Successful movements against war?
Jun 12 2008 16:22
Leaving Russia 1917 aside, have there been any successful domestic movements against a state participating in a war? Either in terms of preventing the outbreak of war, or of ending it once it had begun.
I know there are lots of inspiring things that happened around GIs with regard to Vietnam, but my impression is that even that was a minor factor compared to the military defeat, and bodybags coming home.
... so - any ideas?
Jun 12 2008 17:21
#2
You could say the domestic protests in France by French-Algerians, immigrants, and other French people were a major force for ending the French-Algerian war. Ofcourse there was an enormous bloodletting on the part of the Algerians as with the October 17, 1961 massacre but this all in some crude way served to stop it.
Jun 12 2008 17:29
#3
Germany 1918.
Devrim
Jun 12 2008 20:08
#4
Ambrose Nurrra wrote:
You could say the domestic protests in France by French-Algerians, immigrants, and other French people were a major force for ending the French-Algerian war. Ofcourse there was an enormous bloodletting on the part of the Algerians as with the October 17, 1961 massacre but this all in some crude way served to stop it.
Admittedly all I know about this is from a week of study at university and the Battle of Algiers film, but wasn't there a mass Algerian mobilisation (strikes, riots), combined with a virtual order to withdraw from the USA which was then holding alot of financial strings over France? Can't remember properly...
Devrim wrote:
Germany 1918.
Didn't the movement really only emerge once military defeat was pretty much a certainty anyway? I've got a book with an article I meant to read on this, so I'll check it out as soon as I can.
Jun 12 2008 21:08
#5
David in Atlanta wrote:
I think the internal demoralization, from the states point of view, of the US military and the increasing size, frequency and militance of domestic protests ended the war in southeast Asia, with all due respect for the Vietnamese.
yeah, concerning vietnam, my info is really spotty but i've heard the vietnamese resistance, for however tough it was, just did *not* defeat the US army whatsoever, and was just really inefficient. which leaves you with the war being ended in USA.
'course, i heard that from right-wingers, so could be biased info.
Jun 12 2008 22:02
#6
The australian World War One war effort was basically ended by an unholy coalition of the Trade unions, Irish Republicans, Socialists, Catholic Church and the IWW. They passed a referendum (yes! the IWW!) twice to abolish the draft. Since enlistment was nearly zero, no bodies = no army. My favorite quote is from Tom Barker, an IWW, who when asked about the Catholic bishop he was sitting next to said something like: "I won't march into heaven with this man, but I'll march into hell with him."
Jun 12 2008 23:16
#7
In response to the topic, France 1871. Also I would question the assessment that the NLF is not responsible for the US withdrawal from Vietnam. Had there not been tens of thousands of bodybags and the need for hundreds of thousands of troops (which dangerously depleted home troops for containing ghetto riots), I doubt the liberal wing of US capitalism would have put its weight behind withdrawal. Personally I find the anti-war protest recollections of the college professor types nowadays to be overly self-important.
Jun 13 2008 05:35
#8
Actually the NLF was definitely NOT responsible for the American (and Allied--let's not forget the troops from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea...) withdrawal. That "honor" goes to the North Vietnamese Army. The Tet Offensive pretty much destroyed the guerrilla infrastructure of the NLF, leaving the post-68 fighting to the "invading" North Vietnamese, who were afterwards responsible for the bulk of Allied troop battle losses. Let's leave that "heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people" to the Stalinists.
Jun 13 2008 07:06
#9
posi wrote:
Didn't the movement really only emerge once military defeat was pretty much a certainty anyway? I've got a book with an article I meant to read on this, so I'll check it out as soon as I can.
The war had turned against them, but immediate defeat wasn't staring them in the face.
