Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle

"Gene Sharp has been consistent over a period of 50 years in advocating more serious study of non-violent action. It’s also inevitable, if you have an American citizen who has been advocating this, that there will be people around the world – especially tawdry rulers and propagandists in dictatorial states – who accuse him of being a CIA agent or worse. It’s all absolute nonsense. I think the central line is that dictatorships and foreign occupation regimes depend upon the cooperation of the oppressed. If you take away that cooperation, you can take away some of the most ghastly features of 20th and 21st century politics. It’s not a totally new idea, but what is new about Gene is the systematic way in which he has investigated all the possible methods of non-violent action, and all the means by which there might be effective resistance to dictatorial regimes. It is an A to Z of terminology in non-violent action. One thing Gene feels passionate about is that some of this terminology is used very sloppily, including by the press. For example, he quite rightly points out that the word “non-violence” is often used in a loose way – he prefers the more specific term “non-violent action”. He feels that the sloppy use of terms has contributed to a lack of public and official understanding of what civil resistance is and how its techniques can best be used. I have differences with him on some matters. Particularly, I think that he is reluctant to concede that there is a definite role for force, sometimes even in conjunction with non-violent movements. One persuasive example is that during the American civil rights struggle, federal forces had to be brought in to protect marching demonstrators from being brutalised by local hooligans or state police in the southern states of America. It was they who enabled the famous Selma march [in 1965] to attain its objective. So I am quite comfortable – more so I suspect than Gene Sharp – with the idea that non-violent action can’t solve all problems. There’s no doubt that Sharp’s work had some influence on events, particularly in Egypt , where some of those involved have said as much. There have been many translations of his work, and people in some of these movements have also had training in his methods of struggle. It’s not just training in how to behave – it’s training in how to think about the pillars of power of the adversary, and how those pillars may be effectively undermined. So yes, that influence is there. There’s no doubt that there have been some very serious setbacks, including in Libya, Bahrain and Syria. These setbacks, to my mind, do suggest that there is a problem with civil resistance. The problem is that if an adversary is particularly bloody – or uses agents provocateurs to discredit the demonstrators by getting them to use force – then a civil resistance movement can easily turn into something more violent. It’s a really deep problem that has arisen sufficiently often that one can’t just think of it as an exception. We are left with the conclusion that civil resistance may work well against an adversary where there is a lot of internal dissension and doubt – as with latter-day communist regimes – but where a regime is tougher it may be necessary to soft-pedal civil resistance, to call off campaigns, to wait for better times. Sometimes, following such an approach, a defeat can turn into a success. I vividly remember being in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968, witnessing what was widely seen to be a defeat after an initially very successful popular resistance. And yet 21 years later, choosing his moment with the perfection of the theatrical impresario, Václav Havel in 1989 managed to bring about change in the Velvet revolution. That sense of timing – the ability to know when to act – is very important."