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Defending Canada: The Power of Nonviolent Defence

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The Threat

Canadians face a threat to the sovereignty of Canada and their democratic, pluralistic way of life. How do we defend ourselves?

Canada shares the longest unprotected border in the world with a country whose president has repeatedly called for the annexation of Canada. Trump in his inaugural address made his intentions clear. He stated that his administration would “expand our territory” and “carry our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada are the three territories that he immediately had in mind. We should not take Trump’s expansionist threats lightly.

The MAGA vision is one that most Canadians reject. It involves, in the first place, the consolidation of a Trump dictatorship. This part of the agenda is well advanced. This aspirant dictatorship is committing itself, in the second place, to building, in effect, Fortress America. It is fortifying its borders, expelling migrants and immigrants of colour with the use of repellent techniques, shutting down dissenting voices and centers of power, rigging the electoral systems, occupying “blue” cities, and imposing tariffs on former allies as much as former enemies.

The rhetoric of Canada as the “51st state,” moreover, suggests that what Trump has in mind is a Fortress North America, In this conception, Canada assumes, at best, the status of a vassal state. What Prime Minister Carney neutrally refers to as a “comprehensive economic and security partnership” may have the incremental effect of trading our independence and our children’s future for a modestly beneficial trade deal – unless we hold the line.

Consider what this subjugation would entail for Canadians. We would be bound to an autocratic and declining hegemon, which, in terms of technological development and ecological survival, is on the wrong side of history. Trump champions a “fossil-fuels-or-bust” economic model at a time of global transition to clean energy. He is gutting existing incentives and infrastructure projects for expanding the green transition. The Americans are thus ceding primacy in the “sunrise” industries of the post-carbon economy to China, the rising hegemon on the global scene.

Canada, if it loses its sovereignty to the US, will thus be part of a coalition of authoritarian petrostates in geopolitical rivalry with China and its expanding set of allies. Trump’s reactionary environmental agenda alone may mobilize climate/environmental activists to join the movement for nonviolent defence.

We must resist the bleak future of Fortress North America. Yet how do we effectively respond?

The unfortunate fact is that Canada has many vulnerabilities vis-à-vis the United States. We never thought that our major security threat would emanate from our erstwhile closest ally. But now it does.

An outright invasion is not a Trump priority at this stage. The Trump government will first try to subjugate Canada via economic coercion – primarily through a trade war – disinformation campaigns conducted largely through social media, and, probably, surreptitious support for the separatist movement in Alberta. It appears that all these tactics are underway; we are already under attack.

If these tactics fail, we cannot rule out an invasion. Its probability is not zero. The pretext might be the need to secure the northern border from alleged, though bogus, terrorist plots against the USA. Or to support an Albertan separatist movement from an allegedly “stolen” referendum, or alleged suppression by an overbearing Canadian government. How would we defend our way of life – that is, defend ourselves from impending fascism – if the need arises?

Military Defence?

A military defence, in the unlikely event of an invasion, would be ineffective and highly costly in casualties and damage to infrastructure and buildings.

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are outgunned by the superpower. But that is only part of their vulnerability. CAF are simply unprepared to defend Canada from the United States.

What was once our strength – integration with US armed forces – is now, in the Trump era, a liability.

  • Through NORAD, we have a binational military command. Canadian officers routinely work under American commanders.
  • The US owns and controls key defence systems, such as the Airborne Warning and Control Systems. 
  • Recently, according to Prime Minster Mark Carney, 80 percent of Canada’s defence purchases came from the US. These purchases entail a continuing dependence on the United States for maintenance, parts and updates. Critically, in certain cases, the US retains control of key operational software that governs the capabilities of the acquired weapons systems. This limitation applies to the exorbitantly expensive F-35 fighter jets and Surface Combatant warships. Our independence demands that we accept no more than the 16 F-35s already contracted.
  • Our government has not rejected participation in the “Golden Dome” missile defence system. Experts have long contended that such a defence system will not only be enormously expensive and ineffective but also lead to the militarization of space. In addition, it will confirm Canada’s role as the sidekick of a fading and reactionary power.
  • US control of information flows, together with Canada’s reliance on American surveillance apparatuses, create further vulnerabilities. In 2019, 80 percent of Canada’s Internet traffic was routed through communications lines and infrastructure situated within the United States. A shutdown of Internet communications in Canada might well precede an attack from the south.
  • A final vector of dependency lies in the training of Canadian military personnel. Joint training is designed to facilitate cooperation and interoperability between the US and Canadian forces. The same goals govern the many joint military exercises. But such interoperability does not bode well for an independent Canadian military defence.

