Three Books on the Nonviolent Movement

As the planet's leading warrior nation, one whose military has invaded more than 20 countries since 1945, has a Congress which allots half of the discretionary federal tax revenues to war, has routinely elected military men as its presidents, has military bases in all parts of the world, is the globe's largest maker and seller of weapons, and unfailingly prosecutes or jails those who conscientiously object a mite too strongly to it all, small wonder then that the nonviolent movement has been cast as a fringe movement.

But the casting requires an avoidance of both the past and present. In "American Nonviolence: the History of an Idea" (Orbis Books, 230 pages, $20 paper), Ira Chernus, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, joins a long list of authors—Staughton Lynd, Michael Nagler, Anne Montgomery, among others—who probe beyond the headlines and political debate which accept governmental violence as inevitable and just.

For Chernus, "the nonviolence tradition runs quietly, like an underground stream, through U.S. history. Its effects have been less visible than the tradition of war and violence. But its effects may some day prove to be more lasting." Focusing on people who acted on the idea and ideals of nonviolence, not merely intellectually dabbled in them, Chernus includes the Anabaptists, Quakers, Anarchists, the Catholic Workers and activists such as Barbara Deming, Adin Ballou, Henry David Thoreau, A. J. Muste and Dorothy Day.

The only misstep is the inclusion of Reinhold Niebuhr, a touter of Augustine who believed that violence is necessary to obtain justice. That makes him a leader of the movement? Except for squandering 16 pages on Niebuhr—okay, professors are entitled to an off day now and then—Chernus is a sound, nuanced and factual guide into the philosophy of nonviolence and the commitments of those who live by it.

During the 1960s and through the 80s, William Shawn, the editor of The New Yorker, reserved space in the country's best magazine for one of its finest writers, Jonathan Schell. In clearheaded prose and persuasive argument, Schell, then in his early 30s, shattered illusion after illusion about militarism, from the Vietnam war to the threat of nuclear annihilation. His books included "The Village of Ben Suc," "The Real War," and, perhaps his best known, "The Fate of the Earth." Few contemporary writers have produced so grounded a literature of peace.

It continues with "The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People" (Metropolitan Books, 433 pages, $27.50 hardcover). A blend of history, politics and the philosophies of nonviolent conflict resolution, it exhibits Schell's belief that "forms of nonviolent action can serve effectively in the place of violence at every level of political affairs."

Is that another dreamy fantasy from the antiwar Left? Not if recent evidence counts. In only the past 20 years, seven brutal or corrupt regimes were overthrown by organized nonviolent campaigns: in Poland, Chile, the Philippines, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, South Africa and Georgia. Two decades ago, who would have predicted that tyrants would be removed because risk-taking citizens with no guns, tanks, bombs or armies took action?

Schell is not a pacifist, which places him in the company of peace writers Thomas Merton and Howard Zinn, and not with all-the-way pacifists David McReynolds, Arthur Laffin, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, Dan Berrigan or David Dellinger. Schell points to "situations, both historical and imaginary, in which it was clear that I would support the use of force or myself use it." But isn't this the "violence as a last resort" argument we keep hearing from one war machine or another?

Jonathan Schell's voice is unique in explaining the failures of peace through strength and the successes of strength through peace.

Lawrence Wittner, a professor of history at the State University of New York, Albany, has not had the access to the mass media that Schell enjoys. But his scholarship and patient digging has brought to the public an enduring body of work.

"Toward Nuclear Abolition: a History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1971 to the Present" (Stanford University Press, 657 pages) is the final part of a trilogy that includes "One World or None" and "Resisting the Bomb." Amid the thoroughness of Wittner's 18 chapters, 1,751 footnotes, 108 interviews and 35 pages of bibliography is a deft and readable account of how a coalition of public and private citizens has kept the ever itchy nuclear finger from being pulled.

Refreshingly, Wittner has a talent for debunking, which isn't hard considering the mountains of governmental bunk piled high these past 30 years. Of the notion that the U.S. brought down the Soviet Union, Wittner writes that chalking up a great overseas victory for U.S. military power plays well among Americans, and especially among ardent nationalists. But as Bill Clinton rejoined, Bush was behaving like "the rooster who took credit for the dawn."

Wittner himself appears to be delusion-free about the chances for nuclear disarmament. Defying the national barriers and the murderous traditions of the past, millions of people have joined hands to build a safer, saner world. The building goes on, supported by authors who know of no worthier issue to write about.