To Nonviolent Political Science:
From Seasons of Violence


By Glenn D. Paige

President of the Center for Global Nonviolence
Emeritus Professor of the University of Hawai'i

Editor's note: Adapted from a book "To Nonviolent Political Science: From Seasons of Violence", published by the Center for Global Nonviolence.

WINTER

My undergraduate and doctoral studies in the 1950s were pursued in a still-prevailing climate that can be termed "violence-accepting" political science. That is: while violence is regrettable, it is an inescapable part of the human condition. The best that can be done is to minimize it. Politically, one of the best things that can be done to ensure domestic and international peace and security is to be willing and able to kill. This orientation is deeply rooted in the classics of political philosophy and is characteristic of other social science and humanities disciplines as well.

Therefore it was natural for me, after having served as a young antiaircraft artillery communications officer in the Korean War during 1950-1952, to select the United States decision to fight in Korea as the topic of my senior thesis at Princeton University (1955) and as the subject of my Northwestern University doctoral dissertation (1959).

For a student of international politics these tasks were exciting and rewarding. This was a time of great creativity in American political science, in which pioneers like my profoundly respected principal professor Richard C. Snyder, tried to place the study of politics on a scientific basis akin to that of the natural sciences and other sciences. The spirit of the times can be summed up in a contemporary remark by Albert Einstein when he was asked, "Why is it that we have been able to unlock the secrets of the atom but have not been able to abolish war?" He replied, "Because politics is more difficult than physics."

In this spirit, with enthusiasm, I took up the intellectual challenge of trying to contribute to the scientific understanding of international politics by applying to a single case Professor Snyder's decision-making approach to the study of international politics. This approach, still of enduring significance, calls for understanding organizational, informational, and motivational factors that combine to produce political decisions. [See Richard C. Snyder, Henry W. Bruck, and Burton M. Sapin, Foreign Policy Decision Making (New York: The Free Press, 1962.)]

The approach calls for identifying participants in decisions, empathetically trying to understand situations, as they see them, and tracing overlapping sequences of choices and responses as they pursue their political objectives. In the Korean case this meant reconstructing the actions of top American officials from the time news was received of an outbreak of fighting on the Korean peninsula (June 24, 1950, Washington time) to the decision to commit United States ground forces to battle (June 30). It led to interviews with former President Harry S Truman, Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson, Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson, and others among the fifteen high-level officials who participated in a series of five major policy decisions during that period.

This produced a decision-by-decision narrative description followed by an empirical propositional analysis that sought to induce patterns of relationships among the organizational, informational, and motivational variables that would account for the choices made.

The original decision-making approach did not contain a method for ethical evaluation of a decision and the original doctoral study did not create one. The training of the scientific decision-making analyst was to hold one's own value preferences in abeyance - not to "contaminate" either factual description or empirical analysis with them. The decision was to be seen through the eyes of the decision makers.

This is not to say that Professor Snyder neglected the importance of values. He taught their significance for politics and for political scientists as well. Values could serve as "spotlights" to illuminate things that others without such values might not see. In this case, however, values did not enable the political scientist to see things the political and military leaders did not see, since both were in agreement - both accepted violence.

Even then I was somewhat surprised by former President Truman's response to a question I asked in a 1957 interview in Independence, Missouri. I asked, "As a devout Baptist, after having engaged the United States in what was to become its fourth largest war in history [as of 1993, fifth after Viet Nam], did you pray?" "Hell, no!" he replied. "There's right and wrong going back to Greece and Rome. It was the right thing to do. I made the decision and went to sleep."

In an extended process of revision for publication after completion of the doctoral dissertation, I decided to add two chapters on "Evaluation" and on "Action Implications." The decision to explore a method for evaluating the ethical nature of political decisions was made partly in response to the interest shown in moral judgment by virtually everyone with whom I had discussed the study. As soon as they learned its nature, they would ask, "Was it a good decision?" "Was it right that they did that?" In addition, I believed that a social scientist bore an ethical responsibility in research and teaching.

