Diana Francis
This article was written before the Ukrainian military began their counter-offensive in early September. The advances made have encouraged talk of ‘victory’ and the maximisation of Ukrainian war aims – even beyond the military defeat of Russia. The need for a negotiated end to the death and destruction becomes ever more urgent.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was an illegal act of aggression and the war that has ensued is a disaster of death, destruction and displacement on a…
The ‘Arab Spring’ revived and broadened interest in the power of nonviolent popular action to challenge tyranny. However, the level of positive outcome promised by events in Tunisia has not been replicated elsewhere, and the slide of nonviolence into unequal violence in the face of violent repression, or civil war backed by foreign military intervention, has led to disillusion and soul-searching.
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The ‘Arab Spring’ has revived and broadened interest in the power of nonviolent popular action to challenge tyranny. However, the positive outcome promised by events in Tunisia has not been replicated elsewhere, and the slide of nonviolence into unequal violence in the face of violent repression, or civil war backed by foreign military intervention, has led to disillusionment and soul-searching.
Here in the UK at least, I believe we should stop insisting on ‘nonviolent revolution…
Adam Curle, founding Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, was born on 4 July 1916, into a family of thinkers. His mother, who had lost three brothers in World War I, instilled in him a loathing for all war. Nonetheless, he was a soldier in World War II, rising to the rank of Major, and after the war was over he worked, at the Tavistock Institute, for the rehabilitation of British Servicemen.
No doubt this experience, and his early study and university teaching as a…
Even for a lifelong pacifist it is hard in some circumstances to argue against military intervention.
The violence and brutality that are the fruit of thousands of years of militarismare so real that, in one situation after another, it is impossible not to long for aspeedy and effective solution. Military options are the ones we know best and that have the resources. The soldiers are ready and waiting, it seems. If they arenot sent in, we feel we have somehow connived in the…