The Solidarity pamphlet on mutinies wasn't bad if I remember well. It concerns the allied armies in WWI. Here is a sample about the British intervention in Russia:
Quote:
THE RUSSIAN FRONTThere is some evidence of fraternisation between Russian revolutionaries and the allied armies sent to put them down, even in the Northern Sector. In December 1918 an occupation of the barracks by Russians of the First Archangel Company, who were sympathetic to the revolution, was supported by fraternising allied troops, who picketed the town so as to shut it off from the barracks. The mutiny was suppressed when Russian NCOs, under British command, mortared the barracks, killing at least one innocent civilian bystander.
In February 1919 men of the Yorkshire Regiment refused to march on Seletskoe. Two sergeants, delegated to express the battalion's refusal to fight, were arrested, court-martialled and sentenced to be shot. In the light of 'secret' orders from the King prohibiting executions after the Armistice, these sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. News of the Yorkshire's mutiny spread rapidly through the allied forces. The first to follow suit were the French battalion at Archangel, who refused to return from leave.
Much has been said about the determination of Russian workers to protect the revolution from the Western allies. What has rarely been recorded is how weak the Bolshevik armed forces were. When clashes with the allied Navy occurred, Bolshevik commanders often surrendered immediately. And the few planes the RAF had commandeered easily took command of the air. In one instance an RAF pilot was able to follow a Bolshevik plane to its aerodrome and land there, after shooting it up, before making a safe return. The ultimate Bolshevik military victory was not due to the superiority of Lenin's forces in the field, but to the decision of the Allies to pull out - a decision largely influenced by the mood of their own soldiers. Major setbacks on the battlefield were largely due to vast numbers of Whites going over to the other side, rather than the superior forces of the Bolshevik armies.
In June 1919, in spite of the fact that the Bolshevik forces on the Dvina were on their knees, the Hampshire Regiment refused contact and withdrew from the battle. To prevent similar acts of indiscipline the ringleaders were sent home for demobilisation. Maintaining discipline, however, proved to be more difficult than it was thought. On July 7 the Slavo-British Legion, which had been at Dvina for only 3 days, mutinied, killing five British officers and four Russian officers. Several mutineers called for volunteers to join the Bolsheviks and some 50 did so, another 50 deserting. Two of the mutineers were captured, tried and shot. The rest of the battalion was disarmed and turned into a labour unit.
The situation in Russia was unique. Here was an army inflicting heavy losses on the Bolshevik forces, breaking through their lines with relative ease, and yet, from the reports of mutinies, it was evident that the whole Archangel force might easily collapse. It is against this background that we can understand the decision to withdraw allied troops from Russia. By September 1919 the evacuation of an army, scarcely damaged by Bolshevik forces, was well under way.
http://libcom.org/library/mutinies-dave-lamb-solidarity
Devrim
Jun 13 2008 08:04
#10
fnbrill wrote:
The australian World War One war effort...
Pics or it didn't happen.
uh, I mean, links please?
Jun 13 2008 09:26
#11
Its always hard to tell what was the main reason behind things that didnt happen, but when the "union" between Sweden and Norway was ended in 1905 by the Norwegians claiming independency there was a rather big risk of war (that would have meant sweden invading norway) but the war-to-be was opposed by the swedish workers movement and never happend.
Jun 13 2008 18:46
#12
Iron Column wrote:
In response to the topic, France 1871.
i cant claim to know a lot about the Franco-Prussian war, but i've never got the impression that the Paris Commune (that's what you're thinking of, no?) was actually a response to END the war at all. France was basically at the point of defeat and promised Prussia that it could occupy Paris for a period of time, as a term of defeat. the Parisians, however, rebelled at the indignity and tried to CONTINUE the war - and when the French government refused, they turned the war against the government. not a very good example of a successful *anti*-war movement, if anything they prolonged the war!
