A Note on Violence, War and Nonviolence

In the phenomenon known as war, nonviolence seems to be made impossible, and the nonviolent approach quixotic or irrelevant. In the Gandhian tradition there are four major explanations for war, four basic roots of war:

1. The first root is greed — for more possessions, or resources, or for new markets. This fact has both psychological and economic dimensions or implications. The industrial build-up for war has long been considered by many among the power elite and industrialists as a convenient solution to mass unemployment. (It certainly fulfilled that purpose in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.) Preparation for war and war itself syphon off the energies and attention of the most vigorous men in a nation, who would otherwise either be a burden to an economy that cannot absorb them, or be politically restless. With the hindsight that we should have today, condoning a war economy is a criminal course of action — it prepares for the unleashing of an untold amount of violence.

2. The second aspect of war is that, while military training does have some positive aspects from certain viewpoints, training for war and involvement in war strongly reinforce and develop a deep aggressive force that is present in all of us.

To be sure, there are diverse aspects to war and to the institution which keeps it going, the military. Alongside its main purpose (the conduct of offensive operations), there are other aspects to the military profession. Thus, soldiers in various countries have devoted certain amounts of time to activities directly fostering the welfare of citizens. An example is the work done in various countries by soldiers and officers belonging to a Corps of Engineers or similar army agencies, or by military personnel helping with the rescue of the population at times of disasters. (The latter function may be carried out by Air/Sea Rescue units, or in some countries by a National Guard.) Also, some aircraft of the U.S. Air Force, Marine, and Navy fly humanitarian flights (taking patients and accident victims to hospitals, conveying needed supplies of blood and organs), while the USAF is responsible for some aspects of the training of civilian pilots. Similarly, the Civil Air Patrol, an arm of the USAF, is used for search of aircraft that are overdue or missing.

Such examples of positive and timely involvement in operations ensuring the safety and welfare of citizens in need reveal how potentially useful the training provided by military-type discipline can be to help attain peaceful, constructive aims. In his book The Power of Nonviolence, Richard Gregg stressed the need for us to emulate the better, more positive aspects of military-type training and discipline and evolve an equivalent to them within the context of training in nonviolence. In the same way as we are confronted with the need for peace conversion economics, we need — within the framework of an integrated program for conversion to a nonviolent society — to consider gradual conversion of the purposes and energies behind traditional military training to constructive and peaceful purposes.

Along with that more positive aspect of military training, there is a more disturbing side to it. The basic purpose of the military is to prepare for and carry out war, and with that aim in mind it develops the brutish force that is sometimes active and sometimes dormant in us. It is this force which the military is immensely efficient at fostering, enhancing, and organizing. There is no denying that the military apparatus has achieved a considerable degree of sophistication at doing just that: transforming — as Tolstoy put it — men into not just animals, but into machines that will blindly obey orders and go out and kill. For some of us, to understand the Gandhian viewpoint on war, fighting, and the military may require a complete reorientation of our perspectives. It may not be easy to see that intervening militarily in a foreign country to meddle in its internal affairs is just another manifestation of brutish force; on a larger scale, this is just as bad as barging into my neighbor’s backyard to tell him how to run his chicken-coop.

For many of us, it may be quite difficult to espouse the Tolstoyan-Gandhian perception which, quite simply put, is that a soldier is an extremely competent professional killer of other soldiers and civilians alike. If we look at the ratio of civilians killed in five successive wars — World War I, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the war in Central America — we see an escalating factor of civilian deaths.

In World War I there were 95% military casualties and 5% civilian casualties; in the Vietnam War, that proportion had reversed dramatically; there were 35% civilian casualties and 65% military casualties. Closer to home, some 100, 000 Guatemalan civilians have been killed since 1954 within the framework of an “operation genocide” actively implemented by the military. These facts should make us completely rethink our notion of what war and the military are all about.

3. The third explanation of war is what we could call the cultural factor. There is a cultural deception. From childhood the notion has been instilled in us that patriotism is a good, necessary, and fine thing. Gandhi condemned exclusive or fanatic patriotism, and made it clear that he would only be a patriot if by being so he would not take away the slightest inch, one single iota, of the love and nurture that he owed to all other nations.

4. And finally, from the spiritual viewpoint, the stifling of the voice of conscience is the most disturbing occurrence in the military way of life as a result of war.

The question is sometimes asked: What would Gandhi have done in facing up to a Hitler? The answer is rather clear. If Gandhian principles had been employed and democracy had been fully implemented in Germany in the early 1930s, then Nazism would never have had the chance to emerge. Gandhi was far from being politically naive; he was a very astute politician, and he advocated participating very fully in the democratic process. Concerning the situation that developed in Germany after the Nazis had seized power, he wrote the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber to suggest specific strategies, based on his own somewhat inadequate (as he himself acknowledged) acquaintance with the German context.

The best time to stop wars is before they start. We hear threats of World War III. The time to avert such a disaster is now, by practicing love, not hate.

World Wars can grow out of regional wars. Regional wars can result from local injustices, lack of brotherhood, an insensitivity to our neighbors, from the ascendance of greed over love, from the bad habit of maintaining antagonisms against many persons and groups, from narrow-minded nationalism, from internecine religious fanaticism, from the ideological messianism of large and not-so-large countries.

The Beyond War movement deserves our gratitude for the clear and sharp logic it uses to analyze the reasons why war is obsolete, and to suggest that in consequence we should make the decision to reject war.

We will always be faced with the propensity in human nature to resort to warfare as a way of solving conflict. But there is a powerful alternate strategy advocated by Gandhi, which can be summed up as follows: Practice the Law of Love; insist that the institutions around which our life is organized apply nonviolence; and re-train ourselves to become nonviolent—that is, to learn to solve conflict without resorting to violence. (For concrete applications, consult Marshall B. Rosenberg’s A Model for Nonviolent Communication, and Mark Juergensmeyer’s Fighting with Gandhi — see “Suggested Readings”.)

 

Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.

 — Volunteer Commitment Card, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 1960

 

Solution:   Practice the Law of Love. Love means thoughtful attentiveness; therefore, practice creative listening to the other's side. In dealing with an opponent, search actively for areas of mutual interests; on the basis of these interests, build projects to encourage the development of increasing mutual trust. Use negotiation, arbitration, and other conflict-solving methods, at local, national, international levels. Fully utilize and improve existing dispute resolution systems between nations so that war is not the only option. Freeze and reverse the arms race. Cut the military budget. Practice nonviolence as an active struggle. Actively pursue alternatives to military intervention. Support human freedom and dignity by ending foreign military intervention (interfering in another country’s internal affairs is a form of violence). Support human freedom and dignity at home by endorsing civil liberties (not granting such liberties is also a form of violence). Persistently denounce and oppose injustice.

 

 

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