Similarly I held that if scholarly research was to be socially useful, social scientists should call attention to implications for action arising out of their studies whenever appropriate. Therefore I added a final chapter that contained three recommendations for action by national decision makers in crisis situations: (1) to call for information in organizational memory that might contradict prevailing views, (2) to be especially responsive to criticism coming from persons normally supportive of them, and (3) to be specific about limits of force to be used by military commanders and to devise means for monitoring their compliance.

The following excerpt from The Korean Decision therefore serves as an example of violence-accepting political science in a season of violence.


SPRING

People arrive at a nonviolent perspective on life in various ways, still scarcely studied and incompletely understood. Some, like Gandhi, may be born into a nonviolent family or subculture where it is taken for granted. Others, engulfed by violence and struggling with whether to respond violently, may independently and instantly receive nonviolent inspiration. Such is the case of the Irish Catholic, later Nobel Peace laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who quietly sat in a Belfast Chapel, contemplating the Cross and asked, "What would Jesus do?" The answer came, "Thou shalt not kill."

Still others come to nonviolence through a longer process that combines internal uneasiness about participation in violence with vicarious and direct tutelage by respected models of nonviolence. It took more than twenty-five years for Father George Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain who blessed the atomic bomber crews of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 (and shortly thereafter even visited horribly suffering A-bomb victims, including children) to adopt a position of principled nonviolence. In this process the Christian example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the guidance of a nonviolent priest, Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, were especially significant.

Yet another path is by reading books on nonviolence and even on violence. The first is illustrated by the ex-Marine Father McCarthy, who departed from the violence-accepting Catholic Church tradition by independently reading the Scriptures, the works of a nonviolent Catholic theologian Father John L. McKenzie, and the writings of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

An example of youthful self-discovery is that of political scientist Mulford Q. Sibley, who told me that he became a pacifist in high school by reading a textbook with pictures of trench war slaughter in World War I. He decided then that war was "simply stupid" and went on to become a much respected professor of political philosophy.

My own awakening to nonviolence has been but one of countless others throughout history. It partook somewhat of the slow process of increasing uneasiness of Father Zabelka combined with the independent, "sudden" clarity experienced by Mairead Corrigan Maguire. It came to me simply as, "No more killing!" I experienced this in a completely secular fashion without any specific religious association, but it was profoundly spiritual in nature and subsequently led to an eager search for the roots of nonviolence in all world religious, philosophical, and cultural traditions. It also led to the discovery of hitherto neglected nonviolent persons such as M. K. Gandhi and Kasturbai, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King.

* * * * * * * *

Awakening to a nonviolent perspective took place during 1973-1974. Since the circumstances are briefly explained in the following essay they will not be repeated here. The first major professional task was to re-examine The Korean Decision from a nonviolent value position. Since I had written the book from a proviolent standpoint as a contribution to the scientific study of politics, I asked myself, "What difference would it have made if I had studied the Korean decision from a nonviolent perspective?" The answer is expressed in "On Values and Science: The Korean Decision Reconsidered" (1977).

The acceptance of this book review essay for publication by the American Political Science Review was unprecedented in the seventy-one year history of that journal since 1906. For the first time an author was given the opportunity to critically review his or her own book. It took two successive book review editors, three anonymous political science evaluators, and about two years for the essay to be printed. As one anonymous reviewer wrote, "Although 95 percent of political scientists will disagree with the author's position, the original book is so widely known in the profession that this reconsideration should be published."

After publication several appreciative letters were received. One was especially meaningful. It came from a West Point graduate, a combat veteran who had served as a captain in the Vietnam War, and who was then pursuing a doctoral degree in international relations. He wrote that although he was not then fully prepared to accept the nonviolent position in its entirety, he was in complete agreement with the essay's conclusion: "In an age of unprecedented potential for violence the supreme task of political science becomes the creation and application of nonviolent knowledge." Another colleague commented that the essay should be read by every graduate student in political science. In contrast, a few years later at a meeting of the International Studies Association in Washington, D.C., in 1985, a participant in a crowded elevator looked at my name tag and said, "So you're Glenn Paige! I like the old Glenn Paige, but not the new one!"

