The past couple months have actually looked somewhat rosy for progressives, as President Bush’s poll numbers have continued to drop and the public increasingly realizes that maybe invading Iraq wasn’t such a good idea after all. It all puts a smile on my face, as someone who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and who was a participant in the massive anti-war demonstrations beforehand. And yet, as the body count of American soldiers approaches 2000, with many times more Iraqi civilian casualties, the moment seems bittersweet. The scientist in me asks, could the protests before the war have really worked?
The historical record suggests that under the right conditions a protest movement can help cease a war that has already begun, contrary to some of the negative critiques of David Corn and others. Vietnam would be the first example to pop into the head of many Americans, for arguably the anti-war protests played at least a minor role in the decision to slowly withdraw, along with the daily casualties of United States personnel. The French withdrawal from Algeria might be another example, although here too it was more the deaths and chaos in Algeria that was responsible for the French desire to withdraw, than the statements and protests by French socialists and the pieds-noir. Two conditions seem to be necessary for protests in the occupier’s country to have any effect at all on the occupier’s foreign policy. First, the conflict must have become bloody and costly. Second, that cost must have led to widespread resentment of the conflict by everyday people, not just those involved in the protests. As both these conditions are true in the case of the current occupation of Iraq, I see no reason the anti-war movement cannot have some effect on how quickly and effectively the U.S. begins withdrawing from Iraq.
However, there are almost no examples of a protest movement in the aggressor country stopping a war before it begins, by sheer moral force. There are a few examples where strong negative public reaction has resulted in the delay of a particular invasion- Bill Clinton, for example, clearly considered invading Iraq in the last years of his presidency, but may have backed away from this because there was such a vociferous opposition to the idea among Americans (remember the heckling at Ohio State University?). But in general, countries with a dominant military will attack other countries with regularity. From 1775 to 1914, the British Empire fought at least 19 wars, which works out to one conflict every 7 years! From 1945 till the present, the United States fought at least 8 wars, or about one conflict every 8 years. Interestingly, the reasons for the wars were all quite idiosyncratic, so there seems to be no way to predict the justification for wars in advance. This is not to say that the justification was just an excuse by the country’s leaders, or that the logic that led to war at the time did not make sense to many of those involved. Indeed, some of the wars may be quite ethically justifiable (e.g., attacking Japan after Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States after 9/11).
The scary corollary to this trend is: the United States will invade another country again! If we assume that our military will remain at its current strength, well above the capabilities of other countries, it seems quite likely that there will be another invasion sometime soon. The circumstances under which this invasion will occur, the political form it will take, is utterly unknowable. We might safely predict that the United States won’t attack another democracy, for the historical record suggests it’s rare for one democracy to attack another. And we can safely predict it will be a relatively weak country, given that the majority of wars are between countries with profoundly different military strength. Other than that, who knows? Maybe Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba…
Is there some kind of movement, then, that will be effective in stopping the next war? Let’s call this line of thinking preventive anti-war organizing. I’ve become convinced that it is the only real hoping of building a more peaceful world in the future. Think of it as a sprinkler system installed in a new building; one hopes it never has to be used, but if the flames of war ever come, it will be there to dampen them. One potential possibility, of course, is to simply strengthen the marvelous global network that developed around the February 15, 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq. If 10 million people can be marshaled for a protest with only six months of real organizing, it should be possible to get many times more people out to protest the next war with years of preparation.
It’s doubtful, however, that this alone is enough. Governments, even democratic governments, seem to have an amazing ability to ignore domestic opposition to foreign policy objectives. There is a real need for new ideas at an international level that will help to restrain the U.S. before the next war. The U.S. has one severe weakness right now, its dependence on foreign investment to finance its trade and budget deficits. Perhaps a set of boycotts of U.S. bonds by prominent investors and central banks, to be initiated at the start of a military conflict not approved by the United Nations Security council, would be an ambitious starts. Even a very small boycott would create ripples through U.S. financial markets simply by exposing to the media the vulnerability of the U.S. economy. It’s a crazy idea, perhaps, one that a few years ago I would have dismissed as absurd and unworkable. But the Iraq war has changed the way we all view global security, has made the globe’s people more aware of the risks of having a single unchallenged hegemon, and perhaps the time has truly come for preventive anti-war organizing.
