Introduction
Nonviolent struggle is a technique for conducting conflicts by social, psychological, economic, and political methods of protest, noncooperation, and disruptive intervention.
It is a technique built on the social, economic, and political application of basic human stubbornness—the determination and ability to dissent, to refuse to cooperate, to defy, and to disrupt. In other words, people may refuse to do things they are asked to do, and may do what they are forbidden to do.
All governments rely on cooperation and obedience for their very existence. When people choose to withhold or withdraw that cooperation, governments are left without any pillars to support their weight.
Nonviolent struggle has been applied in various types of conflicts throughout human history to resist oppression, undermine
dictatorships, oppose foreign occupations, defend detested minorities, and to expand freedom.
Such struggles in the past have largely been the result of intuition, chance events, improvisation, and people acting without clearly identifying their objectives, or without understanding what was really required to achieve them.
Some of these struggles displayed a degree of tactical (or shortterm) planning, but very few operated under grand strategic plans
for the development and conduct of the overall struggle.
Now, groups engaged in nonviolent struggle no longer need to re-invent the wheel. Through deeper understanding of this technique, the sharing of this knowledge, and the use of strategic, or long-term, planning, nonviolent struggle is becoming more effective.
Elements of Strategic Planning
The following are some of the key elements requiring attention when planning a nonviolent struggle:
Phase I: Initial Assessment and Analysis
Examine the issues at stake as seen by both sides.
- Prepare an analysis of the cultural, political, and socio-economic systems present in the society or country, as well as
the population distribution. - Prepare a strategic estimate, meaning: identify the strengths and weaknesses of both sides to the conflict. This includes
identification of the sources of power for the contending sides and the institutions that serve as their pillars of support, an
analysis of resources available to or controlled by each side, an examination of the degrees of dependency each side has
on the other for meeting particular needs, and the relative struggle power of the two sides. - Identify which of the opponents’ sources of power can be best targeted to be weakened or removed.
- Identify and examine the potential roles and attitudes of third parties to the conflict, including the “non-committed” population-at-large.
- Identify other external factors affecting possible courses of action: geography, weather, climate, infrastructure, etc.
- Identify what other kinds of pressures may lead to gaining the resisters’ objectives.
- Examine the above factors to identify whether existing conditions are favorable or unfavorable to conducting a nonviolent struggle within a particular timeframe. Which of those conditions are “fixed,” which are variable, and which can be directly influenced by the actions of the resisters or their adversaries?
Phase II: Strategy Development
Develop a grand strategy for the overall conflict. Identify the objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms. Calculate in general terms how the nonviolent struggle should operate in order to achieve that objective. This is the broad, long-term, master concept for the conduct of the struggle, coordinating and directing all appropriate and available resources of the struggle group.
- Can the primary objective of the conflict be achieved in a single all-out campaign? If so, plan how to do that. If not, the struggle will need to be deliberately phased to include more limited campaigns for secondary but important objectives.
- Develop strategies for individual campaigns for more limited objectives to be obtained during the course of struggle. This is where the broad framework of the grand strategy becomes more detailed, to answer the who, what, where, when, and how in the planning of a particular campaign in the conflict.
- Select specific short-term tactics and individual methods of action that will implement the chosen strategy. It is very important to select tactics and methods carefully within the framework of a particular strategic campaign, and only after one has developed a grand strategy. Nonviolent methods that can be selected include those of protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention. Some will work better than others in different situations, depending largely on the grand strategy and overall objective, the strategic estimate, and the objective of the individual campaign. Some methods will be more capable than others of restricting and severing the regime’s sources of power.
- Ensure that the adopted strategic plan is harmonious in its objective, types of pressures to be applied, and selected tactics and methods.
Phase III: Capacity Building
- Ensure that the selected strategies for the struggle are within the capacity of the population to implement. If they are not, deliberate efforts will be needed to strengthen the population’s capacity. Or, the strategies will need to be modified.
- Strengthen organizations and institutions that are outside the opponents’ control, especially if the grand strategy calls for
using these independent bodies during the struggle for applying noncooperation and defiance. - Plan for third-party assistance, but do not rely on it.
Phase IV: Open Struggle
- Concentrate the resisters’ strengths against the opponents’ weaknesses to gain selected objectives according to the grand strategy, strategy, and selected methods, especially in restricting and severing the opponents’ sources of power.
- Ensure that the strategic plan is applied in a disciplined way without violence that will weaken the resistance.
- Ensure that the struggle activities help to empower the resisters.
- Ensure the resisters’ access to critical resources.
- Keep the opponents off-balance.
- Defy the opponents’ repression but stick to one’s own forms of struggle.
- Act, rather than react. Maintain the initiative and momentum. The struggle should be conducted on the terms of the resistance group, not the opponents.
- Continuously re-assess and evaluate the conduct of the struggle according to the strategic plan.
Phase V: Conclusion of the Conflict
- Success, failure, or mixed results?
- Conduct a post-conflict assessment and plan for the future.
These are only elementary notes for the application of strategic nonviolent struggle.
Access Resource
- Chapter 3: Steps in Strategic Planning for Nonviolent Struggles against Repressive Regimes, There are Realistic Alternatives, ogs 25 – 29 (PDF)
- Chapter 3: Steps in Strategic Planning for Nonviolent Struggles against Repressive Regimes, There are Realistic Alternatives (Audio)
Explore Further
- 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp
- Can Nonviolent Struggle Defeat a Dictator? This Database Emphatically says Yes
- SNAP: Synergizing Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding: An Action Guide
- The Politics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp, 1973 (Book)
- Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century
- Gene Sharp — the lonely scholar who became a nonviolent warrior, Waging Nonviolence, Geoge Lakey
- Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, Gene Sharp
- From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp
- Social Power and Political Freedom, Gene Sharp
- Pillars of Power Analysis: Identify the Institutions