All these forms of dependency and cooperation make it difficult for Canadian officers to even contemplate the United States as a potential threat.

A military defence of Canada will therefore be damaging and probably unsuccessful. What of an armed insurgency? Some scholars contend that an invasion of Canada would ignite a decades-long insurgency that would lead to the destruction of the United States. Yet this scenario seems both unlikely and exceptionally violent. Canadians, apart from a few veterans, have no experience of guerrilla warfare. An effective insurgency is thus improbable, as well as destructive.

Consequently, Canada must depend heavily on the strength of its institutions and its resolute people to maintain a democratic, pluralistic and ecologically sustainable way of life. We may need organized nonviolent resistance not only to counter an invasion, but also to protest against our own government, should it implicitly opt for vassal-state status within an increasingly fascist Fortress North America.

The Case for Nonviolent Defence

Nonviolent defence is particularly appropriate to the circumstances of small countries lying on the periphery of major powers. The smaller country cannot hope to prevail through military force, or at least not without sustaining immense death and destruction (as in Ukraine).

To many, the idea that unarmed civilians could deter, and if necessary, defeat an assault and occupation by a heavily armed expeditionary force seems absurd. Yet there are many historical examples in which nonviolent movements have defeated tyrants, ousted colonizers, achieved redress of historical grievances (minority civil rights, women’s rights, landlessness, homophobia), and out-maneuvered invading forces. Gandhi was the first major historical leader to draw attention to the potential power of nonviolent defence. A highly readable recent review of civil resistance is This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the 21st Century by Mark and Paul Engler. Gene Sharp, the “Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare”, spent his life drawing lessons from the many historical cases of nonviolent action in general and “civilian-based defence” in particular. (Sharp’s work is available online from the Albert Einstein Institution – https://www.aeinstein.org/ ).

Nonviolence works. For the period 1900-2019, Harvard’s Erica Chenoweth (in Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know) recorded 627 rebellious campaigns against tyranny or colonial or foreign rule. More than half of these campaigns that were nonviolent succeeded, whereas only about a quarter of violent uprisings achieved their goals. Since 2010, however, the success rate of nonviolent actions has fallen. Governments became more adept at countering standard nonviolent tactics through “smart repression”; new ones need to be invented.

Although nonviolent resistance can fail,, the historical record nonetheless bolsters the case for organized nonviolent defence. This form of warfare is essentially the application of civil resistance tactics to deter or defeat an occupation.

Three exemplary cases of nonviolent defence are Denmark’s response to an invasion by Nazi Germany, the Czech response to the invasion by Warsaw Pact armies to terminate the “Prague Spring” of liberalization in 1968, and the Ukrainian response in the early weeks of the Russian invasion of 2022.  In the Danish and Czech cases, the government realized an armed response to an invasion  would be quickly and violently suppressed. They thus side-lined the armed forces and called upon their citizens to engage in nonviolent resistance. The spontaneous actions in all three cases achieved some remarkable successes. One can only imagine how much more effective defense would have been if the people had received training in nonviolent strategy and tactics and had organized beforehand to resist in a disciplined manner. In Ukraine, the unarmed resistance was soon overtaken by battles between conventional armed forces.

Civilian-based defence was taken seriously in Finland, as well as the Baltic states and Poland following the latter group’s nonviolent independence struggles in 1990-1991. When these countries acceded to NATO (between 1999 and 2004) and sheltered under the nuclear deterrent provided by the United States, civilian defence fade into a pale civil defence.

Canada today, however, is in the same position vis-à-vis the US as the Baltic states were in vis-à-vis the Soviet Union in the 1990s. We can rely neither on a nuclear deterrent nor powerful allies to deter an attack. Our European allies would condemn US aggression, but they would do little more. We can depend only on ourselves.

Deterrence is the primary goal of nonviolent defence. The establishment of a voluntary and trained civil defence corps signals to a potential aggressor that Canadians are united and resolved to retain their independence and their values. Such an organization of volunteers would engage in training in how to handle crises, such as extreme weather, floods, wildfires, and health-related, in addition to invasions, cyber-attacks and disinformation. Unity and preparedness may discourage not only an invasion, but also destabilization campaigns.

Nonviolent defence must always be accompanied by a willingness to negotiate any genuine grievances. However, if an attack does come, Canadians are prepared.

