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The Sinatra Doctrine
JEREMY JONES reviews
Waging Nonviolent Struggle
At the height of the European revolutions of 1989, the Soviet Foreign Affairs spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, in an allusion to US President Ronald Reagan's old friend, enunciated the Sinatra Doctrine. Eastern European states were to "do it their way," without hindrance from the Soviet Union, and, if anything, with a bit of a Soviet helpinghand. Those revolutions, which saw Communist regimes peacefully overthrown in five major states, are the towering achievement of nonviolent struggle of our time. The Cold War was brought to an end, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the Iron Curtain vanished, and the constant threat of global nuclear annihilation evaporated. There was a new world order. But in his new book, Waging Nonviolent Struggle, Gene Sharp, who for more than 30 years has been a leading theorizer of nonviolent struggle, does not have too much time for this achievement. Rather, his colleague Joshua Paulson provides half a dozen pages of narrative on Poland and another half-dozen on Czechoslovakia, but that is it. In a book running about 600 pages, it just is not enough.
Paulson provides a more engaging contribution to the book with a short summary (again much too short, only five pages this time) of the remarkable 18 days in February 1986 in the Philippines when Corazon Aquino's people power mobilized over a million people on the streets of Manila. First, the Defense Minister and Vice Chief of Staff resigned from the government and, along with about 300 rebel troops, pledged their allegiance to Aquino as the legitimate winner of the February 7 election. Next, the deliciously named leader of Manila's Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Sin, intervened, calling on the people to go to the rebel base to provide protection and prevent bloodshed. The people formed a massive human blockade, physically preventing troops loyal to President Ferdinand Marcos from attacking the rebels. Just three days...