Promoting Civilian-based Defense: Lessons from the History of Development of the Policy The choice of how to promote civilian-based defense is far from a simple matter of choosing and using effectively such means as advertisements, speeches, pamphlets, books, television and radio interviews, articles, conversations, and other methods. Even more important than these specific instruments are the perspectives and assumptions that underlie the presentation of the policy of civilian-based defense. Current advocates of this policy hold a variety of perspectives and convictions. These can have widely differing consequences on the efforts that are used to promote it. The present policy of civilian-based defense did not happen by chance or arrive ready-made by heavenly messengers or political seers. This policy is based on years of analysis, discussions, and development. It is not a policy which can be simply grafted onto a dominant ideology which then uses it to gain acceptance of the belief and movements of the ideology, without resulting in grave negative consequences. Instead, the civilian-based defense policy needs to be promoted by means and approaches compatible with the assumptions and insights which underlie the policy itself. Some current approaches to civilian-based defense do not have their roots in the analyses on which the policy has been developed since 1964. These more doctrinal approaches often have their origins in perspectives which have little or no intrinsic connection with this policy. If that association grows, the results may prove disastrous. It may therefore be helpful to look at the thinking which has contributed significantly to the development and refinement of the policy, especially since 1964. The civilian-based defense policy historically emerged out of the interplay of several originally separate influences: (1) the improvised practice of nonviolent resistance against foreign occupations and coups d'etat; (2) the thinking of certain military strategists, such as Sir Basil Liddell Hart and Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall, about nonmilitary ways of providing defense; (3) the writings, especially in the 1930s, of various antimilitarist social radicals, such as Henrietta Holst and Bart. de Ligt in the Netherlands; (4) the thinking of various Western pacifists, such as Cecil Hinshaw and Jessie Wallace Hughan, on how to provide defense without violating pacifist principles; (5) Gandhi's thinking in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s about how defense could be provided against international threats by the extension of the practice of satyagraha to this problem (including such interpreters of Gandhi as Krishnalal Shridharani); and (6) a small group of scholars, activists, and strategists, primarily in England, Norway, the United States, and Germany, who in the early 1960s began to address the problems associated with making such a defense policy both credible and viable. Underlying the development of the policy of civilian-based defense and its separation from doctrinal and ideological associations are several insights into the nature of the dual problems of war and defense: First, that the objective is not to witness to the truth of a particular conviction, or to propound an encompassing doctrine or program of comprehensive social change. Instead, the objective is actually to achieve a fundamental change in defense policy, from a military to a civilian one. Second, that comprehensive and deep social change that includes a change in defense policy does not come in an instant but requires time and must be achieved in steps. Therefore, replacement of military-based defense with civilian-based defense is likely, in most situations at least, to take place in stages. Third, war and the military establishment capable of conducting it cannot be simply abolished without a substitute. Defense is a legitimate need. (By defense I do not mean retaliation, destruction, and slaughter, but rather protection, preservation, and warding off danger.) As long as war is believed to be the only available means for providing defense, the society will continue to support military preparations for that function. Therefore, prior development of civilian-based defense policy as a viable substitute is required if military defense is to be reduced significantly or abandoned. Therefore although many of us were driven in the 1960s to find a way to abolish war, we nonetheless were required to acknowledge the concern of other people for an effective defense. We came to recognize strongly that defense is a legitimate need, even though traditional military means of providing defense were inadequate. Therefore, a need existed for a nonmilitary defense. Fourth, the overwhelming part of the past practice of nonviolent struggle (including improvised cases for defense) had been made pragmatically, without conviction in ethical or religious nonviolence or other doctrinal repudiation of violent means. (This is argued and documented elsewhere in detail.) Therefore, it was obviously possible consciously to choose nonviolent means of struggle to be applied in place of military means to provide defense. Switching to civilian-based defense could therefore occur in the world in which we live. Fifth, there is no historical evidence that the military institutions will be abolished as an indirect consequence of social change or political revolution. In fact, past revolutions have often resulted not in the abandonment of military means of defense but rather in their expansion. Furthermore, there is no evidence that nonviolent struggles, for independence or some other goal, lead logically to the abandonment of military means of defense. Direct attention to the issue of defense is therefore clearly required. Sixth, there is no historical evidence that the quest for converts to personal pacifism or principled nonviolence has ever led to a whole society's abandonment of military means of defense. There