to assess whether there are technological improvements that would aid the struggle. This might involve looking at the use of radio in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the role of agriculture and food delivery systems in Palestine during the intifada. This approach is valuable in gaining a feeling for particular research projects, but it does not provide an overview of the areas of science and technology most likely to be useful for nonviolent struggle.
Research Proposals
The next possibility is to look at proposals for research. To get an overview, it is useful to look at the Dutch book
An inventory of organisations and social structures, such as government bureaucracies, corporations and pressure groups, examining how an aggressor might seek to control them and how they might be strengthened to resist takeover.
An examination of centralised versus decentralised coordination of social defence, surveying studies of resistance to the Nazis during World War II, guerrilla warfare, military strategy and other areas.
Collection of information about technologies of repression and what can be done to oppose them. (This is discussed in chapter 8.)
An examination of the influence of the new information technologies on the capacity for both repression and social defence. (This is a central theme in chapter 5.)
An investigation of databases and personal files, how they might be misused and protected, and the social effects of measures for dealing with them. (This topic is dealt with briefly in chapter 5.)
An assessment of the value of instructions for workers in government bureaucracies on resisting occupation by an aggressor.
An inventory of key people and positions in government bureaucracies in relation to social defence.
A study of the reception to the idea of social defence, surveying social defence advocates, media, government bureaucracies, etc.
A study of factors promoting psychological health, focussing on child rearing and the school system, and their relevance to willingness to resist injustice.
A listing and examination of basic assumptions and unsolved questions in writings about social defence.
A survey of theories and ideas of writers on nonviolent resistance and their relevance to action.
An analysis of Dutch nonviolent struggle during the 1920s and 1930s and Dutch resistance to the Nazis.
An assessment of Alex Schmid’s ten conditions needed for the success of social defence.
An examination of the process of conversion from military defence to social defence, called “transarmament.” (An aspect of this is discussed in chapter 10.)
An assessment of the value to social defence of Lazare Carnot’s method of studying new fields “by stating problems as double negating sentences to come to new knowledge.”
An examination of the idea of the centre of gravity in a defence system, looking at both theory and case studies.
An inventory of means of confrontation, their relationships, their connection to the centre of gravity, and their relevance to strategic goals.
A study of different social defence security systems and how building each one up might affect social conditions after a war.
An examination of Jurgen Habermas’s distinction between strategic action and communicative action and the relevance of this distinction to social defence.
An inventory of goals and weapons of opponents of social defence, and an assessment of likely conflicts.
An examination of occupations by military forces since World War II and implications for social defence.
A study of the political effects of introducing social defence, including effects on diplomacy, the economic system and political structures.
An analysis of spying (“intelligence services”), how it might operate against a social defence system and how it might be resisted.
An examination of what and how information might need to be collected as part of a social defence system; in other words, an examination of social defence intelligence services.
Most of these research projects would require years of investigation. Their scope is not revealed by these brief descriptions. This list hints at the vast amount of research that could be carried out into social defence. Indeed, given that the military spends billions of dollars each year on research, it can be anticipated that a full-scale social defence system might spawn a similar mass of research. Therefore, the 24 projects listed here from de Valk’s book would only be the barest beginning of a full-scale social defence research effort.
Most of the 24 projects are social rather than technological: they deal largely with history, psychology, politics, ideology, strategy and policy. Only three — the third, fourth and fifth as listed — provide any focus on technology. This gives an indication of the relative neglect of the technological dimension in the nonviolence field. Indeed, searching through writings on nonviolence, there is remarkably little attention to technology, so it is worth mentioning those few writers who deal with it.
The earliest and most important was novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley, whose ideas are described in the prologue. Then there is leading peace researcher Johan Galtung, who has made specific suggestions for specific technological developments that would aid a social defence system, especially in his 1968 paper “On the strategy of nonmilitary defense: some proposals and problems.” He suggests, for example, that research could be done into how to design a country’s physical equipment so that it can be sabotaged appropriately. Since Galtung’s ideas are so insightful, it is worth quoting his entire account on this point.
The task would not be to blow up a factory completely,
. Which part this is and how much will have to be removed would be a subject of meticulous calculation, where the availability of substitutes, or substitute uses of the remaining parts of the factory, would play a great role. Such calculations are well within the reach of modern, computerized societies. Thus, in an airplane it would probably not lead to the removal of the propeller (since the engine could then be used for other purposes), but of some small, highly specialized part of the engine, and so on. In the tertiary sectors of society, it would generally be easier since these sectors (except transport and communication) are mainly concerned with symbolic activity, so that the removal or destruction of files, codes, manuals of procedure, membership files, population data, means of financial tranactions, etc., should cause a high degree of uselessness. Transport and communication are also relatively easily reduced in efficiency. But in the primary sector it would generally be less easy, since the facilities here are more like territory. However, pits can be undermined and fields can be rendered useless by chemical means — and better technology could make both strategies time dependent, so that even though the destruction would be irreversible for the time being, it would still only be temporary. It might be argued that all the enemy then would have to do, would be to sit down and wait for usefulness to recur — but the counter-strategy against that again would be to calculate the timing of destruction as well as recovery, or to have options for repeated destruction.
Richard Wendell Fogg raised a few relevant points, for example noting the importance of broadcasting to the population of an aggressor’s country.[3] Eminent nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp devoted a page to general comments about the need to question standard assumptions about large technological scale and centralised control over energy, food, production and transport; he suggested that attention should be paid to technology with the aim of diffusing social power.[4] Aside from these authors, though, little had previously been done before my own work. The contrast with the enormous military research and development programmes is striking.
There are two obvious groups who might have been expected to undertake studies of science and technology for nonviolent struggle. The first is activists and scholars in the field of nonviolent action. As far as
