Speaking of Pundita….
She has a post up that skillfully weaves the case of Colonel Tunnell into a much larger, demoralizing, political and policy context:
On the perversion of nonviolence and religious tolerance in service of politics and war
Two recently published essays, one by Belmont Club’s Richard Fernandez, one by Zenpundit’s Mark Safranski, when taken together reveal a portrait of human evil so horrific that young people and the severely depressed should not be allowed to see it. The rest of us need to contemplate what we have wrought by looking the other way as NATO military commands ordered soldiers in Afghanistan to act like saints in the face of ruthless armed militias and democratic governments promoted the lie that nonviolent resistance could topple dictators.
In The Limits of Myth, Richard Fernandez amplifies on the theme I presented in On the Taliban shooting of Malala Yousafza: Pakistani human rights activists need to step believing in American fairy tales:
Pundita argues the notion of bloodless resistance has been oversold by the advocates of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It was a convenient alternative narrative to that perennial problem-solving algorithm, war. By skipping over the War of Independence and the Civil War and emphasizing the Salt March and Selma, Alabama they gave the mistaken impression that resistance was all about speeches and heroic poses.
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But nonviolence is a useful myth she argues, because it gives diplomats an excuse not to act. It makes a virtue of doing nothing by characterizing it as actively breaking the cycle of violence and counseling that eventually the tyrant will die of shame. But not before you die of a bullet.
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The truth is that every resistance movement — even largely nonviolent ones — carries with it the implicit threat of force. The police and army of the regime often switch sides when they see that the cost of dealing with impending storm of popular violence exceeds the cost of turning on the tyrant. They fear force and therefore decline to exercise it.The idea of consequences was once deeply rooted in the public consciousness. Yahweh thundered. And even Christ came to save us from the fires of hell. But hell there was. The opportunity for nonviolent change was always understood to be the ‘last chance’ prelude to violent consequences. … This kind of reasoning is now out of fashion…..
Read the rest here.
October 25th, 2012 at 6:00 am
Zen – Thanks for the mention. Every little bit counts, I hope. They really did a very thorough number on Tunnell. I guess they wanted to make sure that if his points ever got beyond the Pentagon, the pile of complaints against him would divert attention from the kind of situations he was describing and raise questions about his character.
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Reminds me of the Japanese saying: The nail that sticks out will be hammered down.
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Re the British POPCOIN approach to N. Ireland — I saw a comment in the comment section about Yon’s piece on Tunnell that I found interesting; it’s at the 8:09 mark by “Charles, Bath” — “And I would still argue that the way that the British smothered the IRA with roadblocks, observation posts, electronic surveillance, informers and sheer time, may provide a way to weaken the Taliban. Remember, the IRA was never reduced to zero activity, only to a level which made their military victory impossible. Eventually they saw that and have given up the military option.”
Those tactics don’t sound like POPCOIN or even COIN to me — or at least not specifically so. They sound straight out of a counter-guerrilla playbook: denying the enemy movement.
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So if the commenter is correct, it could mean there’s a certain amount of myth associated with the British handling of The Troubles. I’ve never studied the situation enough that I could come up with a good conjecture as to the answer. But it would be a terrible irony if the US was copying a myth in its POPCOIN approach in Afghanistan…..
October 25th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
C. Raja Mohan had an article in the American Interest, I believe, talking about a kind of scrubbing of Indian independence history by Indian Gandhists and Western non-violence activists of the complexity of the situation.\
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I mean, key tracts in local languages are apparently still being translated, lots of stuff only recently declassified, and so on. A struggling country without a feel for the preservation of history, in a way. Always a complaint of my relatives with respect to Indian governance.
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The British army according to some reports was becoming communal in a particular way and could not have held or kept order (some retired Indian officers I’ve read). Partition–or Indian and Pakistan independence–was on the cards for a whole host of reasons yet we continue to focus on key personalities from the era. I guess this is a common discussion among people who study these things seriously.
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The narrative from one part of India (where one part of my family is from) is all about how violence post the 1857 Rebellion underscored everything the British did from then on. They retreated into themselves and their own community, locally.