In Canada, as elsewhere, nonviolent struggle is most effective when it draws upon trained volunteers. They will understand the importance of maintaining a disciplined nonviolence despite provocations. Volunteers will be aware of the variety of tactics (more than 340, according to Michael Beer’s useful manual), and the importance of versatility in shifting tactics as circumstances change. Nonviolent defence, as decentralized asymmetric warfare, requires groups thinking through strategic objectives via discussion.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to training. We can draw upon the previously mentioned accumulated wisdom of civil resistance. Let’s say we aim to train one percent of the Canadian population in 10-12 hours, in sessions of two hours length in the evenings and weekends.

This nation-wide training and organization would be facilitated if the Canadian government were involved in providing facilities and perhaps instructors in all regions of southern Canada. While nonviolent civilian defence must remain nonpartisan, that does not mean that the government should not lend logistical support.

But dependence on the government is ill-advised; governments can change, possibly leading to the termination and collapse of nonviolent defence.

Even if Canadians never face a military invasion, this voluntary effort provides major benefits. Canada is heavily dependent on the United States, culturally, economically, and militarily. As a national project, a voluntary Canadian Civil Defence Corps will foster a healthy sense of national identity and collective efficacy. The tools of nonviolent civilian defence, in addition, are useful in protecting Canada not only against annexation, but also against any future governmental surrender or authoritarian challenge. Free people should always be prepared to protect their freedom.

Next Steps

A Canadian Coalition for Nonviolent Defence formed in June 2025 with members throughout Canada. If you would like to join this coalition, as an individual or an organization, or receive further information, please contact me at info@scienceforpeace.org .

The Coalition considers that the immediate priorities are these:

  • Establish local chapters of nonviolent defence throughout the country. Realistically, each chapter would comprise 10-15 trained volunteers of all ages and genders and would draw on allies in the climate, Indigenous and social-justice movements as well as the peace movement. The numbers will expand over time. These chapters would be ready to function as the nucleus of a nonviolent defence in whatever region of Canada an incursion might take place. Even such a small number of trained volunteers places Canada in a better defensive position than obtained in Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Ukraine in 2022.
  • Each chapter should develop a contingency plan. The chapter, in communication with local social-justice, Indigenous, climate, environmental, religious, and other organizations, would decide where and when they would congregate in the event of an invasion. A designated meeting place is essential; it may be difficult to communicate after an attack as the US may shut down digital communications.
  • Place pressure on the government to remain strong and allow nonviolent training groups to utilize federal facilities throughout the country, at no charge, to conduct training.
  • Work out an amicable arrangement with the Canadian Armed Forces about the respective roles of the CAF and NVD in the defence of Canada. This arrangement must acknowledge that the logics of nonviolent defence and armed defence are in conflict. We need some creative thinking on this central issue.
  • Forge ties with nonviolent movements in the United States so that any action against Canada will spark widespread protests in the homeland. It is obvious that most Americans are our allies, not our enemies.

Nobody wants to contemplate that we may need to defend ourselves from our long-time ally. Yet the possibility of an invasion cannot be denied, and we must be prepared for that eventuality Furthermore, the preparation itself is empowering, because a people united, and trained in nonviolent action, can never be defeated.

The barrel of a revolver tied in a knot to symbolize nonviolence

10 Essential Things to Know about Nonviolent Resistance

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1.      Two traditions of thinking about nonviolence hold sway.

  • Principled nonviolence: Adherents decide to use nonviolent means on ethical grounds. In the Gandhian approach, nonviolence is a way of living a moral life.
  • Pragmatic nonviolence: Activists, seeking to win rights, freedom, or justice, choose to use nonviolent techniques because they are more effective than violent means in achieving these goals.

However, in practice, principled proponents, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, proved to be adept at pragmatically using nonviolent methods, Equally, some pragmatists hope for a world in which principled nonviolence can exist.

2.       Nonviolent resistance (NVR), from the pragmatic viewpoint, is a form of political struggle.

Unarmed civilians employ coordinated and unconventional methods to deter or defend against usurpers and foreign aggressors or to overturn injustices, though without causing or threatening bodily harm to their opponents. Examples of nonviolent methods include demonstrations, protests, strikes, stay-at-homes, boycotts, street theatre, derision of authorities, rebellious graffiti and other communications, shunning of collaborators, building alternative institutions, and many more.

3.       NVR is not a doctrine of passive resistance or acceptance of weakness.

It is not passive, but active, demanding coordinated and unconventional struggle. Far from manifesting weakness, NVR demands immense courage of resisters, who are aware their resistance may lead to injury, imprisonment, torture, or even death. NVR is thus not for the weak-hearted. It is a strategy only for those with the determination to persist in the face of repression.