* * * * * * * *

In the springtime of awakening to nonviolence it occurred to me that I might try to apply the same logic of criticism of my own book to the discipline of political science as a whole. The result is the essay "Nonviolent Political Science," presented at the XIth World Congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) held in Moscow in August 1979. It was not easy either to gain IPSA permission to present the paper or to find the fourteen hundred dollars needed for Honolulu-Moscow travel and expenses. But finally I was permitted to offer it as a submitted paper in a panel on "New Trends in Political Science Since 1949." After my appeals for travel support were turned down by a half-dozen of America's leading foundations and scientific associations, the then president of the University of Hawai'i, Dr. Fujio Matsuda, somehow found five hundred dollars to help me go.

The responses to this paper in Moscow, especially by Russian and Eastern European scholars, were surprising and profoundly meaningful. This was heightened by the fact that I was fresh from receiving reactions to its basic thesis from American political scientists. It came at the end of a six-week summer seminar on applying political theory to the subfields of political science, held at Vanderbilt University and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities in June-July 1979. Twenty colleagues participated in the seminar, selected to represent the subfields of political theory, American government, comparative politics, and international relations.

The IPSA paper had not yet been written, but at the end of the Vanderbilt seminar, I was able to ask my colleagues, "Are nonviolent politics and a nonviolent political science possible?" The strong consensus was, "It's unthinkable." Three main reasons were given: (1) human nature - humans are dangerous animals, forever prone to kill, (2) economic scarcity - competition for scarce resources will always lead to conflict and killing, and (3) sexual assault - one must always be prepared to kill to defend women against rape. All participants except one were men. I later learned that the equivalent response of American women is that they regrettably must be prepared to kill if anyone threatens the life of their children.

The Moscow responses to the paper were different. The idea of nonviolent politics and a nonviolent political science were completely thinkable - but there were some serious problems to be solved. A professor from the Institute of General History said, "We admire the humanitarian intention of the author of this paper. Furthermore we fully agree that the goal of politics and of political science is a nonviolent society." "But," he asked, "what is the economic basis of nonviolent politics and of a nonviolent political science?" Another scholar from the University of Kazan introduced his question with essentially the same supportive preliminaries and then asked in a more challenging tone, "But, how are we to deal with such tragedies as Nicaragua, Chile, and Kampuchea?"

In reply I expressed appreciation for the view that a nonviolent political science was possible and for the raising of two fundamentally important scientific questions. "Indeed, since both contemporary capitalist and socialist economies rest upon the threat and use of violence, what kind of economy would not require such lethality?" I agreed that the examples cited were indeed tragic, and added a few others such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, and the Yezovshchina. "But," I asked, "should we let these tragedies make us prepare eternally to employ greater brutality than any of their perpetrators? Or should we not devote our efforts as political scientists to discovering nonviolent means for preventing such atrocities, for resisting them if they begin to occur, and for removing their noxious influences upon global society?"

Later that day, an Eastern European social scientist who had participated in the panel session said to me, "You are saying publicly what we are thinking privately, but we can't say it. But I've traveled in the West. I know your academic freedom. You can say anything you want, but you're completely isolated and have absolutely no influence upon your policy makers." How keen was his insight!

On the following day at an informational meeting for about sixty IPRA scholars at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, I asked a leading Soviet arms control and disarmament specialist whether a newly formed Institute for Peace and Disarmament would take up the scientific study of nonviolence. He did not answer the question directly but nevertheless gave the following surprising response: "Some people say that nonviolent politics, Gandhiism, is some kind of fantasy. But we do not agree. It might become reality tomorrow."

