The Quak­er activist looks back at non­vi­o­lent resis­tance strug­gles to pre­vi­ous super­pow­er inva­sions in places like 1968 Czecho­slo­va­kia and 1940s Denmark.

What strikes me as extra­or­di­nary about these and oth­er suc­cess­ful cas­es is that the non­vi­o­lent com­bat­ants engaged in their strug­gle with­out the ben­e­fit of train­ing. What army com­man­der would order troops into com­bat with­out train­ing them first? 

We’ve been talk­ing about these kinds of resis­tance in peace cir­cles for decades and kudos to Gene Sharp, who cat­e­go­rized a lot of the tech­niques, and Eri­ca Chenoweth, who has done a lot more recent work. When peo­ple doubt that paci­fism can work, we can turn to this research to prove it does — or can. The trou­ble is the body count can get high. Putin’s not an empa­thet­ic guy and it seems his para­noia and mega­lo­ma­nia is get­ting worse. I’m wor­ried that he’s not above an extend­ed blood­bath if it feeds his vision of a greater Russian.

https://​wag​ingnon​vi​o​lence​.org/​2​0​2​2​/​0​2​/​u​k​r​a​i​n​e​-​d​o​e​s​n​t​-​n​e​e​d​-​t​o​-​m​a​t​c​h​-​r​u​s​s​i​a​s​-​m​i​l​i​t​a​r​y​-​m​i​g​h​t​-​t​o​-​d​e​f​e​n​d​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​i​n​v​a​s​i​on/