RECENT NONFICTION

No Alternative? Nonviolent Responses to Repressive Regimes, ed. John Lampen. York, UK: William Sessions, Inc., 2000; $15.95

Nonviolent Intervention Across Borders: A Recurrent Vision, ed. Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan and Thomas Weber Honolulu: Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace/University of Hawaii Press, 2000. 359 pp. $20

Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation in Africa, Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 2000. 272 pp. $19.95

John Lampen, editor and contributor to No Alternative?, puts the matter succinctly: If humankind is to abolish war as an instrument of policy, "it is not enough to tend the trauma and damage which already exists; we must find ways to prevent the recurrence of the horrors that characterize the century just ending. "Even in freedom struggles, Lampen warns elsewhere, "confrontation without attempts at mediation and reconciliation is likely to spiral into more and more direct violence."

In all three books under review, activists and researchers provide concrete testimony on the successes and failures of recent attempts to change our habits of thought about violence and war. In doing so, they contribute to a growing list of books that build upon Gene Sharp's classic study, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, 1973, and its three methods: protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and nonviolent intervention.

In No Alternative?, a collection of essays provoked by the Gulf War and the bombing of Kosovo, fourteen authors describe (1) means of responding to repressive regimes; (2) efforts to prevent wars before they become "inevitable"; (3) styles and ways of disagreeing with and altering government policies (from legislative to direct action); and (4) the moral and religious context associated with all of the above.

The book begins with a stunning indictment of the self-censorship of the media during the Gulf war, and the barbarous "turkey shoot" on the road from Basra as it ended. "What ought to have been the main news event as it ended," according to John Pilger, war correspondent and film-maker, "was that as many as 200,000 Iraqis may have been killed, compared with an estimated 2000 Kuwaiti casualties and 131 Allied dead," in a war that pitted "the power of money and superior technology...against a small Third World nation." On a similar theme, Kevin Clements, in "International Peace Institutions," recommends changes in policy and priorities in evaluating recent successes and failures of the United Nations as an instrument for countering repression and war.

Efforts to discover ways of preserving the peace following a war and rebuilding a sense of community have provoked new thinking across a wide spectrum. In "Sharpening the Weapons of Peace," Colonel Philip Wilkinson, for example, describes changes in thinking about Peacekeeping and Peace Enforcement, and the need for international military forces to develop multi-national and multi-agency approaches for Peace Support Operations.

Reflecting on the hidden costs of another war, Roswitha and Peter Jarman describe their work in the former Yugoslavia, and the complexity of issues that arise in trying to reconstruct war-torn regions. "If we forgive, we cannot feel angry," some young men from ethnic regions of the North Caucasus complained; "we feel weak, it makes us feel powerless." Although the Jarmans succeeded in arranging meetings and seminars among young Croats and Serbs, the Jarmans remain modest about their ability to encourage the necessary transformation of perceptions and habits of thought. "How can young men filled with the energy of anger and tempted by the sweetness of revenge regain a sense of dignity?" they ask.

"Teaching Peace in a Violent Context" also describes efforts to heal the wounds of war by Sezam, a program for children initiated by the International Medical Corps in Zenica, Bosnia, in 1993. Working first among traumatized children, the group moved gradually toward peace education for six-to-twelve year olds. Through many ups and downs, and feeling imprisoned by the horrors of the war, Sezam developed a program of games and activities emphasizing respect for others, cooperation, and conflict resolution. Such tasks, they found, are essential to recovering a sense of community in a climate dominated by suspicion and fear.

In the second book, Nonviolent Intervention Across Borders, Thomas Weber and Yeshua Moser-Puangsuan, Robert J. Burrows, Narayan Desai, Liam Mahoney, among others, provide the most comprehensive and well-documented study of cross-border intervention ever assembled. Looking carefully at manifestations of this activity in detail, it is the latest among several remarkable contributions to peace studies, particularly on nonviolence, from Australia.

The book begins with a brief history, from "Maude Royden's grand, but doomed, proposal to interpose civilians" between Japanese and Chinese warriors near Shanghai in the early 1930, to the recent interventions by Peace Brigades International and the Gulf Peace Team. In an essay on typology -- an effort toward clarification of thought -- Burrows identifies a set of criteria for evaluating nine different categories of cross-border intervention, defined as action carried out across a national border by grassroots activists aiming to prevent violence or to facilitate social change for the benefit of ordinary people and the environment.

Individual essays provide informed accounts of initiatives in the Sahara, Cyprus, Haiti, the Balkans, and Cambodia, by Christian Peacemaker Teams, Witness for Peace, and Mir Sada, among others. The general usefulness of the book is enhanced by a detailed index, a chronology of grassroots initiatives in unarmed peacekeeping "From the Peace Army to SIPAZ (Servicio Paz y Justicia, the name for FOR in Latin America)," and a list of nongovernmental organizations currently seeking volunteers and placing peace teams in various regions of the world.

Although it differs markedly from the two previous volumes, Guns and Gandhi in Africa complements them by providing insights on the relationship between nonviolent direct action and armed struggle. The book is also an unorthodox biography of its co-author, Bill Sutherland, American-born civil rights activist and war resister, who has been deeply involved in the Pan African Movement, especially in Ghana and Tanzania, for thirty years. That experience provided the editors with an entré to leaders throughout the continent, with their unique perspective on the relationship between nonviolence and violent strategy.

In an extended interview, the late Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, as well as the Organization of African Unity (OAU), for example, said that for him "the nonviolence of our movement was not philosophical at all." Known affectionately as Mwalimu (Swahili for teacher), Nyerere added, "That's why we had -- in the case of Mozambique, in the case of the Portuguese -- to support the armed struggle. It seemed to be the only way out because the Portuguese said, 'We don't have colonies, Mozambique isPortugal,' Rhodesia's Ian Smith was saying, 'Not in one thousand years, not in my lifetime.' So the only way we could shake this man was through armed struggle.'"

Throughout the book, Matt Meyer discusses similar thorny matters associated with the origins of Pan Africanism, and subsequent developments in Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, during five decades of struggle for freedom throughout the continent. A sub-theme in the book is the influence of Gandhi on several African leaders, as well as their friendships with and awareness of Americans, including A. J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and in the background, War Resisters League and the American Friends Service Committee.

Elise Boulding wrote, in recommending Guns and Gandhi in Africa, "It is time to begin learning from Africa, not just about it." These three essential books dramatize how important it is, similarly, to begin learning directly from nonviolent activists -- many whose names we do not know -- and not just indirectly about them.

Michael True teaches courses in nonviolence at Teachers College, Columbia University.