Slideshows about nonviolence and nonviolent resolution of conflicts, economic alternatives, ecology, social change, spirituality : www.irnc.org , Slideshows in english An alternative to armed defence Defence, a vital function Dealing with new threats Alternative to armed defence Conventional defence Armed popular defence nuclear defence.

1. Étienne Godinot
Translation : Claudia McKenny Engström
16.03.2015
Séries “Towards a nonviolent civil defence”
1- An alternative
to armed defence

2. Towards a nonviolent civil defence
Sources
- Jean-Marie Muller (Vous avez dit « Pacifisme ». De la menace nucléaire à la
défense civile non-violente, Le Cerf, 1984 ; Désobéir à Vichy Presses Universitaires
de Nancy, 1994; Dictionnaire de la non-violence, Relié Poche, 2005; L’impératif de
désobéissance. Fondements philosophiques et stratégiques de la désobéissance
civile, Le passager clandestin, 2011, etc.);
- Brochure Armée ou défense civile non-violente (by Olivier Maurel and a group of
civil and military, éd. Combat non-violent, 1975)
../..

3. Vers une défense civile non-violente
Sources (suite)
- Jacques Sémelin, Sans armes face à Hitler. La résistance civile en Europe, 1939-
1943, Payot, 1989
- La dissuasion civile, Christian Mellon, Jean-Marie Muller and Jacques Sémelin,
Fondation pour les Études de Défense Nationale, 1985
- MAN publications, including brochures
* Se défendre sans se détruire, Gilbert Girondeau, François Vaillant, Hugues Colle,
1982
* Non violence : éthique et politique, éd. Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le
progrès de l’homme, 1996
- Les stratégies civiles de défense, Acts of the international Colloquium organised by
the IRNC in Strasbourg, éd. ANV 1986,
etc.

4. Towards a nonviolent civil defence
Contents
• Slide 1. An alternative to armed defence
• Slides 2. Historical examples of non-armed civil resistance to military
aggression: the Second World War and Czechoslovakia 1968
• Slide 3. Nonviolent civil resistance against communist dictatorships in
Eastern Europe
• Slides 4. Non-armed civil resistance against dictatorships, coups and
terrorism
• Slide 5. Definition and schema of nonviolent civil defence
• Slide 6. Conditions of a nonviolent civil defence
• Slide 7. Transarmament

5. Diaporama 1
An alternative to armed
defence
Contents
- Defence, a vital function
- Nonviolence is neither pacifism nor antimilitarism
- Is armed defence really efficient ?
- Different forms of armed defence
• Conventional defence
• Popular armed defence
• Nuclear deterrence

6. Defence, a vital function
Defence is a vital function of all living organisms. All
existence is a fight for life, a struggle that implies means of
defence against aggressions. This necessity concerns
societies just as much as living beings.
It would be wrong to believe that we could live in a world
without conflict. Coexistence between men and people must
become pacific, but there will always remain a conflictual part.
Photos : - Cells organising their defence against a virus
- The illusion or the pious wish for Peace and Love. “Rather pious wishes than
impious ones, but that does not change reality” teases J-M. Muller. Peace and
love are far reaching spiritual objectives. Nonviolence aims at a political
objective : ensuring law and justice in a respectful balance of power with ones
opponent.

7. Looking for an alternative
War is a method of action, and its finality is just when it
aims at defending or rehabilitating human rights. The
method is detestable, but the action no less necessary.
To promote a policy for disarmament, it is necessary to
conceive “the functional equivalents to war” that will
allow nations to defend themselves using other means
than war.
Peace is not what most matters : it is first Justice, which
supports dignity and freedom.

8. The functions of defence
A defence policy must anticipate situations which are not
probable nor predictable today, but that may occur tomorrow.
It must organise a national reaction in case of external or
internal aggression.
It must also dissuade the aggressor, by showing him that the
damages and difficulties he would face would be far greater
than the benefits he hopes to gain with his aggression.

9. Dealing with new threats
The new and real threats that weigh on our societies are
no longer army invasions seeking conquest or
enslavement.
They are of a completely different nature :
- fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, terrorism,
-economic, oil, food or ecological crisis,
- social disintegration in societies struck by mass
unemployment…
Photos :
- Genocide in Rwanda, 1994
- Attack against the Twin Towers in New York, 11th September 2001.

10. Nonviolence is not pacifism
The pacifist is the one who wants peace at all price,
be it at the price of justice, who prefers whatever
peace to whatever war. There can be a shameful
peace, such as the one gained with the Munich
agreements and denounced by Gandhi.
Pacifism can be a “criminal mistake” (Simone Weil)
if the community does not prepare an alternative to
armed defence against aggression and oppression.
But we share with the pacifists that war is madness
and absurdity…
Photos :
- Munich Agreements, September 1938
- Slaughter in Verdun trenches, 1916.

