The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People [Paperback]

Jonathan Schell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0805044574 | ISBN-13: 978-0805044577

"This book mounts perhaps the most impressive argument ever made that there exists a viable and desirable alternative to the continued reliance on war." -The New York Times

At times of global crisis, Jonathan Schell's writings have offered important alternatives to conventional thinking. Now, as conflict escalates around the world, Schell gives us an impassioned, provocative book that points the way out of the unparalleled devastation of the twentieth century toward another, more peaceful path.
Tracing the expansion of violence to its culmination in nuclear stalemate, Schell uncovers a simultaneous but little-noted history of nonviolent action at every level of political life. His investigation ranges from the revolutions of America, France, and Russia, to the people's wars of China and Vietnam, to the great nonviolent events of modern times-including Gandhi's independence movement in India and the explosion of civic activity that brought about the surprising collapse of the Soviet Union.
Suggesting foundations of an entirely new kind on which to construct an enduring peace, The Unconquerable World is a bold book of sweeping significance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In what seems at the moment a quixotic thesis, Schell argues that warfare is no longer the ultimate arbiter of political power and that a maturing tradition of nonviolent political action offers hope for a peaceful future. Schell, an eloquent antiwar essayist best known for The Fate of the Earth (1982), begins with a study of the modern "war system," which he says proceeds from Clausewitz's premise that wars are fought to secure political objectives. As wars grew increasingly devastating, they became unwieldy means to achieve political ends. Since no political goal justifies annihilation, the Cold War nuclear standoff made the war system obsolete. Meanwhile, people's revolutions were also contributing to the demise of the war system. Citing Gandhi's independence campaign and anti-Soviet dissident movements. Schell argues, not totally convincingly, that political liberation can be achieved by popular will alone, through passive resistance and active construction of civil society. As we enter what Schell calls "the second nuclear age," in which proliferation threatens us with a "nuclear 1914," he warns against the Bush administration's "Augustan" policies of "unchallengeable military domination." Schell proposes instead the development of cooperative institutions to promote four goals: banning weapons of mass destruction, using shared sovereignty to settle wars of self-determination, enforcing an international law prohibiting crimes against humanity and creating a "democratic league." Hard-nosed realists will consider these ideas na‹ve pacifism. But at a time when Americans feel insecure despite overwhelming military superiority, Schell's radical rethinking of the relationship between war and political power offers a fresh and hopeful perspective.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

At the outset of this lucid survey of alternatives to warfare, the author disavows the label "pacifist": he is not opposed to the use of force, but he believes that it has become an ineffective tool for achieving political ends. On this pragmatic basis, Schell builds a case for civil noncoöperation, which he argues has long played a crucial role in deciding otherwise bloody conflicts (among them the American, French, and Russian Revolutions). Showing how nonviolent action proved successful in ending apartheid in South Africa and in dismantling the Soviet bloc, Schell writes with discipline and urgency. It's disappointing, then, that, once he has persuaded us of the need for peaceful solutions, those he offers—such as shared sovereignty—seem disconnected from the realities of politics today.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (July 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805044574
• ISBN-13: 978-0805044577
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > War & Peace
  • #32 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > Comparative Politics
  • #32 in Books > Law > Legal Theory & Systems > Non-US Legal Systems

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Restores Faith, Non-Violent Restoration of People Power September 13, 2003

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links

This book, together with William Geider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, and Mark Hertsgaard's The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World, in one of three that I believe every American needs to read between now and November 2004.

Across 13 chapters in four parts, the author provides a balanced overview of historical philosophy and practice at both the national level "relations among nations" and the local level ("relations among beings"). His bottom line: that the separation of church and state, and the divorce of social responsibility from both state and corporate actions, have so corrupted the political and economic governance architectures as to make them pathologically dangerous.

His entire book discusses how people can come together, non-violently, to restore both their power over capital and over circumstances, and the social meaning and values that have been abandoned by "objective" corporations and governments.

The book has applicability to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places where the US is foolishly confusing military power with political power. As he says early on, it is the public *will* that must be gained, the public *consent* to a new order--in the absence of this, which certainly does not exist in either Iraq or Afghanistan, no amount of military power will be effective (to which I would add: and the cumulative effect of the financial and social cost of these military interventions without end will have a reverse political, economic, and social cost on the invader that may make the military action a self-inflicted wound of great proportions).

Across the book, the author examines three prevailing models for global relations: the universal empire model, the balance of power model, and the collective security model. He comes down overwhelmingly on the side of the latter as the only viable approach to current and future global stability and prosperity.

A quote from the middle of the book captures its thesis perfectly: "Violence is a method by which the ruthless few can subdue the passive many. Nonviolence is a means by which the active many can overcome the ruthless few."

Taking off from the above, the author elaborates on three sub-themes:

First, that cooperative power is much greater, less expensive, and more lasting that coercive power.

Second, that capitalism today is a scourge on humanity, inflicting far greater damage--deaths, disease, poverty, etcetera--that military power, even the "shock and awe" power unleashed against Afghanistan and Iraq without public debate.

Third, and he draws heavily on Hannah Arendt, here a quote that should shame the current US Administration because it is so contradictory to their belief in "noble lies"--lies that Hitler and Goering would have admired. She says, "Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities."