4.    The aim of NVR is to build support and undermine the pillars of the opponent’s power.

NVR movements succeed by building up a large and diverse following of activists, winning over passive supporters, and precipitating demoralization and defections among the pillars of the established order (eg, the police, army, bureaucrats, insiders).

 5.    NVR is effective in comparison to violent campaigns.

Erica Chenoworth, who has undertaken path-breaking research, discovers that, of the 627 revolutionary campaigns waged worldwide between 1900 and 2019, more than half of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded in achieving their goals, whereas only about a quarter of the violent ones succeeded. Nonviolent struggles are twice as effective as violent struggles. Yet the influence of the military-industrial complex, the widespread glorification of violence in popular culture and the equating of masculinity with domination obscure the superiority of nonviolence as a political stratagem.

6.    The leverage of NVR stems from the dependence of rulers on the consent of significant sectors of the population (Gene Sharp’s insight).

Rulers cannot rule if bureaucrats obstruct, armed forces and police hold back, people shirk work and ignore laws and regulations, and foreign powers desert. Rulers do not need the support of entire populations; the Nazis could destroy Jews, Roma, the mentally and physically disabled, socialists and union leaders, so long as most ethnic Germans acquiesced to their rule. Hence, the task of nonviolent resisters is fourfold:

  • ·         to build a large and diverse movement
  • ·         to attract the loyalty of passive supporters
  • ·         to encourage the defection of pillars of the regime
  • ·         to attract support in the international community.

  7.    The effectiveness of NVR depends on many factors.

  • Organization: to attract the support of a large and diverse group of supporters.
  • Prior coalition building ensures a core of committed activists as unity is critical, the coalition needs both clear, unifying goals, and processes to resolve internal disputes
  • Leadership is needed, but it must be decentralized, to make it difficult for rulers to decapitate resistance by arresting its top leaders.
  • Training in nonviolent methods: an effective movement must be able to shift tactics as circumstances change. Noncooperation with the regime is one of the most effective sets of methods in the playbook, but these methods require coordinated action.
  • Strategic and tactical agility: protests and demonstrations are only the public face of nonviolent action; effective movements employ the full panoply of strategies, depending on the degree of repression by the rulers. The resisters win when they attract the support of passive supporters and precipitate mass defections among the pillars of the established order.
  • Nonviolent discipline. Rulers respond to NVR by neutralizing the leaders of the opposition, undermining the movement’s unity, and fomenting violent action on the part of protesters. If the last tactic works, the government can then justify violent repression. It can portray the civil resisters as a terrorist threat. The resisters can succeed only if it is clear to everyone who is the major threat, namely a ruthless and violent governing elite. Thus, destruction of property (such as the destruction of bridges as enemy forces advance) is permissible, so long as it entails no loss of life or injury. Collaborators of the regime can be shunned, but not assassinated. Such nonviolent discipline is difficult to maintain. It runs counter to one’s inclination to respond to violence with violence. The need for discipline underlines the importance of training.

8.      NVR can be employed to deter and defeat foreign aggressors, as well as to prevent or overthrow dictatorships and demand rights and justice.

Civilian-based defense, in the words of Gene Sharp in his book of that name (1990) is “a policy [whereby] the whole population and the society’s institutions become the fighting forces. Their weaponry consists of a vast variety of forms of psychological, economic, social, and political resistance and counter-attack. This policy aims to deter attacks and to defend against them by preparations to make the society unrulable by would-be tyrants and aggressors. The trained population and the society’s institutions would be prepared to deny attackers their objectives and to make consolidation of political control impossible. These aims would be achieved by applying massive and selective noncooperation and defiance. In addition, where possible, the defending country would aim to create maximum international problems for the attackers and to subvert the reliability of their troops and functionaries.” History holds many examples of civilian defense, including in Denmark and Norway during Nazi occupation and in Czechoslovakia following the 1968 “Prague Spring,” when a Warsaw Pact army sought to reimpose rigid Soviet-style Communism.

9.      NVR became less effective in the period since 2010.

Although nonviolent campaigns worldwide reached unprecedented numbers prior to the 2020 pandemic, their success rate fell. Erica Chenoworth in her 2021 book Civil Resistance provides the statistics. (However, nonviolent resistance remained more effective than violent campaigns.) Chenoworth also offers some tentative reasons for this comparative decline. She highlights “smart repression” by governments and strategic errors on the part of resistance movements. Each is a major subject, and each demands attention if NVR is not to repeat the errors of the past. Restrictions accompanying the pandemic (2020-2022) dampened NVR by rendering mass gatherings illegal and/or dangerous.