is, however, abundant evidence that nonpacifists can, for particular conflicts, abandon violence in favor of use of nonviolent struggle. The history of the development of the concept of prepared nonviolent struggle for defense against international aggression and internal coups d'etat may be divided into two time periods, before and after 1964. That year marked the publication in London of the booklet Civilian Defence by Adam Roberts, Arne Nass, Jerome D. Frank, and Gene Sharp. More importantly, it was also the year of the Civilian Defence Study Conference held at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, and attended by a select invited group of military strategists, historians, and specialists in the study of nonviolent struggle. In the 1964 booklet and conference the need was recognized to separate the rough idea of "civilian defence" from the various ideological perspectives and doctrines which had been linked to that very broad concept previously. The goal in 1964 was to look at the policy on its merits, to examine how such a policy might actually operate. In that, the conference organizers were building on the similar, but less rigorous, efforts of Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall whose book in 1958, Defence in the Nuclear Age, addressed the efficacy of defense by nonviolent resistance for Britain. While still relatively elementary, the efforts of 1964 marked a watershed in the development of the idea of defending a society by prepared nonviolent noncooperation and defiance by a trained population. The discussion in 1964 concerned the defense not of imaginary ideal societies but actual imperfect, relatively democratic political systems. Defense would be undertaken by ordinary people, not only believers in pacifism or some type of principled nonviolence. In bypassing various ethical or ideological arguments conference participants could focus instead on practical problems: How would civilian-based defense operate? What historical experiences provided evidence of the viability of such a defense? What leverages and power could this policy wield? How could people using nonviolent struggle withstand brutal repression? How could people and institutions mobilize to defend their societies by wielding nonmilitary social, economic, psychological and political weapons? Behind these questions stood the following premise: If the policy could be made viable, then a shift to this policy by "imperfect" people in "imperfect" societies was possible. If demonstrated to be a superior form of defense, civilian-based defense would be more readily accepted, opening the way for its adoption on its merits. The arguments for keeping a military capacity to wage modern war would then collapse. (If, as some are convinced "defense" was really a guise promoted by a military industrial complex for other motives, then the development of a nonmilitary type of defense would reveal the disingenuousness of that excuse for military build-ups.) Irrelevant to these considerations of viability of the policy were the ethical, religious, or political principles and judgements which condemned war. The terminology of this concept of defense also underwent various changes which reflect the separation of policy from belief. The 1964 conference organizers rejected the term "nonviolent defense" as too reminiscent of religious nonviolence or pacifism and "unarmed defense" and "nonmilitary defense" as too vague, in former case implying weakness and in the latter case on indicating what it was not. The conference organizers used the term "civilian defense" to indicate that it was defense of the civilian society conducted by civilians using civilian weapons. Several years later it became apparent that communication could be improved if we modified the term slightly to "civilian-based defense." Other terminological changes were also introduced. Theodor Ebert, for example, applied the term "transarmament" to indicate the changeover from a military to a civilian-based policy, instead of "disarmament" which outside of pacifist and peace groups had a negative connotation associated with weakness and helplessness. Changeover to a civilian-based defense policy would not require any individual, much less millions of people, to adopt a new set of social, religious, or political beliefs. The recognition of this fact marked an important departure from other approaches to defense by nonviolent resistance and remains crucial for those promoting this policy today. No one would be required to become a personal pacifist, to repent of past support for war or participation in it, to become a supporter of a new system of social transformation, or to pledge never to use violence again in the remainder of his or her life, as a precondition for supporting or participating in civilian-based defense. A misunderstanding must be avoided here. The separation, discussed above, of the civilian-based defense policy from doctrines and ideologies was not made, as is occasionally assumed, out of a view that principles, beliefs, ethics, and the like have no merit and should be rejected. Quite to the contrary: the focus was and is on the social and political applications of such ideals and principles and how they can be accomplished. Indeed, this is a task which proponents of principled nonviolence sometimes believe they have a responsibility to help achieve, although it appears that many have little confidence that such a change can actually be accomplished. Indeed, persons with a comprehensive philosophy of life which includes a type of principled nonviolence may play important roles in promoting and developing civilian-based defense provided that they can focus only on civilian-based defense when that is appropriate and not feel a compulsion to inflict their full personal beliefs on the policy. Furthermore, it is incorrect to assume that those of us who pressed for the separation of policy from belief were unsympathetic to the goals of the peace and