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There are Alternatives to Military Force

A few hours before the Iraqi CPT hostages were freed, a timely book was launched in London. The book People Power and Protest since 1945: A Bibliography of Nonviolent Action (Housmans, 2006), is a new compendium of global "people power" initiatives. It is a powerful reminder that policy alternatives to situations like Iraq do exist: that "non-violence and peace activism can be a more effective instrument for social change than military force". This is what peace activists around the world have been espousing and working toward.

I have always firmly believed that we should not be so quick to use military force, and resolving issues by non-violent means is a much better and definitely less costly alternative. Instead of building up nuclear arsenals against each other, would it not be in the best interest of our world if we abandoned our bully tactics and worked more arduously toward peaceful resolutions? True, the industrial-military complex generates billions of dollars for a select few elites, but that behemoth could be transformed into machinery for alternative energy sources, innovative agricultural projects in places where draught is endemic, viable research into sustainable crops, massive building projects (dams, hospitals, schools, etc.), fighting poverty and AIDS instead of each other, and so much else that is for the betterment of humankind and our planet.

About the authors:

The co-authors (or "compilers" as they describe themselves) are in different ways experts in the theory and practice of non-violence: April Carter, one of the world's leading academic specialists on the subject; Howard Clark, former coordinator of War Resisters' International and long-time campaigner for non-violent alternatives; and Michael Randle, a dedicated peace activist and academic with a remarkable record of engagement from the "Committee of 100" (a vigorous part of the anti-nuclear weapons movement in the early 1960s) to the present day.

An excerpt from the article:

"Norman Kember [the freed British member of the CPT] and others on similar journeys of commitment riposte forcefully that military action is reinforcing rather than resolving a situation where scores of Iraqis are being kidnapped or killed every day, and that intermediation in the cause of peace can play a valuable role in addressing the roots of such violence. Much of the press in turn treats such views with contempt; pacifists and their ilk, it contends, have little or nothing to contribute in difficult situations where well-meaning but misguided naïfs should make way for those playing by "big boys' rules.

This populist view is by no means shared by all professional military people, especially at a time when there is an increasing questioning – which reaches even into senior military circles in Britain and western Europe – about the viability of current United States policies. At the same time, the populist approach reflects a brutal "realism" in relation to Iraq and to George W Bush's wider war on terror that remains deeply lodged in media discussion and establishment thinking: that there is no real alternative to current policies."

Read article "There are alternatives" by Paul Rogers on Open Democracy here.

posted by Annamarie at 10:52 AM