I was surprised at the almost entirely negative response generated by my speculations yesterday on the use of passive resistance to the Russian invasion. I had added this comment to the Ukraine Update diary by Kos.
Whenever I hear all the cheerleading for Ukraine in this war, I think of the Viet Nam War when millions of Americans, in and out of uniform, resisted their own government’s aggression. Finally, that war did end with a US withdrawal and despite the fears of the time, life for the Viet Namese people became marginally better than it was when we were so deeply involved. War, as we used to say half a century ago, is not healthy for children and other living things.
Is it possible that Gandhi-style massive peaceful resistance could have been the better way for Ukraine to counter the Russian invaders? Faced with a general strike that shut down the entire agricultural and manufacturing sectors of Ukraine, what would have Putin have been able to do? Could that kind of non-violent alternative prevented the massive war which has taken, and will take, so many lives on all sides?
Of course, non-violent mass resistance would not result in billions of tax dollars going into the military-industrial complex both here and in other NATO countries….
Well, that comment struck most responders as hopelessly naive. But given the tragic results of US military commitments over the past many decades, the Ukrainian people might well have considered the Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Henry Thoreau model of resistance to unjust power.
During the Viet Nam War, some of the strongest and most consistent resistance to the war came from pacifist groups such as the Quakers, Catholic Worker, War Resisters League and unaffiliated conscientious objectors. They were opposed back in 1964 when LBJ escalated US military forces in the region and they continued to be active long after the original draft and then lottery conscription ended.
By 1975 the vast majority of our country was ready to leave Viet Nam and we quickly moved on into a draft-free future. I wonder now how many Americans ever think of the million or more dead in South East Asia? There is a powerful monument in Washington to the 70,000 Americans who died but nothing in our capital memorializes the Asian victims of that war.
The same pattern occurred 20 years ago when a very few of us opposed George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which also led to at least a million dead. Mainstream politicians like Joe Biden(and nearly everyone else except Bernie Sanders and a few outliers) supported that war in 2003. Only after it became clear by 2011 that we could not win any kind of victory, did the majority of our political leaders, led by President Obama, decide to pull out our combat troops. The same happened in Afghanistan where we left in 2021 without any public acknowledgment here at home of how many Afghanis died and were injured as the result of our military involvement.
The present US commitment to Ukraine is different primarily in that American soldiers are not involved. It is, to be frank, easier to support such a conflict. Americans are not dying in this war.
Perhaps, the Ukrainians will be able to battle Putin to a standstill and keep most of their country. Perhaps Putin’s power will collapse and they’ll get their whole country back. Or perhaps the US commitment will begin to fade and the Ukrainians will be forgotten. If that happens, it would be the fourth time in my lifetime that US military involvement led to a disaster for a nation we were ostensibly helping. And as Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest : “What’s past is prologue.”
Clearly, by 2022 there was very limited time to prepare the kind of massive training for peaceful resistance as I envision. But if training had begun in 2014 when Putin seized Crimea, it might have worked. One thing, at least , is undeniable: A massive non-violent resistance by the 41 million Ukrainians would not have required armaments or aid of any kind from the US and NATO. And, in addition to empowering the Ukrainian people, this strategy would have eliminated the chances of war between the major powers which now exist.