From D to D, Chapter 2: The Dangers of Negotiations

This post is the second installment of my "study guide" and commentary on Gene Sharp's book titled, From Dictatorship to Democracy.  For the sake of these posts, I will shorten the title to "From D to D."  Chapter 1 of Gene Sharp's book discusses the most common options to which people look when they find themselves living under a dictatorship.  Among these common options are resorting to violence in order to try to achieve liberation, hoping for liberation through military coups, hoping for liberation through elections, and hoping that foreign "saviors" will intervene to free the oppressed population from the dictator.  The point of Chapter 1 is to convince us of the inadequacy and risks of pursuing these options.

Chapter 2 explores another common option to which people resort when they find themselves suffering under dictatorship.  That option is to try to pursue negotiations with the dictator.  And here again Dr. Sharp seeks to cure us of romantic notions of what negotiations can actually accomplish in dealing with evil holders of concentrated wealth and power.

If you have read the chapter, you will note that Dr. Sharp does not say that negotiations are always useless.  Rather, he says that negotiations work best when one understands these things:

1. The magnitude and nature of the issues being negotiated, and
2. The relative balance of power between the negotiators.

And so we come back to the psychodynamics of the various sides in a conflict.  In some labor disputes in which a strike is deployed by workers, one side consists of greedy, money-grubbing slave drivers, and the other side consists of people who don't want to be worked like dogs for nothing more than dog food.  Yet if the money-grubbers look at their money-grubbing simply as a certain kind of business philosophy, they will be most willing to alter that philosophy once their employees show them that their philosophy will drive them out of business due to the withholding of employee labor.  In this case, the business philosophy of the business owners is not such a core element of their identity that they are willing to hold onto it at all costs.  Therefore, the amount of non-cooperating pressure which employees must apply tends to be limited, and negotiations are therefore frequently the end-game of labor disputes.

But it must also be noted that the outcome of such negotiations will not be settled by the rightness or wrongness of each side's claims.  Rather, the outcome of negotiations in this case is determined by how powerful the union is relative to the management - that is, the magnitude of resources that can be withheld for a long enough time by one side from the other side.  (The reason why the labor movement in the United States is so weak just now is due to the fact that many labor leaders have been co-opted by management, which has succeeded in the creation of a robust "business unionism" that can accomplish nothing.  That is why the results of labor negotiations nowadays are frequently very disappointing.  The unions of the early 20th century were much more powerful.)

There is also a category of struggle in which negotiations are practically useless, because the core interests of one or both sides in the struggle are at stake.  In such cases, at least one of the two sides will not be willing to engage in truthful, fair negotiations.  In fact, they may not even be willing to give the appearance of trying to negotiate.  This is especially true of a DSM-IV malignant narcissist dictator of the ethno-nationalist kind who refuses to share the world equitably with other people, but seeks to make his chosen people great at the expense of all the other people on earth.  This, for instance, was the reason why the imperialist Winston Churchill steadfastly refused to relate to Mohandas Gandhi as a fellow human being.

The most dangerous situation of all for people resisting dictatorship comes when they are dealing with a dictator who truly has no intention or desire to submit to any will other than his own, yet who knows how to psychologically "play" people.  For then, the negotiations will be subject to gaslighting and all kinds of other psychological tricks.  In the words of Dr. Sharp, "The offer of 'peace' through negotiations with the democratic opposition is, of course, rather disingenuous."  Those who resist dictatorship are therefore likely to be very disappointed by the outcome of negotiations with the dictator.  

One observation therefore that must be made about people's ideas of strategic nonviolent resistance is that such resistance is not, and does not depend on, negotiation.  This is a key point which is frequently missed.  People who hear the term "nonviolent resistance" frequently conjure up images of M. K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King as "spiritual" people and assume that the call to such resistance is a call to try to win your oppressor to your side by showing how "spiritual" you are.  They equate a call to such resistance with a call to the kind of "spirituality" that can "melt the hearts" of oppressors.  In other words, they see strategic nonviolent resistance as a form of negotiation.  (BTW, I am all for spirituality as long as it is the right kind.  See 1 Corinthians 2.)

