SPECIAL TO QMI AGENCY
Last Updated: June 16, 2011 9:41am
Courtesy Of "The London Free Press"
The "Prague Spring" of 1968 was a gallant attempt at a non-violent democratic revolution, but it was crushed by Soviet tanks. Eighteen years later, in the Philippines, the first "people-power" revolution succeeded, and since 1986 non-violent revolutions have driven a great many dictators from power. The most recent was in Egypt, in February --but there never was a guarantee that these revolutions would turn out well.
The revolution in the Philippines succeeded because by the late '80s, everything was happening in real time on global television. Oppressive regimes that had never had much compunction about killing people who challenged them didn't feel confident about doing it before a global audience. They no longer felt free to use massive force unless the protesters gave them an excuse by resorting to violence themselves.
The Marcos regime that was overthrown in the Philippines in 1986 was a mere kleptocracy with little ideology beyond a vague "anticommunism."
When the infection spread to China in 1989, the outcome was different, because a disciplined Communist dictatorship was willing to kill large numbers of its own people in front of the television cameras. It understood that if it failed that test, it would not survive.
Less ruthless Communist dictatorships in Europe, longer in power and ideologically exhausted, did fail the test.
The non-violent revolutions that began in East Germany in November 1989, and ended Communist rule in the old Soviet Union itself by late 1991, could have been stopped if the local Communist regimes had been willing to follow the Chinese example.
None of them had the stomach for killing on that scale.
Around the same time, there was a peaceful transition to majority rule in South Africa, but then there's a long gap. An attempted non-violent revolution in Iran in 2009 was mercilessly crushed, and some people worried that repressive regimes might have finally figured out how to counter non-violent revolution. And then along came the "Arab spring."
The technique is still alive after all, and it worked in Tunisia and in Egypt.
On the other hand, it has been stamped out in Bahrain, whose fate resembles that of Prague in 1968. And while the revolt in Yemen has probably displaced the old regime, it has been very violent, and the new regime may be no more democratic than the old.
Same goes for Syria, and of course for Libya. There are no one-size-fits-all techniques for revolution or for anything else.
But the desire for democracy, equality and fairness survives everywhere, and the least bad technique for trying to achieve those things is still non-violence.
Even if sometimes the revolution succeeds but the aftermath doesn't.
The original "people power" revolution in the Philippines was followed by two decades of political turbulence. Yugoslavia splintered into half a dozen warring fragments. Russia, though it escaped mass violence, is not exactly a model democracy.
On the other hand, South Korea, Indonesia and South Africa are now all democracies. So are Poland, Romania and Taiwan.
The aftermath may not be what most people hoped for in Egypt, and it probably won't be in the case of Syria.
But non-violent revolution works often enough, and its results are positive often enough, that it is still the most hopeful political development of the past quarter-century.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries
No comments:
Post a Comment