Toward the end of the book the author addresses the dysfunctionality of the current "absolute sovereignty" model and concludes that in an era of globalization, not only must the US respect regional and international sovereignty as an over-lapping authority, but that we must (as Richard Falk recommended in the 1970's) begin to recognize people's or nations as distinct entities with culturally-sovereign rights that over-lap the states within which the people's reside--this would certainly apply to the Kurds, spread across several states, and it should also apply to the Jews and to the Palestinians, among many others.

On the last page, he says that we have a choice between survival and annihilation. We can carry on with unilateral violence, or we the people can take back the power, change direction, and elect a government that believes in cooperative non-violence, the only path to survival that appears to the author, and to this reviewer, as viable.

This is a *very* important book, and it merits careful reading by every adult who wishes to leave their children a world of peace and prosperity. We can do better. What we are doing now is destructive in every sense of the word.

Other recommended books with reviews:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship

58 of 62 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, thought-provoking work June 9, 2003

By thedevilscoachman

Format:Hardcover

I picked up this book after hearing the author speak at a book signing in Washington, DC. I was quite impressed by the power of his thought, and this book demonstrates the same qualities of well-supported, insightful and frequently iconoclastic analysis. The central premise, as the above reviews note, is that "political power" - which is based upon the consent of the governed and the agreement by political actors to keep promises and to behave within certain rules - and "violence" - which relies upon ruling by fear of harm and actually destroys the social bonds from which actual "power" flow - are at odds, and that ultimately political ends may be more effectively achieved by application of "power," a constructive force, than by "violence." Accordingly, the author argues, the political aims of mass movements of people frequently may be more effectively achieved by non-violent means than violent ones. And lest this example be dismissed by "realists," the author analyzes in-depth examples of non-violent or mostly non-violent "revolutions" that include the Indian independence movement, the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the transformation of South Africa from apartheid state to democracy (as well as a host of other, somewhat less-striking examples including the growing democratization of South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc.) Although, in my view, the author does not fully answer one of the central questions posed in response to pacifism - how can a non-violent movement gain political traction when confronted by a totalitarian system that utterly denies the worth of human life? - his thoughts on non-violent mass movements are fascinating and thought-provoking, and shed much needed light on largely non-violent political transformations - like the collapse of the Soviet empire or the democratization of South Africa - that have been taken for granted. Thus, while I am not entirely convinced of some of his points, I believe that the author has framed a very interesting political argument, one which cannot be dismissed out-of-hand and must be answered by those who feel that the liberal application of violence by the United States is helping to make the world a safer place.

Not by any means an easy or a quick read, this book is very worthwhile and good material for thought whether you tend to agree with the author's perspective or not. Recommended.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Power In The People January 17, 2004

By Panopticonman VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Schell's identification of the phenomenon of "people's war," the
bottom-up fight for freedom waged by colonized peoples over the last 250
years is nothing short of revolutionary. The basis of the analytical framework he builds to explicate the different varieties of colonial oppression and local resistance, Schell historicizes people's war in its most important incarnations starting with the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion, moving through Gandhi's non-violent formulation which he developed in South Africa and employed against the British in India, discussing how this form of resistance taken up by Martin Luther King to fight the people's war against the squalid Jim Crow regime in the American South. He notes that over time, "people's war" has been successful more often than it has not, that colonial regimes cannot win against forces which refuse to fight using oppressor's tactics, or use the narrow forms of redress, such as "working through the system," which are offered by those in power under the head of democracy.

He begins by examining the great military strategist Von Clausewitz's theory of warfare. In a section that it perhaps somewhat overlong, Schell takes apart Clausewitz in light of the changes in warfare since Clausewitz's time. Clausewitz did witness the first examples of total war in which every citizen was enlisted in the war as either a soldier or as a possible target of war -- the great "democratic" army of Napoleon, and wrote about it in contrast to prior European wars where relatively small forces of men fought limited conflicts for their aristocratic masters. What Clausewitz could not see was that with the emergence of the atomic bomb, total war was extended beyond competing nations, their peoples and ideologies, to include the entire world and the possible destruction of humanity. He notes, as does Jeremi Suri does in his history of the post-nuclear age, POWER AND THE PEOPLE, that the possession of nuclear weapons and the protests such weapons engendered (including the proxy wars fought by client states which became a feature of the post WWII landscape and were much more likely to end a global conflagration than skirmishes before the bomb) ultimately served to push together the Soviet Union and United States out of fear of their own people.

Schell also discusses various theories of power, including the Hobbesian justification of power, the Weberian observation that the state holds power by reserving the right to violence. He upends a lot of this theory by noting that fear and intimidation only work for so long. Eventually people begin, like water freezing in a crack in the sidewalk, to break apart the structures of such regimes. He discusses how Vaclav Havel and his friends during the Soviet occupation initiated a small scale alternative "government" which sought to deliver minimal social goods, a stop that worked to give citizens a way to see they could exert control over their own lives even in the shadow of the totalitarian state. This strategy that has been used since the American elite formed the Committees of Correspondence and the Continental Congress to throw off the oppressive economic policies of their colonial masters. The "people's government" was in place and thus Washington's task was to outlast his opponents so that this government could take its rightful place -- a strategy which has been used in successful "people's war" ever since. Once the state is made irrelevant, it ceases to exist, an analysis growing out of Hannah Arendt's discussions of power.

It is hard to do justice to a work like this in a short review. Schell advances a fairly radical theory here, but his evidence is sound, his argument is clear and straightforward (although a bit repetitive). Perhaps most compelling in this age of "terror," Schell helps us see that resistance against colonial powers and homegrown totalitarian regimes has a long history, and that for the most part, that people's war has been successful.