pacifist groups. Indeed all, or almost all, of us had significant roots in those groups. Some of them, especially myself, had become convinced that in their goal of abolishing war (as distinct from protesting against it) the peace and pacifist movements had failed, and that they had done so to a significant degree precisely because they had not offered a satisfactory substitute means of defense. Indeed, it was the separation of the technique of nonviolent struggle on the one hand, and the policy of civilian-based defense on the other, from the creeds of principled nonviolence and doctrines of political ideologies that strengthened the policy. It was the rejection of the conception that such a defense was only possible in a utopian society in the distant future, and the insistence that this policy could be made not only possible but extremely powerful in the present highly imperfect world, which helped to give this policy its potential and make possible an understanding of its relevance to the real world. Since 1964, this nondoctrinal approach to civilian-based defense has continued essentially intact. Several countries have become quite interested in this approach to civilian-based defense. In 1986, for example, the Swedish parliament unanimously voted for the inclusion of a small nonviolent resistance component in their "total defense" policy. In February 1991 the Lithuanian Supreme Council (parliament) voted to make nonviolent noncooperation their first line of defense in case of an intensified Soviet occupation. The consequences of this incremental and nondoctrinal approach to civilian-based defense for its promotion are significant. Civilian-based defense can be supported by people with widely differing philosophies of life and views about the ideal social and political system. The presentation of civilian-based defense should therefore be made in a "transpartisan" manner. All efforts to identify the policy with particular beliefs and views should be strongly rejected. Those who in 1964 took hold of this prototypical conception of civilian-based defense ("civilian defence" as we called it then) generally accepted that a basic change of defense policy would most likely come in steps. A series of steps could lead to transarmament to civilian-based defense, which itself might well lead to wider change. But this policy was not a panacea and should not be expected to avoid major problems. Civilian-based defense would have major social, political, and perhaps economic consequences that might come as corollaries or indirect results but are in no way prerequisites. There might even be, as I understood later, consequences for political ethics and even moral theology. It might become understood that by providing a nonviolent means of defense it would not be necessary any longer to choose between pacifist and just war positions - there would be a third alternative. But all that followed from the intended development of a viable and effective substitute system of defense against external and internal aggression as a limited specific policy. Once the idea of civilian-based defense as a policy began to receive some respectful attention, various persons saw it as a natural consequence of their own existing beliefs; some even argued that their beliefs and ideological programs were prerequisites for the policy. These other beliefs, programs, and ideologies have often been labeled as pacifist, antimilitarist, socialist, anarchist, or some other type. Two examples of these influences may illustrate the harm these associations can do. In Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s some social radicals tied their programs to the early political and governmental interest in civilian-based defense. This was done very strongly in one book, which the defense minister at the time, Sven Anderson, told me in 1972 had set back consideration of the policy by ten years. Interest in that specific approach, however, lessened and by April 1986 it was possible to get unanimous parliamentary support for adding a nonmilitary resistance component to Sweden's "total defense" policy. In Germany, the policy (Soziale Verteidigung, or "social defense") never fully escaped from its identification with pacifists, peace groups, and social radicals, especially the Greens. It was, and is still, widespread for the policy to be advocated as relevant only after a neo-Marxist or neo-anarchist revolution. A great deal of effort was put into connecting the proposed defense policy with ideological outlooks and positions, whether antimilitary, pacifist, or prorevolutionary. In one Bundestag hearing on the subject a leading spokesman spent much of his time talking about the rights of conscientious objectors instead of civilian-based defense. Many of the Greens neither understood nor supported the policy and helped to spread misconceptions. This was despite the more informed efforts of Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian. As a result, although the term Soziale Verteidigung is known, the kind of civilian-based defense which emerged from the 1964 Oxford conference and which has since developed is not really understood or widely known in Germany. The consequences of this have often been, in my view, highly negative and if continued are likely to stultify the development of the policy. If those associations grow, the civilian-based defense policy tainted with doctrinalism is likely to become relegated to the role of a strange conception of defense associated only with political sectarians, when it could have grown to be a serious defense option. These intrusions of doctrine and ideology into a nondoctrinal nonviolent defense policy which developed since 1964 reconnected a defense policy by prepared nonviolent struggle to doctrinal and ideological conceptions and groups from which we had long struggled to free it, so that it could actually be adopted. Similar strains have appeared at certain points in other countries. These variants have