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Wasn’t the General at Kanpur actually married to an Indian woman? I mean, whenever I hear how cultural study will solve some intractable issue, I’m like, how much more can you understand another culture than to be born locally, know the language, and marry a local? And still, it didn’t help him.
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Some viewed the attempts to involve Indians in local governance as an outcome of the rebellion violence so that the non-violent movement was simply one step in a long line of events leading to Independence. It simply morphed from violence to non-violence– with implied violence and disorder underlying it all.
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There are stories of Rao Tula Ram and the narratives are like this:
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“After the battle, Rao Tula Ram moved into Rajasthan; then joined Tantya Tope’s forces for one year. After the British proclamation of promising unconditional pardon, amnesty and oblivion to all offences against the British to all except those who directly or indirectly took part in the murder of British subjects (issued on November 1,1858). He sent a petition to the Governor-General, Lord Canning, on December 24, 1858. He stated that he considered himself “an offender, but as he looked up to the government as his protector, he begged to solicit that an inquiry might be directed to be instituted and that he As well as his followers pardoned.” He was refused pardon for he was chief instigator and prime mover of revolt. He therefore, left India in 1862. He went to Iran; then to Afghanistan in the winter of 1862, where he died of dysentery at Kabul on 23 September 1863 at a young age of 38.”
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http://www.haryana-online.com/people/rao_tula_ram.htm
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I’m not vouching for the accuracy of any of that. I am talking about narratives, national stories; the things people say and think versus official histories and the like.
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So it’s an ugly and complicated thing, human nature. Which, well, duh.
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But I always defend Gandhi (he’s not entirely popular in all parts of India, which apparently surprises some people) because what would have happened during WWII if different passions had been unleashed in the subcontinent? Which is where Madhusree Mukherjee comes in. As an aside, her public arguments are interesting when compared to some contemporary Churchill writers. I always like to look at original writing myself….it’s a mess, you know, sorting things out, and I’ve learned the hard way following footnotes that, well, I guess I wish I were better educated. That’s what following footnotes teaches me.
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Oh, and can anyone see how silly Washington Consensus moralizing about the Indian presence in Afghanistan sounds given the history? Does anyone know anything that isn’t from some South Asian scholar as shill? Sorry, harsh words I know, but look at all the blood and treasure we’ve spent. Someone has to say this stuff.
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In terms of myths and the Troubles….when you have lived in towns with a heavy Irish diaspora, naturally one hears that lots of things weren’t written down. These things are always a mess when looked at closely.
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All of this reminds me of M.L. R. Smith’s article in SWJ (which, again, I can’t log into. It’s always a browser issue for me, I usually fix it myself):
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http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/a-tradition-that-never-was.
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When I’ve time, I’ll link a bunch of interesting stuff I’ve found.
October 25th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Heads up: I’ve got a comment in moderation.
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(Is it annoying when I do that? I used to appreciate it when I blogged but maybe it’s irritating to the zenpundit crew….)
October 25th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Hi Madhu:
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I’ve posted it above.
October 27th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
Mark, you’re just trying to suck me in, aren’t you? Pundita concludes “The moral of the story is that it’s playing with fire to fashion religious tolerance and nonviolent means of conflict resolution into political and military stratagems.”
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(In what follows, I loosely and fastly use “outsider” to mean those from another culture, with “insider” meaning those from within the culture.)
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Obviously I agree with Pundita’s statement with regard to outsiders and their stratagems. I’d emphasize my agreement (and go so far as to say it should be obvious) that non-violence cannot be used as a military stratagem. The messages are mixed and people are not fooled. That is one lesson that was confirmed from the way the US has attempted to pursue something or other in Afghanistan.
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But I certainly take issue with this statement, “The truth is that every resistance movement — even largely nonviolent ones — carries with it the implicit threat of force.”