10.  “Smart repression” needs to be better understood and counteracted.

Nonviolent movements’ strength depends on maintaining unity among a diverse following, sustaining nonviolent discipline, and demonstrating versatility in nonviolent methods. Determined rulers will undermine the movement’s unity, provoke violent responses, and neutralize the leadership. Digital means of communication have assisted NVR movements in mobilizing large numbers of protesters and in spreading their messages via social media. But there is a dark side to digital technology. It allows governments to enhance surveillance of dissidents, identify leaders, and sow discord through misinformation campaigns. The effectiveness of the next phase of NVR depends both on neutralizing smart resistance and returning to the fundamentals of nonviolence: organization, training, nonviolent discipline, and the versatile use of the full panoply of nonviolent techniques

 

Gandhi is an icon of nonviolent resistance

How Nonviolent is Nonviolent Action?

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The relationship between violent and nonviolent action is not as clear-cut as it may at first appear.

In principle, as nonviolence guru Gene Sharp repeatedly reminds us, violence must not be combined with nonviolent action. Why? For one thing, violence will undermine the legitimacy and moral high ground enjoyed by nonviolent resisters. Why is this legitimacy so important? Because of its effect in undermining the morale of the violent attackers, creating dissension among supporters of the invaders/usurpers, and building international support to sanction the aggressors/usurpers of power. Conversely, violence creates fear that not only scares off potential supporters or resistance, but also motivates the oppressor’s police and armed forces to fight back more determinedly. Thus, nonviolent discipline is a key to success, claims Sharp with few dissenting. Continue reading →

total noncooperation with an occupying invader is like a walll the invader cannot penetrate

The Viability of Nonviolent Defence Today

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“Non-violent defense” is an oxymoron. Or so it appears to many people. You hear the word “defense”, you think of “military”. You hear the term “national security”, you think of a state’s military strength (and perhaps diplomacy). The military has hi-jacked the terms defense and national security. Consequently, it sounds absurd to talk about non-violent defense.

But is the idea so preposterous?

Consider the war in Ukraine. Civilian resistance to the Russian invaders is inspirational. Civilians have blocked tanks and convoys, berated or cajoled Russian soldiers to undermine their resolve, given wrong directions to Russian convoys, refused to cooperate, and mounted spontaneous protests in occupied areas. And all these tactics were improvised on the spot.

Think how more effective non-violent defense would have been if it had been planned, and if Ukrainians had been trained in non-violent methods. With a civilian defense system in place, the Ukrainian armed forces might have allowed the Russian tanks to enter the country unimpeded. No immediate deaths, no destruction. And what can you, the invader, do with tanks when you face a population united in defiance, unarmed protest and complete non-cooperation? Ukraine would be indigestible.

Whether non-violent defense would have worked cannot be known. But what is certain is this: the prevailing notion of national security is leading us to death and destruction, in Ukraine and elsewhere. Thus, a potential alternative — civilian-based defence — deserves critical scrutiny. My earlier reflection on this system reviewed its strategy and tactics, some limiting conditions and provisos, and its potential benefits. Now I turn to lacuna and obstacles in the theory and practice of non-violent defense. Only hard-headed questioning will mitigate the skepticism surrounding this approach.

This critical review emphasizes the work of Gene Sharp – sometimes referred to as the “Clausewitz of non-violent warfare”. Recent major contributors on the methods of civilian resistance – in particular, Srdja Popovic and Erica Chenoworth – follow in Sharp’s footsteps. They provide either updated non-violent methods for a digital age (and for young rebels) or empirical evidence of the effectiveness of such an approach.

Two issues strike me as pivotal in getting real about non-violent defense. The first is recognizing and overcoming major domestic obstacles, especially vested interests, partisan divides, and apathy. The second involves seeing beyond the static typologies of non-violent action to conceptualize its implementation as a dynamic, mutually reinforcing process. Taking civilian defense seriously confronts its proponents with several dilemmas.

Not Just an Abstraction

Non-violent defense is not simply a theory. Not only is there a long history of improvised civilian resistance to invasions, but also countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Lithuania have institutionalized civilian defense at various times.

