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A long list of peace studies scholars has issued a statement advocating for coordinated strategies of entirely unarmed resistance in Ukraine. Some critical reflection... @wagingnv/1508852850067222535
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been resisted by Ukrainians and Russians using multiple means, including armed resistance but also individual and collective unarmed actions.
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Absolutely extraordinary numbers of occupied Ukrainians have protested against the soldiers in their towns, people under bombardment have communicated their humanity, and Russians have protested and countered propaganda at great personal risk.
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In that context, nonviolent action proponents should be so busy celebrating and defending these actions that they have little time for "here's what we might do" manifestos. It's being done.
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Except for one thing, Peace Studies scholars and Gandhian nonviolence advocates are philosophically opposed to simultaneous use of their tactics and violent ones.
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Allegedly this is for practical reasons. Violent resistance, this statement argues, hardens the resolve of soldiers and imperial societies. It allows them to call you terrorists and justify their actions.
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This is a plausible hypothesis, but basically everything that happened in the last month argues against it. Violent and nonviolent Ukrainian resistance coexist right now .
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Russian soldiers are defecting and avoiding combat precisely when they are facing spirited resistance.
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The largest antiwar movements of the past sixty years have opposed wars alongside guerrilla resistance, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq.
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The Peace Studies field, like Gandhian nonviolence which it follows, is founded on the idea that nonviolent solutions to situations of injustice are an area that is under-developed relative to military conflict.
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It's grounded on both a moral aversion to violence and on strategic research on how nonviolent action can wield power.
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In the past fifteen years, largely on the basis of research on civil resistance, the field has come to argue nonviolent methods are not just morally but strategically superior.
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In the contexts of resisting invasion, this superiority is very much in doubt. In other contexts, the power of civil resistance is very much buoyed by combative but unarmed protest.
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The strategic development of nonviolent methods of opposing war and colonial invasion is happening on the ground in Russia and Ukraine right now.