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This is simply not true. Non-violence as a strategy has a solid and practical body of theory and practice behind it. The implicit threat of force is explicitly rejected in favor of a moral struggle that completely eschews physical threat. The explicit threat is to legitimacy and the ability to govern. For ruling authorities this is often worse than the physical threat and has a tendency to bring out the worst in them. This is why dictators respond so ruthlessly to non-violent movements. Torture enough people and you can do serious damage to the levels of trust within a society, which helps to isolate resistance movements from natural allies.
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Non-violence is very, very hard to do. It is a long-term strategy and requires both intense levels of commitment and deep study on the part of leaders, as well as a willingness to suffer and perhaps die on the part of everybody involved. When you threaten a government’s legitimacy, they will try to kill you and/or make an example to you. Therefore, non-violence is not a strategy that people should attempt if they are not willing to die.
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Nor is it a strategy for the short-term; you don’t win in a season and you don’t win in a year. Like all wars, non-violent ones are boring or frightening with very little in between and most people have no stomach or fortitude for that life.
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Non-violence is only a viable strategy for insiders, freely chosen and committed to. Outsiders cannot pursue it. Outsiders cannot promote it. Outsiders cannot support it unless that support is part of the strategy of the insiders and is explicitly asked for and directed by insiders.
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Those who hide behind non-violence as an excuse not to act are pursuing apathy, not non-violence. To be successful in any struggle requires relentless focus and constant movement. You can’t get inside your opponent’s OODA loop by doing nothing – though you can get inside by sitting still. (As this site is dedicated to zen, I feel I can offer koans for study.)
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I would agree that there has been a sanitizing (and a willful obscuring) of what non-violence means and how it achieves its goals. This sanitizing has been extremely valuable to all ruling authorities as it has largely eliminated a serious threat to all of them.
October 28th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Hi Marshall,
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Great comment!
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Ha! No, I am not trying to “draw you in ” – though I am glad that you are – you should re-post this at her blog if you have not already, so that she does not miss your comment.
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My thoughts:
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I think the two of you are coming at this from different perspectives – not just non-violence but from the focal point of where to start an analysis. Most regimes are overthrown in part because of a division within the elite and this holds true whether we are talking about whether they go quietly or bloodily or the nature of the regime itself: Tsar Nicholas II, Ngo Ding Diem, Ceaucescu, the East German state, King Charles I. all were undermined by loss of support or a crisis of confidence within the regime. Very rarely is an elite completely cornered and wholesale removed from power except by foreign invasion.
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Nonviolent movements, in my view, seek to leverage these divisions and widen them, so if there is “an implicit threat of force” it is outside of the nonviolent movement but it’s possibility is a fulcrum on which the nonviolent movement threatens or weakens the legitimacy of the regime. For that to work there needs to be some moral connection between the protesters and part of the elite. So ordinary Germans could protest the discovery of Hitler’s secret euthanasia program to kill the mentally ill and disabled and the Nazi state quickly shut the program down and tried to cover up evidence of it’s existence. German Jews protesting their treatment at the hands of Nazi authorities, or Germans protesting on their behalf, would have been utterly futile and likely suicidal. Protesting in North Korea (nonviolently or otherwise) is likewise suicidal in a way that protesting under other terrible regimes – Iran, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Belarus – even China or Cuba – is not. The regime too mercilessly polices it’s own elite to maintain abolute unity for that to be possible. Most regimes are not that psychotically paranoid though.
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I think your comments about the risks assumed by nonviolent protest movements are correct, it is just a more reasonable risk in some places and times than others when rationality and a failure to live up to their own professed beliefs can be discerned on the “other side”
October 30th, 2012 at 3:42 pm
testing….having trouble posting comments….
October 30th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Sigh, was trying to post an excerpt from the intellibriefs blog by SK Sinha on 1947 partition and the British Army and it keeps not “taking”.
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Col. Tunnell’s letter is stunning.
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The curious thing is that the very things we think are necessary only increase the freedom and maneuver of the Taliban and affiliated goups.
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Our economic development activity feeds the insurgency and affialiated groups and our intelligence is not improved, apparently, by the very activities that are supposed to give us better intelligence….Nothing new for the discussion around here, I know, but to see specific examples from someone who was there.