On June 24, 2004 the Institute hosted a project report by senior fellow, Yo'av Karny on, "Fateful Choices: Violence and Nonviolence in the Independence Struggles of Small Nations." Karny discussed his research on three cases—the Chechens, the Palestinians, and the East Timorese—and suggested that the latter may provide a useful lesson: a timely switch from a prolonged armed struggle to nonviolent resistance might be the most effective way for an independence movement to advance its goals.

Yo'av Karny is an independent journalist and author, born in Israel, who has covered civil wars and ethnic conflicts around the world. He is the author of Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory (2000), based on his extensive fieldwork and reportage in Chechnya, Daghestan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the 1990's. He has also written extensively in the Israeli press about the Middle East conflict. Having witnessed the tragic decline of Chechnya’s independence movement, he became interested in the way small subject nations conduct their struggles in the post-Cold War era. As part of his research at USIP Karny recently traveled to East Timor and to the Palestinian territories, where he conducted extensive interviews and tested his hypotheses.

Report Summary

A United Nations peacekeeping soldier is accompanied by a group of local children while conducting a security patrol in the Becora district of Dili, East Timor. UN/DPI Photo# 203225C

Yo'Av Karny began by noting the consequences of the end of the Cold War for the proliferation of small nations in the international state system. The 1990s saw hitherto sacrosanct state designations and international borders called into question. At the same time, improbable new state structures surfaced at a pace not seen since the aftermath of World War I. This created an environment, according to Karny, that gave "rise to a host of ahistoric states—many that had never existed as such, and many of which had only vague notions of collective experience and nationalism."

However, while this period was a time of great opportunity, Karny observed that the window of opportunity for groups seeking independence to reassert themselves and take advantage of new opportunities for consolidation of their positions was quite narrow. This led to a challenge that Karny likened to an effort to shape a "yet-to-crystallize lava flow of international relations." While very malleable, "the speed of the flow and its virtually unlimited destructive potential," he stressed, "ultimately gives way to the immovable, unbreachable basalt of a new order."

Against this backdrop, three independence movements in particular—the Palestinians, the Chechens, and the East Timorese—took on a new life in the 1990s. Discussing his central thesis developed from his research on the struggles of the Palestinians, Chechens, and East Timorese, Karny stated that all three independence movements would have benefited from a switch from armed struggle to nonviolence. More specifically, a utilitarian nonviolence arising from the recognition that military resistance no longer serves the cause, as opposed to principled nonviolence which emanates from ideology or theology and is shrouded in pacifism, would have been a more effective strategy to pursue independence, he argued.

In fact, in contrast to armed struggles, Karny stressed that each of the three movements in his study would have benefited more by addressing the following questions:

1. How can the movements keep the attention of the international community?
2. How can the movements effectively influence public opinion as well as maintain sympathy within the occupying power?
3. How can the movements assist new political allies, both from outside and within, and lessen the impact of actions by those unwilling to renounce violence that may alienate the efforts to court and maintain political allies?

The Day After: Examining the Challenges of Newly Independent States

According to Karny, with the end of the age of traditional colonialism, freedom seekers and independence advocates will likely continue to take the shape of ethnic minorities seeking to break away from a larger state. Once successful, however, they will have to assume the position of the smaller and weaker neighbors of the states from which they broke away. In the absence of an ocean to shield them from their former rulers, such independence advocates will have to be more conciliatory and realistic than most decolonized nations of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa ever were at the time of victory. Moreover, he argued that they also would be well advised to exercise greater realism in the course of their struggle and assume more self-imposed inhibitions than are normally associated with an independence struggle.

In particular, Karny stated that one of the most important of such self-impositions entails embracing nonviolent forms of resistance. He noted that it is often argued that the propensity to violence is determined by cultural habituation, and some are likelier than others to opt for it. However, it is also true, echoing Nelson Mandela's apt words, that how the oppressed fight for their freedom is largely determined by their oppressors. Paradoxically, the more susceptible and responsive an opponent is to a shift in strategy toward nonviolence the likelier such a shift is to occur.

Defining a Role for the International Community

Karny argued that the East Timorese and the Palestinians have both benefited from greater exposure and understanding shown their cause by the international community. Gradually, if at times too slowly, they both have moved from misplaced fantasies about the overthrow of an entire system to seeking a place within that system. However, for the international community to provide independence movements with a good reason to abandon violent resistance it must be careful. The central dilemma, according to Karny, is that the international community must avoid facilitating a perpetual centrifugal spin that will undo large, multiethnic states, and at the same time develop ways to limit the damage of such spinning forces when they do occur. While being attentive to national agendas without appearing to encourage them is a towering challenge for the international community, Karny noted, it pales in comparison with the challenge posed by an unending stream of dead-end wars of liberation.

Ultimately, Karny concluded, the international community should pay greater attention to the plight of small nations and especially to their despair. Noting, how WWI is itself a reminder of how local grievances within a small nation may spark a conflict that can devastate an entire continent, he stressed that desperate, small nations tend to be self absorbed, act without inhibition, and often resort to extreme forms of violence. Coping with their despair and showing them a way out is not only the duty of a mature international system, but would help ensure overall international stability. "As long as small nations do not see a glimmering light at the end of the tunnel they might behave in a way that poses a great threat to their environment," Karny cautioned in closing.