Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century.

While sadly mulling over the Paul Hill debacle, I happened to spot a book on our library's recent acquisitions shelf, Peter Ackerman's and Christopher Kruegler's Strategic Nonviolent Conflict. The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Greenwood). I immediately grabbed it and became immersed in the authors' analysis of different nonviolent campaigns. Building on Sharp's previous work, Ackerman and Kruegler provide six detailed case studies to test their derived principles for effective nonviolent resistance: principles of development, principles of engagement, and principles of conception. Included are familiar accounts, such as Gandhi's Indian resistance movement and Solidarity's campaign for free unions in Poland, as well as lesser-known struggles like the Danes' wartime resistance to the Nazis and a 1944 civic strike in El Salvador which brought down a dictator.

Ackerman and Kruegler are not interested in the religious and moral justifications for espousing nonviolence; they seem to focus on nonviolence because of its political effectiveness. Their realpolitik approach emphasizes the crucial decision making necessary at different levels of policy and stratagems--in order to respond to the confusing and unpredictable events which always rapidly unfold. This strictly secular analysis, while too narrow in scope, does provide some intriguing pointers for peaceful prolife activists.

First, Ackerman and Kruegler admit that the outcome of any struggle, nonviolent or military, is always in doubt, but they make a good case for their claim that attention to strategy, critical thinking, and constant reassessments and adjustments will always make a difference. Intelligence counts. Nonviolent conflicts are not decided simply by the amount of endurance or repression the different sides can muster. Nor does the power and repression of the opponent always determine the outcome.

Perhaps crazed irrational fanatics bent on genocide can hardly be stopped, but historically the brutal Nazis in Denmark were resisted as successfully as the more civilized British in India. In fact a more liberal regime which cleverly deploys strategic violence in tandem with its own nonviolent methods (making meaningless concessions, coopting conferences, etc.) may be as formidable an opponent as one can face. (Is there a message for us here?)

Another point surely relevant for the prolife movement is found in the authors' explication of their principle about how to "Maintain Nonviolent Discipline." When individuals give into violence they squander all the hard-won psychological and material advantages gained by disciplined nonviolent resistance. Ackerman and Kruegler conclude that assassinations, even of a dictator, never work, because "the structure of power is never simple." Other, often worse individuals will inevitably take the offender's place. Moreover, a violent repugnant act causes the nonviolent resistance campaign to lose moral credibility; potential allies are repelled and reprisals will seem justified.

The only remedy for violent "helpers" who cannot be controlled is for the nonviolent campaign "to distance aggressively the nonviolent movement from those [violent] groups and make sure one's own supporters [and outside observers] understand why that has been done." So let's immediately set to work getting together a public formal condemnation of violent prolife tactics harmful to persons, to be endorsed by all the leaders of the prolife movement interested in maintaining nonviolent discipline.

Violence when employed in abortion or assassination may look quick and efficient, but violent means take their toll. Even if we exclude questions of sin, other objections to violence can be made. Tough secular strategists here point out that once the thought of using violence resides in someone's mind, "there is an inhibiting effect upon his [or her] ability to explore fully the possibilities of nonviolence or take the risks inherent in serious struggle." Imagination, persistence, and the capacity to accept suffering in a good cause are likely to be impaired when violence is an acceptable option, ready at hand. When will we ever learn that in all sorts of crude and subtle ways, killing kills the Spirit?