Mass sit-in at the Wenceslas square, Prague, on the eve of the Soviet invasion, August 1968.
This Academic Webinar took place on Wednesday, December 21, 2016 at 12 p.m. EST
This webinar was presented by Dr. Maciej Bartkowski
Watch the webinar below:
Webinar content:
1. Introduction of the Speaker: 00:00 – 00:55
2. Presentation: 00:56 – 49:52
3. Questions and Answers: 49:53 – 1:07:58
Four different polls were conducted among the participants during the webinar. The polls asked the following questions:
- What would you do if foreign troops invaded & occupied your town/city/region/country?
- In your view, how effective can nonviolent resistance against a powerful aggressor-state be?
- In your view, how effective can armed resistance against a powerful aggressor-state be?
- What resistance action would you join if your town/city/region/country was occupied by a brutal foreign regime?
Check the webinar recording above to see the polls’ results and compare them with the outcomes of the national surveys that were shown and discussed by the speaker.
Webinar Summary:
Historically, nonviolent resistance has proven to be more effective than armed insurrections against domestic authoritarian regimes. The relevance and applicability of civil resistance to fighting violent regimes at home are by now indisputable.
This scholarly, policy and practitioner confidence has yet to translate into the opinion that civil resistance can also be relevant and applicable for effective national defense against an aggressor-state. This webinar will elaborate on a national nonviolent defense as a viable means to counter external, overt and covert (hybrid) aggression and foreign occupation.
More specifically, the webinar will analyze the results of recent national surveys from Poland and Ukraine that show surprisingly large social capital among respective populations for civil resistance in case of violent foreign intrusion. It will also look at selected historical cases of nonviolent defense used spontaneously by the attacked societies and current efforts by Lithuania to integrate civil resistance into its defense policies and preparedness.
These analyses will show how nonviolent resistance strategies can be relevant for developing viable and effective national defenses against violent aggressor-states.
Presenter:
Dr. Maciej Bartkowski is the Senior Director for Education & Research at ICNC. At ICNC, Dr. Bartkowski manages academic programs for students, faculty, and educators that support curriculum-development, teaching, research, writing and study on civil resistance. He is editor of the ICNC Monograph series and the volume Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles. He is also an adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Read more
Relevant publications by Dr. Bartkowski:
- Countering Hybrid War. Civil Resistance as a National Defense Strategy, openDemocracy, May 2015. Available Online
- Nonviolent Civilian Defense to Counter Russian Hybrid Warfare, Critical Policy Issue Studies, Johns Hopkins University, March 2015. Available Online
- To Kill or Not to Kill: Ukrainians Opt for Nonviolent Civil Resistance, Political Violence @ A Glance, October 2015. Available Online
- The Kremlin’s “Protest Potential” Strategy, The HuffingtonPost, November 2016. Available Online
- Nonviolent Strategies to Defeat Totalitarians such as ISIS, openDemocracy, March 2016. Available Online