Consider Sweden:  “Total defense” (military plus civilian defense) originated in neutral Sweden in the dangerous 1930s and World War II. Created in 1944, a Swedish Civil Defence Board undertook research on civil defense, organized training and oversaw the construction of air raid shelters. Sweden ran civilian-defence training centres in six cities during the Cold War. In 1986 the agency merged with the fire services board in a new Rescue Services Agency. The end of the Cold War led to a withering of the civil defence component. The initial idea – that all citizens had a duty to protect their country in an organized manner – fell into disuse by the mid 1990s.

The Russian attack on Georgia and seizure of Crimea however, revived the concept of total defence after 2014. Everyone between the age of 16 and 70 again has an obligation to respond in the event of an invasion or a natural catastrophe. “Everyone is obliged to contribute and everyone is needed” proclaimed a government pamphlet in 2018. Swedes were cautioned in the same pamphlet to prepare themselves for an emergency, though the emphasis was as much on peace-time natural emergencies as war. Nevertheless, in the event of war, the pamphlet declared that “we will never give up”. This basic idea is central to non-violent defence: an invader may occupy territory, but total non-cooperation and symbolic opposition will raise the costs of occupation, thereby discouraging invasion in the first place. In principle, all municipalities, voluntary organizations, businesses, trade unions, and religious organizations are required to prepare for civilian defence.

By March 2022, at the height of the war in Ukraine,  one in three Swedes was fairly or very concerned their country would be attacked.. Furthermore, a 2021 survey registered popular support for the idea of civil defense: 84 percent of Swedes said they would be willing to play a defense role, so long as it was non-combative.

Sweden is not an ideal case of civilian defense. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government talked of raising the defense budget and perhaps abandoning Sweden’s neutrality by joining NATO. But the idea of civil defense persists as a defiant complement, though not alternative, to military defense.

Partisanship, Vested Interests and Apathy

If a country were to experiment with non-violent defense, what obstacles would the experiment encounter?

Sharp in Chapter 5 of Civilian-Based Defense contends that non-violent defense, to succeed, must not only adhere to an all-of-society, nonpartisan approach, but also secure the cooperation of the armed forces. People of both sexes and all ages must participate, according to Sharp. They will do so out of patriotism, the desire to maintain their way of life, and an abhorrence of domestic and foreign usurpers alike. It will also be necessary to bring the military onside, claims Sharp. Civilian-based defense (CBD) may thus begin as a minor supplement to the armed forces, the former’s role expanding as it demonstrates its efficacy and popularity.

Is this a realistic scenario in today’s world? The establishment of CBD, from this viewpoint, is largely a top-down exercise, based on two assumptions. The first is that partisan cleavages are bridgeable. According to Sharp, civilian defense must be “trans-partisan”. It must accommodate conservatives as well as liberals and socialists. If it becomes the project of a radical movement, or any single party, Sharp contends, its appeal will be too limited.

Secondly, this scenario assumes that reason will trump interests. The armed forces, various security apparatuses, suppliers of weapons and military technology and the national-security intellectual wing, are apparently swayed by evidence. Sharp emphasizes the importance of research in demonstrating CBD’s potential effectiveness. If research on CBD is positive, if the training of the population proceeds, and if civilians show enthusiasm, the armed wing of defense will acquiesce to the ascendancy of non-violent defense. Reason and patriotism will prevail.

Note that Sharp advocates “transarmament,” not disarmament. Presumably, it will be easier to sell CBD if it is seen not as pacifism, but as another form of struggle. The weapons in the new defence system are not munitions, missiles, warplanes, tanks; instead, they involve the subtle employment of 198 non-violent methods, their selection geared to the stage of engagement with the opponent, and the degree of the latter’s repressiveness.

I see three problems with this approach. The first pertains to interests. Sadly, we do not live in a world governed by reason; indeed, today people contest even what counts as fact. Interests shape dominant ideas, including those, or especially those, concerning national security. President Dwight Eisenhower, long ago, warned of the power of the military-industrial complex in bolstering military expenditures. Today, we would need to refer to an expanded military-industrial-security-intellectual complex. Thousands of billions of dollars are spent worldwide on the military and ancillary activities: on weapons, personnel, training, think-tanks, research and development. Many corporations, wealthy shareholders, employees and intellectuals are invested in perpetuating and extending the system of military defense. And defense budgets grow year after year.

In contrast, how much is spent on research on non-military forms of defense? Virtually nothing – perhaps the occasional grant for esoteric scholarly research.