Shortly thereafter in November 1979 I participated in a panel on "War and Politics: Roles of the Intellectual" held at the University of Southern California. There I tried to convey to a group of American scholars who specialized in national security issues the surprisingly favorable responses to the idea of nonviolence that I had received in Moscow. This report was generally dismissed. A leading Soviet politics specialist from M.I.T. opined that I had been "brainwashed."

But just seven years later in November 1986 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev joined with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to issue the New Delhi "Declaration on Principles for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free and Non-Violent World." And three years after that in November 1989 a Research and Education Centre for the Ethics of Nonviolence was founded in Moscow as an independent, nonprofit institution by scholars of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences. That same month it convened an international conference on the "Ethics of Nonviolence" in which the leading American scholar on nonviolent politics, Gene Sharp, the author of The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973); and Richard Deats of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) participated, as well as scholars from Austria, France, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In May 1991 the Centre sponsored in Moscow a training workshop on "Nonviolent Resolution of Mass Social Conflicts" for police officers, professors, and community activists. It was held in collaboration with the New York State Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolence (founded in 1986) and the FOR. Also in 1991 the Centre began to publish a series of books on nonviolence, including works by Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, and King, complete with commentaries. A second international conference on nonviolence was announced for May 1992 with four themes: the origins and development of the concept of nonviolence; human nature, the environment, and nonviolence; the ethics of nonviolence; and the experiences of nonviolent movements throughout the world. A teacher training workshop on "Nonviolence for Schools" was planned for August 1993 to be held at Tolstoy's country estate Yasnaya Polyana.

Many more explicitly nonviolent seminars, publications, training workshops, organizations, and actions have emerged in the former Soviet Union and its successor countries, especially since 1988. This includes the dissemination among opponents of the August 1991 attempted communist military coup of copies of the table of contents of Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent Action, which lists almost two hundred methods. In addition activists have been seeking to apply nonviolent methods to resolve ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet republics. And the new Lithuanian Department of National Defense has been exploring nonviolent security alternatives.

As these developments testify, the supportive responsive-ness to the idea of nonviolent politics sensed among some Russian and Eastern European scholars in 1979 surely was not mistaken.

The essay "Nonviolent Political Science," however, was not directed specifically to political scientists in the former Soviet Union, but to the world political science profession. At the request of Ralph Summy, pioneering nonviolent politics scholar at the University of Queensland, Australia, it was published in the Australian journal Social Alternatives in 1980. Subsequently over a dozen years I was able to discuss its thesis with colleagues in Costa Rica, China, England, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Korea (North and South), Malaysia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, and Yugoslavia, and with those from a number of other countries. However, partly because it was presented and published abroad, the essay received virtually no American political science attention.

My awakening to nonviolence occurred about midway in a major effort to write a book to urge establishment of the study of political leadership as a new subfield in political science. The idea was conceived while teaching at Princeton University from 1961 to 1967 and was carried forward thereafter at the University of Hawai'i. The results were published in The Scientific Study of Political Leadership (1977).

Political leadership and nonviolence have been the two most exciting "discoveries" of my scholarly life. Both grew out of social science training combined with study of Korea.

Insight into the innovative potential of political leadership was rooted in a graduate seminar at Northwestern University in the late 1950s. There the eminent social psychologist Donald T. Campbell challenged us to find "natural social experiments." These are naturally occurring differences in society akin to those that might be produced by deliberate scientific experiments in a laboratory or in agriculture. That is, look for something divided into two parts, with certain stimuli applied to one part but not the other. Then comparatively measure the results. My seminar exercise involved comparing voting in matched towns where President Harry S Truman did or did not stop on his "whistle stop" electoral campaign by railroad train in 1948. It took me several years to understand that the transformations brought about in divided Korea, North and South, during 1945-1960 were just such an "experiment." Purposive political leadership had produced striking differences between the two parts. This insight was expressed in two essays, "The Rediscovery of Politics" (1966) and "Some Implications for Political Science of the Comparative Politics of Korea" (1966).

