1/12 As a longtime activist and historian of US foreign policy , glad protests are taking place today against possible war with Iran. But we must grapple w/ this: US antiwar movement has been singularly ineffective in preventing war. We need to ask why, and what to do about it.
2/12 In 2003 I worked full-time as an antiwar activist, helping to plan the global Feb 15, 2003 protest against the Iraq war. 660 cities in the US, more than 12 million people globally. Largest day of coordinated protest in world history. And it failed, utterly, to prevent war.
3/12 The anti-Vietnam war movement’s history is relevant here. Historians hotly debate whether or how much it constrained US warmaking in Indochina, or whether broader war weariness (since a majority of public opposed antiwar movement) mattered more.
4/12 The 1991 mobilization against the Iraq war was similarly ineffective. Hundreds of thousands demonstrating in dozens of cities, along with a close vote in Congress, and Bush still waged war. It’s swiftness gave antiwar mvt little chance to mobilize, and it collapsed in 1991.
5/12 Arguably the most effective antiwar movement in modern US history was the Central America solidarity movement, which may have prevented US invasion of either Nicaragua or El Salvador in the early 1980s. This was a more deeply rooted movement, which made a big diff.
6/12 it’s still important for antiwar movement to protest, organize, mobilize, lobby local officials, etc, in part to signal opposition for media and fence-sitting politicians and citizens, as well as to provide community for ourselves.
7/12 But antiwar activists and those who consider themselves antiwar more broadly need to think hard about our strategic and tactical ineffectiveness. Some questions to ask: why has public protest proven relatively weak constraint on warmaking?
8/12 Does the effectiveness of antiwar protest, if at all, lie in large public displays of opposition or in smaller, daily local organizing which builds community, leadership, and experience? How effective is lobbying Congress, esp in face of unconstrained Pres war making power?
9/12 What, if anything, can an antiwar movement do to constrain a radical Pres who has contempt for both public opinion and Congress? Since one-off protests have no discernible effect, how can an antiwar movement build capacity for sustained militant action?
10/12 In such a large, divided country as the United States, what kind of strategic antiwar action might impose real costs on an authoritarian President? The US left has no demonstrated capacity for sustained, disruptive Hong Kong type protests, which would require millions.
11/12 Given that 40% of the country lives in a right wing media bubble, and that no antiwar movement in US history has enjoyed broad public support, what could the antiwar movement do to build such support (or tolerance) for the kind of mass disruptive protest that might matter?
12/12 I don’t have good answers for these questions. But historians, analysts, activists, and supporters need to answer them in some form. Because 50 yrs of protest has done little to suggest what might work now if Trump is determined to go to war. END