Demilitarization will therefore involve a political struggle. It will be a struggle obviously in the superpowers. But even in in developing countries with weak institutions, the military tends to be comparatively strong. Much is at stake in defense policy for a range of powerful interests. No research results in favor of civilian defense are likely to persuade those whose profits, privileges or job depend on military defense. Non-violent defense – as more than a minor supplement to military defense – is a radical proposal.

Secondly, many societies today are riven with partisan divides and authoritarian tendencies. The United States is an obvious example, but the phenomenon is widespread, in Europe and beyond.

Is it possible to forge trans-partisan support for CBD in these circumstances?

Sharp notes in Civilian-Based Defence (ch. 5) that non-violent defence is more likely to work where social cohesion is high and democracy and civil society are strong. However, these ideal conditions are not, he claims, prerequisites.

But is Sharp correct? Can non-violent defence happen in the absence of social cohesion and strong democracy? It seems unlikely. The issue would be politicized and viewed with deep suspicion by conservative/populist forces. And autocrats would not empower their people via training in nonviolence.

Thirdly, alienation and cynicism are rife in many societies today; Yet Sharp emphasizes that non-violent defense requires intensive preparation and training of all or most of a country’s population. What will induce people to shake off their apathy and devote their free time to training? Motivation is a problem, magnified by deep partisan divides.

All these considerations – vested interests, partisan divides and alienation – suggest that a top-down, apolitical approach will not work. The reality is that non–violent defense is a radical democratic initiative. Nonviolent action is inherently democratic to the extent that it empowers people vis-a-vis their rulers or aggressors. Only a mass movement will be powerful enough to overcome the vested interests in militarism and motivate people to participate in training and preparation.

Of course, even if CBD fails as a national system, or is limited to a subsidiary role, people may, when the need arises, spontaneously take up nonviolent resistance. But a trained response would be so much more effective.

A Dynamic, Mutually Reinforcing Process

The prospect of non-violent defense is enhanced if it is understood as a dynamic process, rather than a static design. Don’t get lost in Sharp’s 198 methods of non-violent action and the complexities of relating strategy to circumstances. The key is this: CBD focuses on agency. People possess power to shape their own futures; how therefore  should this agency be harnessed for the common good? People have power because rulers depend on the ruled. Rulers cannot rule if the latter withhold their consent (or perhaps more accurately, assent). Thus, Sharp and his followers explore the bases of consent, and how consent can be denied to internal usurpers or external aggressors through nonviolent means.

Sharp and the others adhere to an inductive approach. They draw principles of effective action from successful and unsuccessful cases. In their examples, groups and individuals improvised responses to attempted domination — for example, the passive resistance of the German population to the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr Basin in 1923, the heroic non-violent resistance to German occupation in Denmark and Norway during World War II, and the astounding non-cooperation and defiance of the Czechs and Slovaks that met the Warsaw Pact army’s invasion to end the Prague Spring in 1968. The point of these cases is obvious: if improvised strategies can work so effectively, imagine if they were organized!

Fine. But how do you begin the process? Enthusiasm for nonviolent defense may be limited at first, and powerful groups will not cooperate and may be actively obstructive.

The process seems to work like this. The more the government builds the capabilities of the civilian defenders, the greater the willingness of people to unite and resist, drawing on the learned repertoire of nonviolent strategy and tactics.  And the more advanced the capabilities and the united willingness of defenders to resist, the less likely that enemies will attack or usurpers will usurp power. The costs of domination become too high.

What comprise the capabilities of non-violent defense? They include organizational structure, committed and shrewd leadership, training facilities geared to the general population, the proportion of the population that wants to participate, and ultimately the strength of civil society.

The final factor alludes to the importance of institutional involvement in civilian-based defense. What political parties, trade unions, religious bodies, school systems, municipalities support the system? Obviously, nonviolent action is much easier to develop within a democracy; indeed, it is inherently democratic. Again, CBD empowers people.

As the capabilities grow, the willingness to resist and the participation of the population expands. Concomitantly, the costs of asserting domination on the part of usurpers or aggressors rises, enhancing the prospects of peace – provided the society in question is willing to pre-empt conflict by negotiating jointly acceptable solutions to outstanding disputes.

Being Realistic

Demilitarization – reducing the budgets and roles of the armed forces – is a critical goal in today’s world. We face the rising probability of a nuclear holocaust resulting from accident, miscalculation, or escalation arising from a war like that in Ukraine. We are also very close to runaway global warming. The military, in the United States and increasingly elsewhere, is one of the largest institutional emitters of greenhouse gases. In addition, massive defense budgets are dedicated to waste – contributing neither to production not higher living standards – whereas we need to reallocate these resources to fighting climate change. Nonviolent defense, together with a renewed commitment to nuclear disarmament, is a potential way of achieving demilitarization.

