It is no more than a mild coincidence that, so soon after the toppling of the Gaddafi regime with the aid of Nato air power, two op-ed pieces (one each on either side of the Atlantic) should be urging the superiority of peaceful means of political transition as compared with the use of arms - both columns making reference to the present situation in Syria. As I mean to put some part of their argument in question, in this post and the next, I had better start by making the following three points clear.
One of the two columns is an editorial in The Christian Science Monitor and it says, among other things, that non-violence is a better way of challenging regime legitimacy and is less costly in human life. So first, yes, peaceful transition is obviously to be preferred when it can succeed. This hardly needs any supporting argument.
Second, violence - whether of revolution, of civil war, of military intervention or of all three - is costly in human life, and if violent loss of life can be avoided, it should be.
Third, I would hate to advise anyone currently battling the Assad regime about what they should do. This is not because I think that outside opinion is, in general, inappropriate in commenting on the affairs of a country; it isn't, or at any rate not always. It's because I don't know enough about Syria to be confident about which tactics of resistance and opposition will work and which won't. And it's an old and I think still valid moral principle that there is a right of resistance against political tyranny, including of armed resistance, though this does not permit, it should be noted, terrorist violence against civilians.
The last point, however - about not knowing in advance what will and won't succeed – leads to my reservation about The Christian Science Monitor's editorial view. Yes, peaceful means are better where they can succeed. But they don't always succeed, and therefore sometimes force is necessary in the removal of a tyranny. It would have been a minimum concession to political realism to have acknowledged this. To write as though non-violence is a universally effective strategy, particularly in face of the evidence we have that dictatorships sometimes fight to the bitter end, is incautious counsel.
[For 2, see here.]
