Wallace Security Without Weapons

Rethinking violence, nonviolent action, and civilian protection
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-317-36990-5
Verlag: CRC Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 264 Seiten

Reihe: Interventions

Few questions of global politics are more pressing than how to respond to widespread violence against civilians. Despite R2P proponents’ efforts to draw attention away from exclusively military responses, debates on humanitarian intervention and R2P’s "Third Pillar" still tend to boil down to two unsatisfying options: stand by and "do nothing" or take military action to protect civilians—essentially using violence to stop violence. Accordingly—and given disagreement and uncertainty regarding moral claims, as well as the unpredictability of military effectiveness—this book asks: how can "we" counter violence ethically and effectively, taking action consistent with our particular moral commitments while also nurturing difference and enacting responsibility towards multiple others?

After evaluating the pragmatic and ethical failings of military action, the book proposes nonviolent intervention as a third—unarmed, on-the-ground—option for protecting civilians during humanitarian crises. In the empirical section of the book, focusing on the discursive and psychological conditions enabling violence, Wallace analyses the mechanisms by which Nonviolent Peaceforce—an international NGO engaged in nonviolent intervention/unarmed civilian peacekeeping (UCP)—was able to protect civilians and prevent violence, even if on a limited scale, in the broader context of Sri Lanka’s war/counterinsurgency in 2008.

The book addresses a range of literatures and debates—from just war theory and poststructuralist ethics to nonviolent action and conflict transformation, from humanitarian intervention, R2P, and civilian protection to strategic theory and discursive and psychological theories of violence—and aims to be both philosophically innovative and practically useful for those working in the field.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wallace, M. S.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regional- & Raumplanung Stadtplanung, Kommunale Planung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Violence and Nonviolence

Chapter 1: Challenging the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence in a world of contested and contingent moral frameworks

Chapter 2: Challenging assumptions about the necessity and efficacy of violence for defense, protection, and victory

Chapter 3: The conviction and provisionality of nonviolent action: coercion and transformation in nonviolent struggle, nonviolent intervention, and nonviolent defense

Understanding the Violence in Sri Lanka

Chapter 4: Confronting wrongs, creating wrongs: official discourses and the legitimation of violence in Sri Lanka

Chapter 5: Making sense of violence: media accounts and combatants’ understandings

Confronting the Violence in Sri Lanka

Chapter 6: Assessing violent and nonviolent alternatives for confronting the violence of Sri Lanka’s civil war: toward a psycho-discursive theory of civilian protection and violence prevention

Chapter 7: Security without weapons: rethinking protection through the work of Nonviolent Peaceforce in Sri Lanka

Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

M.S. Wallace is Hood House Lecturer of International Affairs at the University of New Hampshire, USA.