In "Nonviolent Global Problem-Solving and the Tasks of Political Leadership Studies" (1986) I have tried to set forth the possibility of combining the creative potential of political leadership with the nonviolent science of politics to assist in solving world problems. This unpublished essay was written at the invitation of the Polish political sociologist Jerzy Wiatr, editor of a special edition on political leadership of the International Political Science Review (Volume 9, Number 2, April 1988). It was not published because IPSR general editor Jean Laponce of the University of British Columbia decided that it did not "fit in" with the other essays in the issue.

However, as more and more preeminent world leaders call for nonviolent solutions to problems that threaten the survival and wellbeing of planetary civilization, the scientific task of combining knowledge of political leadership and nonviolence becomes increasingly critical.


SUMMER

The awakening of spring was followed by the eager explorations of summer. In December 1975, for example, I journeyed to India to study the nonviolent Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed University) and its military training alternative, the Shanti Sena [Peace Brigade], under the inspired leadership of Vice-Chancellor Dr. G. Ramachandran, chief organizer Professor N. Radhakrishnan, and their colleagues. This was done at the invitation of Dr. Ramachandran, who said on a visit to Hawaii that year, "Come to India and I will show you Gandhian principles of education in action." A whole university dedicated to nonviolence was a revelation to me. Its model of training for nonviolent community security and service is one that every university in the world eventually should emulate.

Journeys of nonviolent discovery were given extraordinary encouragement by colleagues whose kind initiatives offered inspiring opportunities for new learning, writing, and reflection. In the summer of 1978 Professor Hiroharu Seki, then director of the Institute for Peace Science, Hiroshima University, provided the opportunity to write my first essay, "On the Possibility of Nonviolent Political Science," in the victim-city of the world's first atomic bomb attack. In 1980 Ralph Summy of the University of Queensland made it possible to discuss nonviolent political science with scholars in a month-long nationwide visit to Australian universities.

In 1982 G. F. Kim in Moscow and Shi Gu in Beijing enabled me to exchange ideas on nonviolence in successive two-week visits with scholars of the then USSR Academy of Sciences and of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Thus I could visit Tolstoy's estate Yasnaya Polyana as well as challenge the search for nonviolent alternatives with the violent realities of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. In June 1984 Mrs. Gedong Bagoes Oka provided an uplifting environment for writing in her Gandhian Ashram Canti Dasa [Servants of Peace Ashram] on the island of Bali. Two years later this served as the venue of an enlightening international seminar on "Islam and Nonviolence," of which I was privileged to serve as temporary convenor, with the support of the United Nations University. In 1989 Dr. G. Lubsantseren and colleagues of the Asian Buddhist Conference for Peace (ABCP) made it possible to convene in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, an international seminar on "Buddhism and Nonviolent Global Problem-Solving." This was the fourth in a biennial series on Buddhism and Leadership for Peace begun in Hawaii in 1983. It brought together in Mongolia scholars from China, Japan, Korea (North and South), Mongolia, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States as well as other countries to share ideas on nonviolence in relation to problems of common concern.

After some years of reeducation in the literature, history, institutions, and practice of nonviolence, I ventured to offer first a graduate seminar (1978) and then an undergraduate course (1980) on "Nonviolent Political Alternatives" in the Department of Political Science of the University of Hawai'i. As an experimental undergraduate course, at first there were fewer than the ten students that were administratively required to sustain a regular offering. But with the special support of the then departmental chairperson Professor Manfred Henningsen, the innovation was gradually able to establish itself as part of the curriculum. Subsequently the syllabus for the course was selected for publication, along with three others in the field of nonviolence by Gene Sharp, Harry G. Lefever, and Stephen Zunes in Daniel C. Thomas and Michael T. Klare, eds. Peace and World Order Studies: A Curriculum Guide (Boulder: Westview, 1989).

