Whereas most pundits have focused on the role of social media in Egypt's revolution, what impressed me most was that one of the most powerful, entrenched regimes in the world was toppled by a nonviolent uprising. Does anyone doubt that if the protesters had resorted to violence, they would have been violently crushed by Mubarak?Egypt represents an extraordinary vindication of the philosophy of Gene Sharp, a political scientist whose work I described here last July. For decades, Sharp has argued that nonviolence is the best means of overthrowing corrupt, violent, repressive regimes. He disseminates his ideas through books such as From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (1993), which has been translated into 24 languages, including Arabic, and can be downloaded from the Web site of The Albert Einstein Institution, a tiny nonprofit founded by Sharp in 1983.
Sharp is not a moralist but a pragmatist, who bases his claims on an empirical analysis of history. He asserts that violence, even in the service of a just cause, often results in more problems than it solves, leading in turn to greater injustice and suffering; hence, the best way to oppose an unjust regime is through nonviolent action. Nonviolent movements are also more likely than violent ones to garner internal and international support and to lead to democratic, non-militarized regimes.
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Very interesting article!
ReplyDeleteRight! In the U.S. in the sixties, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee adopted non-violence as a strategy. Later Martin Luther King Jr. made it more of a philosophy. But it succeeded as a strategy then as now. Certainly the Egyptian people didn't have a real chance to go toe-to-toe with the military. They would have been defeated and if any non-combatants got caught in the crossfire, it would have been blamed on the militancy of the demonstrators.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading about how the Egyptians built their movement, leading up to January 25 -- very impressive.