Besides bolstering demilitarization, civilian defense has other positive outcomes. It reinforces civil society, builds democracy, discourages would-be tyrants and enemies, and extends norms of non-violent conflict resolution.

How then can we promote CBD? Civilian defense may proceed as a gradual process. Initially, it may be seen as only a supplement to military defense. Realism suggests that this approach is the most viable option. If popular enthusiasm grows and civilian capabilities advance, the military may be gradually reduced to a border control agency. But such a harmonious process is likely to be blocked at an early stage. Apolitical gradualism has severe limits.

Authoritarian states, for one thing, would balk at empowering their subjects. Civilian defense reveals the acute dependence of government on the assent of the ruled, together with the non-violent acts of omission and commission that withdraw that assent and paralyze rulership.

Nonetheless, in authoritarian systems, citizens have often improvised effective non-violent tactics. Consider the revolts of the people in eastern Europe and republics of the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the “Arab Spring” of the early 2010s, which featured in many cases massive street protests; the “color revolutions” beginning in 2004 in the post-Soviet countries of Eurasia, including Ukraine; and the non-violent revolts against military rule in Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere. Indeed, nonviolent protest reached its apogee in the period 2010-19, inhibited eventually by the pandemic.

Nonviolence, at a minimal level, is just common sense for people with grievances but without deadly weapons.

Partisan divides and power structures also hinder the expansion of nonviolent resistance at the expense of the military. “The people united will never be defeated,” yes. But the people are rarely united, and vested interests are powerful. Partisan and other cleavages allow those who govern to divide and rule their subjects. Social cohesion, together with democracy, is a key ingredient of success with non-violence. Unfortunately, many societies today are riven by partisan loyalties and authoritarian tendencies. What to do?

Accept the reality: civilian defence, in its full manifestation where the military’s role considerably shrinks, is a radical proposal. It will probably be advocated only by a progressive movement, along with measures to9 achieve democratization,  equity, and a Green New Deal for a just transition. Civilian defence, as a radical project of democratization and demilitarization, is the missing link in the programs of the left.

What sort of states are the best candidates for CBD? Nuclear-armed states are unlikely candidates. From the strategic viewpoint, it is assumed nuclear weapons deter attacks. We know the logic is strong. How else could a nuclear power such as Russia, without the deterrent, get away with attacking and devastating Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe? States will be reluctant to surrender their nuclear weapons.

Non-violent defence can still play a supplementary role in the US, the UK, France, India and Israel, acting as a major deterrent to domestic usurpers of power and building civil society for the longer run. In addition, the more states adopting CBD, the lower the international threats; the lower the tensions, the more likely are agreements on limiting and eventually abolishing nuclear weapons. There is an indirect benefit of civilian defence.

Clearly, CBD would be easiest to introduce in small democratic countries and territories that lack a military. Cases that come to mind include Costa Rica, Mauritius and Iceland.

Countries bordering on a Great Power could also benefit from civilian defence. These countries could not hope to defeat an invading force from the superpower – or at least not without inflicting enormous damage and casualties upon themselves. Besides training the population in the principles and methods of nonviolent defence, civil society organizations would need to build strong links with peace groups internationally and with dissident groups within the superpower. The aim would be to precipitate internal dissent in the aggressor’s country and international condemnation of the invader, together with sanctions, in the event of a conflict. This strategy would proceed along with a willingness to negotiate to resolve conflicts with the great-power neighbour. Ukraine would have been a major candidate for such an approach. Smaller countries would be in a more dangerous position with CBD. They would face the prospect of forced assimilation to the dominant ethnic group of the superpower, as has happened in Tibet and the western regions of China.

Democratic middle powers, especially the Nordic countries, also offer an opportunity. Sweden is an exemplar. They would begin with civilian defence as a supplement to military defence. As CBD is a dynamic process, it might expand over a decade as it demonstrates its viability. Given catastrophic climate change, civilian and military defence would both expand to encompass preparation and training in handling “natural” disasters (extreme heat and storms, floods and forest fires). The body in charge might be termed a “civilian protection agency.”

Nonviolent defense is one element in a broader program to allow humans to live and thrive in an increasingly dangerous world. Politics is key.

Richard Sandbrook is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto and President of Science for Peace.