I became a student as well as a teacher. In the summer of 1985 I entered the extraordinary two-week course on "Nonviolence - Meanings, Forms and Uses," organized by Professor Theodore L. Herman (Director of Peace Studies, Colgate University) and Nigel Young (Peace Studies, Bradford University), at the Inter-University Centre for Postgraduate Studies in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. There we were able to benefit from the inspiring experiences and subsequent friendship of Danilo Dolci ("the Gandhi of Sicily"), Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr. (gifted trainer for nonviolent action in the Martin Luther King, Jr., tradition), Dr. Lynne Jones (with other veterans of the Greenham Commons Women's Peace Camp against nuclear weapons in England), and other young nonviolent activists from Europe and the United States.

In addition I met the young nonviolent Muslim political scientist Syed Sikander Mehdi from the University of Karachi, who was the second scholar to enlighten me about the nonviolent inspiration of Islam. The first was Chaiwat Satha-Anand, from Thammasat University in Bangkok, who wrote the first University of Hawai'i doctoral dissertation in the field of nonviolent politics in 1981. His subject was The Nonviolent Prince, a nonviolent reconstruction of Machiavelli's The Prince to seek new insights into political leadership without violence.

Later, in 1987, I entered a week-long training course in New Delhi to study the science-based Jain system of Preksha Meditation ("Perceive the self through the self" - "Search the truth thyself and be a friend to all"). The method uses energy from the brain to connect the endocrine system with the nervous system. It results from a synthesis of the philosophical wisdom of the 2,500-year old Jain tradition with modern science made by the brilliant contemporary Jain Terapanth leaders Acharya Tulsi and Yuvacharya Mahapragya. At the same time I discovered the wellconceived M.A. program in Nonviolence and Peace Research offered by the Jain Vishva Bharati (Deemed University) in Ladnun, Rajasthan. The degree requires preparation of eight papers: the history of war and peace; conflict resolution; economics of peace and nonviolence; sociology of peace and nonviolence; peace education; peace technology and disarmament; methodology of peace research; and a dissertation based on practical field work related to nonviolence and peace.

Further explorations in nonviolence naturally tended to be related to Korea, political leadership, and global politics. Three illustrative essays are included here.

* * * * * * * *

After viewing Korean history and politics from a violent political-military standpoint, it was surprising for me to discover among some scholars in both Seoul and Pyongyang confirmation of the hypothesis that indeed there are nonviolent roots in the Korean tradition that can be cultivated for Korean and global well-being. Three experiences stand out.

The first was a meeting in 1982 at his home with the late revered teacher-scholar Ham Sok Hon, a member of the Seoul Quaker Meeting and a courageous voice for freedom, justice, and nonviolence. In response to my question about the Korean roots of nonviolence, teacher Ham explained that they are evident in the creation myth of the Korean people. There is no violence in it: heaven and earth combine peacefully to create them. The same answer to the same question was given in Pyongyang in 1987 by the preeminent professor of Korean history, Pak Si Hyong, who added - as did teacher Ham - that Koreans had never been aggressors against their neighbors but rather had been victims of foreign violence. As the Korean example suggests, a comprehensive study of the nonviolent characteristics of any culture poses a critical task for interdisciplinary research.

A second extraordinary experience, also during my first visit to Pyongyang in 1987, came in response to the question as to whether a nonkilling/nonviolent society was possible. I posed this question to scholars of the Korean Association of Social Scientists (KASS), who are responsible for developing North Korea's social science and national philosophy, termed Juche (a concept stressing autonomously creative human social initiatives). As expressed by Professor Hwang Jang Yo]p, KASS president, a nonviolent society can be considered completely possible because: (1) humans are not animals, violent by instinct, but are endowed with consciousness, creativity, reason, and capacity for love, (2) scarce resources should not be used as an apologia for lethality because human needs can be met by a combination of creative productivity and equitable distribution, and (3) rape can be eliminated by education and the provision of a proper social atmosphere. As will be recalled, these responses are virtually a complete reversal of the opinions of my American political science colleagues when I first asked this question at Vanderbilt University eight years earlier in 1979.