11. Nonviolence is not anti-military
Sentencing the military staff is always an injustice and
a mistake. War is always deadly, but military
contingents are not necessarily assassins.
Partisans of nonviolence respect the military and those
who believe war or military actions might be helpful to
secure peace and law enforcement.
Photos :
- Maxime Leforestier and the song “Parachutiste” (1972)
- Military intervention in Libya after UN authorisation on 17th March
2011, following the Arab League’s request, to protect the population
of Benghazi threatened by M. Gaddafi. Alain Juppé was the minister
of Defence at the time. The problem is that international intervention
was only military, and not political, economic or social (elections with
no process of reconciliation), and thus, political chaos succeeded
Kaddafi’s dictatorial regime…

12. Dialoguing with the military
While refusing militarism and militarisation
(nuclear testing or simulating, arms sales,
military budgets…),
partisans of nonviolence dialogue,
contradictory yet respectful and most often
cordial, with the military and politicians
- on the dangers of the race to armament
- on the possibilities offered by strategies of
non-collaboration and civil intervention for
peace.

13. Does a defence army protect the territory ?
- In 1814
- 1815
- 1970
- 1914 *
- 1940,
In each of these conflicts, France was invaded
each time.
• *in 1914-1918, the Germans who had almost reached Paris by
100 km, were stopped by a trench war and the disasters we
know.
Photos :
- Siege and Paris bombing by Prussians, 1870
- German army entering Paris, 1942.

14. Does a defence army protect the population ?
The proportion of civilians among war victims
increases to reach absurd numbers :
- 1914-18 war : 5 % civilians
- 1939-45 war : 45 % civilians
- Korea, 1953 war : 60 % civilians
- Vietnam war : 85 % civilians
- Nuclear war : 100 % civilians
Photos : -1914-18 war
- Hiroshima, 6th August 1945

15. Conventional defence
It consists in pushing or destroying the armies of the
aggressor by military terrestrial, maritime or areal
action, led by professionals or conscripts.
- It defends the territory very badly
- It is costly in human lives
- It rests on a body of specialists or a limited fraction
of the population, most of the time men aged 18-50
and in good health.
Photos : Armament during 2nd World War :
- American tank Patton
- English plane Spittfire
- German cruiser.

16. An armed popular defence
It consists in arming a population, in reference to the
Chinese, Indochinese, Algerian wars of liberation, Mao
Zedong or General Giap engineering constructions, Swiss
defence systems or in Yugoslavia during Tito times.
Photo : General Giap (Indochinese War)
It does not consist in defending borders, but harass the
enemy until he abandons.
It implies two conditions: vast natural shelters difficult to
penetrate and an essentially rural population.
../..

17. An armed popular defence
- It is very costly in human lives
- It is inconceivable in a largely urbanised country : it is easy
to deprive an entire city of water, food, electricity.
Civilian population will be reduced to having a passive role
and a hostage.
Such a defence cannot be democratic. The fight against a
modern army implies : a hierarchical, pyramidal and
centralised system of decision-making, military secrecy,
clandestinity, military and technical competence.
Photo above : Algerian war (1954-1963)

18. Nuclear deterrence,
suicidal and totalitarian
It makes no sense to take, in order to defend oneself, the
risk of destruction.
Nuclear threat is the equivalent of taking a population
hostage.
Nuclear deterrence implies citizens giving up their destiny
to the sole decision of the Head of State.
- Albert Camus (photo above) : “Mechanical civilisation has reached its
last level of savagery″.
- George Bernanos (photo below) : “To the world of atomic bombs we can
only oppose a movement of consciences, by the greatest number of
consciences possible”.

19. Nuclear deterrence is inefficient
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, former French President,
wrote in his Mémoires, in the hypothesis of a mass
soviet invasion in Western Europe during the “cold
war” :
“A conclusion has been gradually reached : neither
from afar, where I stand, nor on the field, where our
military forces fight, does the decision to launch an
atomic bomb seem opportune (…). Whatever
happens, I would never take the initiative of a
gesture that might lead to the destruction of our
country”.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Power and Life, vol. II,
L’affrontement, Le Livre de Poche, 1992, p. 196 and following.

20. Nuclear deterrence is dangerous
- because of weapon proliferation in the world
(USA, Russia, China, UK, France, India,
Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Saudi Arabia,
Iran, etc.)
- because of the risk of causing accidents. For ex. : a head of
the Pentagone revealed on 27th October 2010, that US
forces had lost contact, 4 days earlier and for 45 minutes,
with 50 intercontinental nuclear missiles of a 5 500 km
range. An electronic breakdown was the cause.
(Source : Le Monde, 29th October 2010).
Photo above : Countries with nuclear weapon.

21. Nuclear deterrence demobilises the population
on matters of defence
Akin the Ligne Maginot erected before
Nazism, (photo above)
the principal risk presented by the nuclear
weapon is its tendency to demobilise the
population on the matter of defence, leaving
it completely helpless in case of aggression,
wherever it comes from.
On this topic, see also the series of slides on “The
Nuclear Weapon”.
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