It is much more accurate to view strategic nonviolent resistance (called "political defiance" in From D to D) as a means by which those under tyranny shatter the power of the tyrant without violence - and without negotiations.  For this to happen, the mass of oppressed people must become unified around a small number of extremely concrete goals, and must withdraw cooperation from the tyrant in specific, coherent, coordinated ways - ways that are determined by, and that follow, a wise grand strategy.  In this respect, strategic nonviolent resistance is very much like laser light.  Consider for a moment a typical suburban house of the 1950's.  In each room of the house, there would have been light fixtures with one or more incandescent bulbs rated from 60 to 100 watts apiece.  Thus, the total amount of power drawn by the house for the purpose of lighting might be as high as 1 kilowatt if all the lights were turned on.

Now 1 kilowatt of power devoted to lighting up such a house might make the house bright, but it would not accomplish anything else except maybe driving up the electric bill of the homeowner.  This is because the light is emitted over a wide range of frequencies and in all directions.  But the light of a laser is coherent, focused, monochromatic, and unidirectional.  This is why a 1 kW laser can cut through steel plate, whereas ten 100-watt light bulbs can only make your house bright.  The goal of the organizers of effective resistance against a dictator is to turn a large number of their fellow sufferers into a coherent, focused source of effective non-cooperation, and to focus that non-cooperation on one or more of the dictator's pillars of support until the pillars start to shatter.  How this is done will be discussed in my next installment in this series, God willing.  If you want to read ahead, read Chapter 3 of From D to D.

A 5 kW handheld laser cutter

From D to D - An Introduction

As I promised several posts ago, today starts the first of a series of posts I would like to write as a study guide and commentary on a key text on strategic nonviolent resistance.  Today also seems to be the first day in which Blogger won't have their legacy posting interface available, so I hope I can make it through this post without too much pain and suffering on my part.  

The text I want to walk us through is From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  It can be downloaded for free from the Albert Einstein Institution, or you can download it by clicking on the link in the first sentence of this paragraph.  If you're too busy to be able to spend a lot of time reading, you can download a free audio recording here.  

Today we'll focus on the first chapter, titled, "Facing Dictatorships Realistically."  And it is important to note that the first edition of this book was published in 2002, while the fourth edition was published in 2010.  The period from 1989 to 2011 was indeed marked by a number of impressive victories for those who were struggling for democracy in many autocratic regimes which existed during that time frame.  However, as many scholars have noted, the period from 2011 to the present has been characterized by a period of intense democratic backsliding, defined by one source as "a...decline in the quality of democracy...caused by the State-led weakening of political institutions that sustain the democratic system."  It is important to note that democratic backsliding does not originate only from the obvious members of a State government.  When capitalism is allowed to run unchecked, private interests can become powerful enough to buy off governments.  This is called regulatory capture, and it is a game that the world's richest people can play with ease.  (You may not know this, but the world's 26 richest people "own" (or lay claim to) as much wealth as 50 percent of the world's population.)

Therefore it is quite likely that if you're an ordinary stiff like me, you either have awakened, are awakening, or will one day soon awaken to a nation and a world which you didn't sign up for, a world or a nation ruled by people who think you would look good barbecued and stuck between two pieces of bread.  You may also discover that you are a member of an entire people who have been designated for exploitation by the wealthy and powerful.  The question then becomes what to do.

Scholars of strategic nonviolent resistance have a general answer to that question, yet they realize that much of the world's population has been conditioned by myths of redemptive violence to see violence as a means of righteous and effective social change.  (For examples of this myth in action, just watch a week of American television.)  In severe cases of injustice and oppression, the oppressed may come to see violence as the only effective answer to the oppression.  Therefore, in Chapter 1 of From Dictatorship to Democracy (shortened in this series of posts to "From D to D"), Gene Sharp takes us through an exploration of the various options available to ordinary people who find themselves victims to ruling powers who want to exploit them.