A third experience, in late July 1990, also was profoundly moving. Together with gifted KASS scholar Professor Kim Myong U, I found myself standing on the rim of the magnificent volcanic mountain Paektusan on the Korean-Chinese border. The spectacular site is one of breathtaking beauty as well as of profound significance in the national consciousness of the Korean people. How was it that all the killing force of the United States and the seventeen-nation United Nations Command in three years of war (1950-1953) had not been able to place a single soldier atop this mountain? Yet some forty-nine years later, here stood an ex-soldier become scholar together with a dearly respected Korean colleague. Surely the spirit of nonviolence, the common heritage of humankind, had brought us peacefully to the mountaintop.

Reflecting these experiences in both North and South Korea, the essay, "A Nonviolent Perspective on Korean Reunification Proposals" (1990), explores an approach to problem-solving that differs from conventional violence-accepting, political-military analysis. It emphasizes common humanity and respect for life. To develop such an approach to public policy formation presents an enormous task for political science.

* * * * * * * *

Another task of nonviolent political science is to learn as much as possible from nonviolent political figures, social movements, institutions, and public policy initiatives. Just as Machiavelli studied such figures as Cesare Borgia, Pope Julius II, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, and others in formulating his analysis of violence-prone political leadership, nonviolent political science needs to be based upon keen understanding of nonviolent leadership experience. Through such knowledge it can assist nonviolent global transformation.

In the "Introduction" to Petra K. Kelly, Nonviolence Speaks to Power, I have listened to the voice of one of the world's most significant nonviolent political leaders. It may be contrasted with earlier research on President Truman and other American national security officials in The Korean Decision.

As co-founder of the Green Party in Germany, an experienced legislator, social movement activist (peace, environment, feminism, and human rights), international civil servant, writer, and world traveller, Petra Kelly set forth a broad agenda for nonviolent politics at the end of the twentieth century. As Green parties and movements continue to spread throughout the world, and as green principles are adopted by other parties, her voice and experience are increasingly important. So are those of nonviolent persons in every field of global life.

Petra's tragic death in October 1992 was a tremendous shock and loss for me as for all her worldwide friends. Although unfortunately she did not see the final published volume of Nonviolence Speaks to Power, sent to her in September 1992, through it her vision, experience, and inspiration live on.

* * * * * * * *

As a violence-accepting political scientist, I had given scant attention to extraordinary nonviolent leaders such as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. But in the summer of awakening I became their eager student, as well as of nonviolent experience throughout the world. Subsequently it was a completely unexpected inspiration to be invited to serve as a member of the national advisory group of the New York State Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute for Nonviolence (1989) and to give the Third Gandhi Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on October 26, 1990. Other expressions of encouragement and challenge came from the unexpected receipt of the Buddhist Seikyo| Culture Prize (1982), the Dr. G. Ramachandran Award for International Peace (1986), the Princeton University Class of 1955 Award (1987), the Jain Anuvrat Award for International Peace (1987), and an honorary doctorate from So|ka University (1992). No words can express adequate appreciation for the kindness of these friends and the importance of their uplifting moral support.

"Gandhi's Contribution to Nonviolent Global Awakening" reflects upon the Gandhian legacy and focuses it upon global problem-solving. It calls attention to some nonviolent world resources and points to the need for institutional development to assist nonviolent global change.


FALL

Autumn reflections follow the awakening of spring and the journeys of summer discovery. To strengthen nonviolent political science for service beyond the dispersed efforts of individuals, institutional capabilities need to be developed. These range from new ways to train scholars, new course offerings, new departmental structures, and new inter-disciplinary relationships to new nonviolent public and private organizations to serve human needs.

