in the Catholic/Protestant conflict in Portadown, 1990-91.[8] The author participated in the international observation/monitoring force in the Nicaraguan election of 1990.

4. Modeling consists of individuals and teams entering a situation of open conflict and, through body language, acts of service, and words, assisting people to choose other-than-violent behaviors. This form differs from interposition in that the third party teammates do not physically place themselves directly between the fighters, but use other behaviors, like active listening, to embody values of decency and respect. The Russian group Memorial reportedly has substantial experience in this form of intervention in inter-ethnic battles, entering the "conflict field" and, in largely subtle ways, refusing to cooperate with the prevailing atmosphere in the field of hostility and violence.

What brings this form of intervention within the framework of "nonviolent action," and distinguishes it from the host of other activities which serve people, is that the interveners are clearly and directly noncooperating with the "game" being played by the combatants, a game of mutual terror or intimidation. In Cambodia, for example, the Committee for Peace and Reconciliation organizes marches through territory contested by the government's military and the Khmer Rouge; while refusing to take sides, the marchers also refuse to cooperate with the strategies of intimidation employed by both sides and model that behavior for the peasants and clergy.

Do these distinctions make a difference?

Even as we begin to look at nonviolent action in this new way, clear differences emerge between social change, social defense, and third-party nonviolent intervention -- in dynamics, strategy, and potential support. These differences have major implications for mainstreaming peace teams.

Social change campaigns characteristically start with individuals and small groups on the margins of society. They start with consciousness-raising and research, developing the set of new ideas and facts which will frame the debate when the center of society starts taking them seriously. Their early actions are informational and may be dramatic because they are operating on a kind of public stage, eager to catch the attention of their "audience" (the mainstream) through their symbolic acts. Their strategists are very sensitive to the interplay of action, organization, and public credibility, because they have little margin for error; their challenge is uphill all the way as they seek the membership, alliances, and arenas of struggle which finally bring change.

Social defense is substantially different. Instead of starting in the valley and struggling to reach the top, social defense starts at the top, supported by key parts of the society's leadership and some major social values. The Northeast Thai farmers who are defending their land send their village heads to a workshop on nonviolent strategy. It is the Clan Mothers who organize the Mohawk barricades against the expansion of the golf course. Greenpeace has for years been overwhelmingly the largest international nonviolent action organization because mainstream values more easily support defense of whales and seal pups. And governments put far more money than pacifists do into research on civilian based defense. The participants in social defense campaigns often have a different profile from social change activists: even when both are using civil disobedience, for example, the campaigns for community defense are more likely to include high-status people and mainstream leaders risking arrest for the cause.

The applications of social change and social defense have at least one major thing in common: both are partisan. In fact, the nonviolent character of the struggle is often overlooked because what matters is the issue: Overthrow the East German government! Block construction of the superhighway! Demand democracy at Tiananmen Square! Defend native rights to fish in that river! Occupy the fields of the rich absentee landowner!

Third party nonviolent intervention is strikingly different in this respect. Its non-partisan character has major implications for strategy, recruits, and support base. Since it is the newest application of the three, the implications will not be fully clear for some time. Here are some tentative conclusions:

1. The more clearly non-partisan the interveners, the safer they are and the more options they have for expanding the range of safety for others.

2. Strategic moves in the field, therefore, must be guided not only by the team's intentions but also by the perceptions of the combatants. "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion."

3. Team participants must accept the non-partisan public stance however much they may privately be more sympathetic to one side. Recruiting (and training) must be guided by this.

4. Intervention teams can do various "good works" in the field (development projects, clinics, etc.) as long as the projects enhance their credibility as outside, non-partisan interveners. As soon as the teams' projects develop mobilization implications or in other ways constitute intervention in the power relations of the combatants, they jeopardize their usefulness in that role. The more tense the conflict situation, the more sensitive combatants will be to perceptions of "meddling in our political life."

5. TPNI teams in the field need strong back-up from a center which continually builds its non-partisan credibility, since credibility tends to erode over time in the friction of the field. The center (the sponsoring agency, umbrella organization, etc.) must be willing to live without the satisfactions of righteous indignation in order to protect and support the teams in the field.

6. The sponsoring agency of TPNI teams jeopardizes its effectiveness and limits its range if it also takes positions on substantive issues or sends other teams which assist one side or another in open conflict situations, even though the other teams use nonviolent action (in defense or change modes).

7. Emphasizing the difference between third party intervention and social change opens the way conceptually to mainstream adoption. The relevant precedent is the case of civilian based defense, which needed to be pried loose from its earlier identification with nonviolent social change in order to be considered seriously by some mainstream groups. Amnesty International also succeeded by distinguishing between "human rights" and substantive social change goals that would have aligned it with the political left or right.

8. The "mainstream" is not a monolith. Some mainstream supporters may favor one application at one time and not another; the U.S. government reportedly used some nonviolent tactics against the Allende government of Chile, for example, in its campaign to overthrow that democratically elected government, while it was unsympathetic for many years to nonviolent action to abolish apartheid. Which elites will support third party nonviolent intervention teams has to do with their specific interests at a given time.

It is likely, however, that more support will be gained from those who have an overall interest in global stability when "peace teams" stress the application of third party nonviolent intervention. Building a large-scale institutional capacity for peace teams will probably depend on that support.

George Lakey is a consultant, activist, and trainer who has led over 1,000 workshops on five continents. A Quaker, he has joined others for all three applications of nonviolent action: successfully defending his neighborhood from tree-cutting and the Puerto Rican island of Culebra from US. Navy bombing practice, protesting the Vietnam War by sailing the ship Phoenix with medical supplies to South Vietnam, and joining the first team of Peace Brigades International to do accompaniment in Sri Lanka's civil war. He has taught at universities, authored six books on nonviolent social change, and he trains peace teams for service in conflict situations.

Footnotes

1. By "nonviolent action" I follow researcher Gene Sharp in referring to many dozens of specific methods of protest, noncooperation, and intervention, in all of which the actionists conduct the conflict by doing -- or refusing to do -- certain things without using physical violence. See his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973). The concept of three different applications will be developed in my next book.
2. These examples are drawn from Yeshua Moser's list in his article "A Short History of Peace Services" in Reconciliation International, December 1994, p. 3. Other histories also mix up different applications.
3. Here I am following the account of Yeshua Moser in "A Short History of Peace Services," work cited.
4. Joseph Gerson and Bruce Birchard, eds., The Sun Never Sets (Boston: South End Press, 1991) pp. 190-91.
5. Roger Powers of the Einstein Institution suggested these three distinctions.
6. Notice the consistency in this definition in using the methods of nonviolent action as defined by Gene Sharp: "A technique of action in conflicts in which participants conduct the struggle by doing --or refusing to do -- certain acts without using physical violence." A Journalist's Brief Glossary of Nonviolent Struggle, brochure available from the Albert Einstein Institution, 50 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.
7. Yeshua Moser, "A Short History of Peace Services," work cited.
8. Reported in Observing: A Third Party Nonviolent Response (pamphlet) published by Irish Network for Nonviolent Action Training and Education (INNATE), 16 Ravensdene Park, Belfast BT6 0DA.