Sharp examines four possible responses to repression: 

1. Hoping for change via the intervention of another rival power (or, hoping for "foreign saviors" to intervene)
2. Hoping for change through elections and other seemingly democratic tools
3. Hoping for change by forming an armed militia to achieve regime change by killing a bunch of your opponents
4. Strategic nonviolent resistance (which Gene Sharp called "political defiance" in his book)

Let's focus on response #3 for a moment.  As a Christian, I am forbidden to advocate or choose violence as a means of liberation.  However, there are people who might look at such a prohibition as unrealistic moralizing, just as such people, if they were kids, might have called me a "Momma's boy" when I was a kid because I brushed my teeth three times a day or because I looked both ways before I crossed the street.  To such people I would answer that people who refuse to brush their teeth or who refuse to look before trying to cross busy streets on foot sooner or later learn that their parents had very good reasons for admonishing us kids the way they did.  And the reasons for refusing to use violence for political or economic liberation have been very well documented by social scientists such as Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan in books such as Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.  

But in case there are people who are not convinced, let's try a little thought experiment.  Say that you are a member of a historically marginalized group in the United States, and you chafe against an environment in which the President of the U.S., the members of many law enforcement agencies, and a number of redneck militias are trying to target you because of the color of your skin or your language of birth.  Say moreover that you have decided that a violent response is your only chance of changing your situation.  Immediately you run into a problem, namely, that in order to apply violence, you'll need weapons.  Given the current state of armaments among belligerents, you'll need at the least a good assault rifle.  A decent assault rifle costs around $1,000.  So you'll need to smash your piggy bank (and maybe a few other people's piggy banks) and eat ramen noodles for a few months if you just want to equip yourself.

Now violence is more effective at achieving political change when a number of violent actors join forces and pool their resources.  But if you are just starting from scratch, equipping a decent force with assault rifles will quickly get rather "spendy" as they say where I live.  For instance, equipping a 1,000 man force will require you to spend a million dollars.  And that's not counting the cost of ammunition.  Ammo will in fact be a recurring cost, because you'll need to practice regularly with your weapons in order to get good at using them.  Where will you get the money for all of that?  

(Wanna be insurgent goes to bank to take out a loan.  Insurgent to loan officer: "Uh, I need some money..."  Loan officer to insurgent: "How much do you need?"  Insurgent: "Uh, a million and some change..." Loan officer: "What do you have for collateral?"  Insurgent: "A two-bed, one bath house, a 25 year old car, and a German Shepherd who's missing a few teeth."  Loan officer: "Ohhh,... and what are you going to do with the money???"  Insurgent: "Uh, make some noise...?")

 A further problem arises when you actually start your "revolution", namely, the very much non-zero probability that you or your compatriots will get shot.  If that happens, you lose your $1,000 per rifle!

But it gets even better.  Your opponent will have much more than 1,000 men to match your 1,000-man force.  For starters, he will have other things besides assault rifles.  Take mechanized infantry fighting vehicles such as the M2 Bradley.  Do you want to match your opponent's capability here?  You too can have an M2...for around $3.2 million.  Try taking out a loan for one of those!  Note also that many police forces in this country have similar vehicles at their disposal.  And if you somehow manage to scrape together enough for a (very small) fleet of M2s, you've still got to deal with attack aircraft ($46.3 million for an A-10, $94 million for a budget version of the F-35, $4 million for a combat drone).   In other words, if you're trying regime change through violence, the violent option is very, very spendy!

Moreover, the violent option is no guarantor of righteous, effective change, even in countries whose militaries are not anywhere near as capable as the Unites States military.  In weaker countries, low-level guerilla war very often degenerates into decades-long "conflict traps" which lower the quality of life for all citizens while leaving ruling elites still firmly in power  Far too many of these guerilla uprisings end in failure.  Just ask the Zapatistas.  

Next post (God willing): Chapter 2, "The Dangers of Negotiations."  Feel free to read ahead.