If we are truly determined to eliminate violence and to encourage nonviolent celebration of life by individuals, families, local communities, nations, regions, and ultimately by the global polity, we need to give it institutional expression. This means finding ways to combine the spirit, science, and skills of nonviolence that are appropriate within each context. As long as we believe that human killing is ineradicable, we are unlikely to devote the intellect, effort, and resources to eliminate it. But once we realize that a nonkilling world is not beyond human capability, then we need to take it as seriously as we have taken the voyages of global discovery of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Manhattan atomic bomb project, and the Apollo project to land a man on the moon. All were previously considered to be impossible, but by combining vision, intellect, and resources - through trial and error - they achieved their violence-era objectives. Visionary institution-alization in the era of nonviolent global transition is no less important.

Skill in institution-building is not usually part of the training of the scholar-teacher in political science. But as discoveries lead to needs that go beyond individual capabilities and resources, the cooperation and support of others is vital. Sometimes only the general vision can be set forth; perhaps others with the necessary skills and means will be able to carry it forward.

At the present time some significant nonviolent institu-tional innovations are emerging in various parts of the world. They join ancient predecessors such as the Jains of India and the modern Quakers. Some of these have been noted with great respect in the foregoing Gandhi memorial lecture. A significant scholarly example is the interdisciplinary Nonviolence Study Group (Commission) founded by Theodore L. Herman and presently coordinated by Chaiwat Satha-Anand within the UNESCO affiliated International Peace Research Association.

The following essay "The Idea of a Center for Global Nonviolence" sets forth a proposal to establish an institutional capability for scanning the globe for nonviolent knowledge and for assisting its application in everyday life. The present idea is not to create a gigantic institution akin to the Pentagon, although an international, nonviolent institution on that scale would be entirely appropriate given the magnitude of global violence. Rather what is envisioned is more like the organizational model of the United Nations University, whose Centre is in Tokyo. There a substantial endowment enables a coordinating core group to establish cooperative relationships with individuals and institutions throughout the world to advance research, education, and service that will promote the survival and well-being of humankind.

Furthermore it is not assumed that only one Center for Global Nonviolence is appropriate. The establishment of regional, national, and local centers combining global and local perspectives will be necessary for nonviolent global change. Underlying the Center proposal is the assumption that every person in the world should be a "center" for global nonviolence.

Between late 1988 and 1993, some small exploratory projects have been undertaken at the University of Hawai'i on very limited local resources to illustrate the promise of the Center idea. These include the books Nonviolence in Hawaii's Spiritual Traditions (1991), Buddhism and Nonviolent Problem-Solving: Ulan Bator Explorations (1991), Petra K. Kelly, Nonviolence Speaks to Power (1992), Islam and Nonviolence (1993), and the present volume. Funds were inadequate to engage in any of the major projects envisioned in the proposal.

A recent president of the University of Hawai'i, while generally supportive, commented that the idea of a nonkilling society is "a hundred years ahead of its time." As of 1993 the future of the Center for Global Nonviolence Planning Project at the University of Hawai'i is uncertain, a vision seeking visionary implementational resources. But what is certain is that eventually such an institute will come into being somewhere in the world.

The Center for Global Nonviolence was founded in 1994 as an independent nonprofit institution unrelated to the University of Hawai'i and now has an affiliate in Haiti (see www.ccngd.org). Another Center emerged in 2005 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.



Glenn D. Paige is Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Hawai'i. He is founder and President of the Center for Global Nonviolence, a nonprofit organization to facilitate worldwide research, education-training, and applications of nonviolent knowledge. He is engaged in writing a book on nonkilling political science and in planning a global institution dedicated to advancing knowledge and practice of nonviolence. The book Nonkilling Global Political Science was published in 2002 and three years was being translated into languages accessible to over 4 billion people. Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Sinhala, Mongolian, French Spanish and Russian editions have already been published. The full text is posted free on the website of the Center for Global Nonviolence.

The Center for Global Nonviolence:
http://www.globalnonviolence.org/


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