The costs of rejecting peace
I attended a speech by author Arundhati Roy recently. One of many interesting things she said was that governments that ignore peaceful requests from their people then 'privilege violence.'It makes sense. When governments tell you that your peaceful demands mean nothing, what is left?
I've been thinking about this quite a bit and reviewing possible examples. If you were a set of 13 British colonies and you wished for independence (or a variety of reforms including representation in government), and the government laughed at your request, what does that tell you? It tells you that war, economic sabotage, and other tactics remain, because your rulers don't respect your peaceful request. The 13 colonies which became the United States engaged in civil disobedience (Boston Tea Party) and terrorism (going to war without wearing matching uniforms; fighting the war from cover, rather than marching in organized lines facing the enemy; engaging in sabotage and spying) to gain its independence. Because the U.S. eventually won, none of those tactics are described as terrorism in U.S. history books. Which is interesting, but which doesn't change their nature. The U.S. 'did what it had to do' to win independence, retroactively justifying any act.
[Roy notes that the Indian independence movement was not completely non-violent, as much as we'd like to believe it was.]
Currently and recently, if you look at disputes around the world, you see that Roy's words are painfully accurate. People in Uzbekistan who asked politely for a just system of governance have been executed, leaving only radicals who have seen the government rule out non-violent action from their list of options. In Iran, the U.S. chased out an elected leader, and replaced him with a king, who then killed off moderate, peaceful opposition members. This left radicals and violent people to figure out how to be rid of him. The country is STILL suffering from the rule of the radicals. Iraq? Hussein killed off his moderate opposition over time. Those who find themselves in opposition to the temporary government remember what they learned under Hussein. Israel constantly ignored both peaceful requests and international courts which ruled its actions unjust. If Israel ignores the law and ignores the peaceful, the groups oppressed by the Israeli government stop listening to their peaceful leaders, and turn to other options.
Those of us who believe in peaceful solutions are constantly being undermined by groups and governments who do not listen to peaceful solutions. Every time an authority rejects a peaceful demand, those moderates arguing for peaceful methods lose credibility with everyone on their side. And the list of options for resolution, ranging from peaceful to violent, loses a peaceful option. The list gets shorter.
We don't benefit from this. Only the violent on both sides gain, and gain only justifications for violent actions.
If governments were serious about stopping violence, including terrorism, they would listen to peaceful demands and provide procedures for requested changes to be made and for grievances to be addressed. The methods by which groups gain independence from their current rulers, for example, invariably lead to either violence to win freedom or government violence to suppress the demand for freedom. If a non-violent, internationally sanctioned method to acquire independence was available, groups would choose it. If they are given little or no choice between receiving violent suppression and engaging violent rebellion, it becomes morally difficult to challenge their choice.