sometimes used the terminology of social defense to describe what in some cases is not primarily a defense policy but a grand conception of social change. Such a conception of social change often has its own merits, but it is a grave disservice to attempt to tie it to civilian-based defense. Civilian-based defense is not the domain of a particular political program. To be adopted, civilian-based defense requires widespread acceptance and support far beyond the reaches of any one political grouping or adherents to any one doctrine or political ideology. Efforts to consider all types of nonviolent action (including a subordinated attention to civilian-based defense) as the various parts of one good thing should also be resisted. Whatever the merits of those other causes and the nonviolent struggle being used in them, the issues need to be kept separate. Civilian-based defense needs to be presented as a distinct policy meriting attention and support regardless of people's views on other issues. Apart from research and policy development, the main important activity in the promotion of civilian-based defense lies in education. The standard means of promotion presented in 1985 in my National Security Through Civilian-Based Defense (pp. 4214) still are highly important. Summarized briefly, these include. 1. Self-education and thought by individuals and groups. This step is basic. How many have read the basic literatwe in the field before going out to promote the policy? 2. Informal public educational efforts, including books pamphlets, videotapes, publication of articles, book reviews, and op-ed articles; arranging radio, television, and newspaper interviews for appropriate persons; discussion meetings and study groups; special public and campus lectures; conferences for more in-depth presentations. 3. Personal development of skills, like writing, speaking, and so forth for promoting civilian-based defense. 4. Formal educational courses and programs for all ages and levels, either full courses or parts of broader ones. 5. Securing of money to finance research and education on the policy. 6. Establishment of special committees or commissions in local, state and national organizations (political, religious, professional, business, trade union, and others) to recommend to the overall organization what attention, if any, it should give to the policy. Special efforts can often be successful in getting local libraries to receive, distribute, and display books on the policy. All these simple steps would, along with other activities, contribute to a growing recognition that nonviolent means of fighting injustice and oppression exist and can be powerful. Furthermore, all those activities help people realize that there exists an alternative civilian-based defense policy which has great potential and lower economic costs, which can help make the world safer both for freedom and for survival. We now understand more about nonviolent struggle than in 1964. The broad outlines of how a civilian-based defense policy can operate are much clearer. Important research topics and problems in policy studies have been identified, and institutions for assisting research and policy studies have been established. Many more people are now aware that such an option exists. The growth of movements of people power which from time to time fill our television screens are bringing awareness to masses of people of the existence of alternatives. The status of our literature is much improved, and the number of languages in which civilian-based defense is discussed has multiplied. We are now in a much stronger position than only two or three decades ago. The future holds great promise, especially if we can avoid serious mistakes and if we proceed with care, wisdom, and confidence. We can contribute to changing the course of history so that it will no longer be possible to oppress human beings and so that major political violence can be defeated by people power, so that war will be replaced by the nonviolent power of human beings and their institutions through which they can be masters of their own destinies. Emphasis needs to be placed where it is valid, on the significance of past and current practice of nonviolent struggle, or people power, as evidence of the practicality and effectiveness of a prepared civilian-based defense policy. Genuine defense needs should be candidly and calmly addressed, with serious explorations of the potential of this policy for dealing with them. Anything which would tend to take this policy out of the field of realism and responsibility and back into the ghetto of the naive, romantic, and doctrinal should be strongly resisted. Instead hard-headed attention is required in consideration of responsible and effective ways to promote civilian-based defense. Civilian-based defense can be made to be a highly realistic policy which merits serious consideration for adoption as the defense policy of many societies. It is not a dream of utopians, but an exercise in the politics of the possible. We must act accordingly. Gene Sharp I am grateful for the assistance of Bruce Jenkins in the preparation of this paper, presented to the conference on "Civilian-Based Defense and People Power" of the Civilian-based Defense Association held in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, September 6-8,1991. This paper is not to be reproduced in any form without written consent of the author: Gene Sharp, Senior Scholar-in-residence, Albert Einstein Institution, 1430 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. Reprinted with permission. Civilian-Based Defense: News & Opinion A ten page newsletter containing theoretical articles, book reviews and world news - all relating to developments in the consideration of nonviolent, civilian-based defense in various parts of the world. Six issues per year: $15, postage paid. Write to: Civilian-Based Defense Association, 154 Auburn St, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.