Dec 30 2008 08:32
#13
fnbrill wrote:
The australian World War One war effort was basically ended by an unholy coalition of the Trade unions, Irish Republicans, Socialists, Catholic Church and the IWW. They passed a referendum (yes! the IWW!) twice to abolish the draft. Since enlistment was nearly zero, no bodies = no army. My favorite quote is from Tom Barker, an IWW, who when asked about the Catholic bishop he was sitting next to said something like: "I won't march into heaven with this man, but I'll march into hell with him."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Australia_during_World_War_I
... doesn't seem from that article like the WW1 effort was stopped, Australian troops were still fighting in late 1918, despite the disaster at Gallipoli in 1915. Please could someone give some more info?
I'm trying to write something to give out at anti-war demos, and I want it to be practical, so I'd like to know about this stuff.
Also, does anyone know where Trotsky says something about it not being possible to influence the foreign policy of bourgeois states?
I'm thinking that I'm more or less going to have to agree with that at the moment, leaving aside revolutionary movements and soldier rebellion...
Dec 30 2008 18:17
#14
The two referendums (referenda?) fnbrill refers to were actually introduced by the Australian government to extend the draft, not introduced by the IWW etc to abolish it. The draft already required compulsory military service within Australia for males aged 18-26; the government wanted to be able to send this demographic overseas. Presumably those soldiers already sent to Europe, Turkey etc were volunteers. Both refendums were defeated, but this simply resulted a continuation of the previous state of affairs and had no effect on those already serving.
Jan 16 2009 19:40
#15
however it worked out, Australia had, with Ireland, the distinction of being one of the few combatants with no military conscription, and the inability of the state to impose conscription is no small block to their overall ability to wage war.
I think Feighnt is correct. The Paris Commune was, if anything, a pro-war movement, which makes it perhaps less useful as exemplar to those of us who's anti-state politics are fundamentally rooted in opposition to war.
Jan 16 2009 20:02
#16
Feighnt wrote:
David in Atlanta wrote:
I think the internal demoralization, from the states point of view, of the US military and the increasing size, frequency and militance of domestic protests ended the war in southeast Asia, with all due respect for the Vietnamese.yeah, concerning vietnam, my info is really spotty but i've heard the vietnamese resistance, for however tough it was, just did *not* defeat the US army whatsoever, and was just really inefficient. which leaves you with the war being ended in USA.
'course, i heard that from right-wingers, so could be biased info.
The right may have a point, they do sometimes. The North Vietnamese regular army and the NLF were well armed, committed and for the most part led by knowledgeable tacticians. However, given the population base and industrial power of the US they would have been crushed if Johnson and Nixon were able to muster national unity. However we were going through a period of wide-spread popular rebellion and support for a prolonged and pointless war was not happening.
Jan 17 2009 01:03
#17
Feighnt wrote:
David in Atlanta wrote:
I think the internal demoralization, from the states point of view, of the US military and the increasing size, frequency and militance of domestic protests ended the war in southeast Asia, with all due respect for the Vietnamese.yeah, concerning vietnam, my info is really spotty but i've heard the vietnamese resistance, for however tough it was, just did *not* defeat the US army whatsoever, and was just really inefficient. which leaves you with the war being ended in USA.
Yeah pretty much, the tet offensive in 1968 is generally credited as being the turning point of the war. However, US casualties were about 1,500 whereas north vietnamese casualties were in excess of 45,000. The reason it had such an impact was that it proved the North vietnamese could continue to launch massive offensives even after years of war which combined with certain propaganda aspectsof the offensive convinced most that the war would continue with no real hope of any forseeable end.
Its also worth mentioning that the cultural revolution was in 1967, the aftermath of which turned the sino-soviet split into open confrontation. This combined with the fact that the ''domino effect'' looked a lot less threatening than it had in the early to mid 60's meant that the vietnam war wasn't really ''neccesary'' so to speak.
Jan 17 2009 06:24
#18
re: Vietnam, North Vietnam General Giap's strategy was a war of attrition based on not to being defeated by the US. The Tet offensive was also important as it effectively ended the NLF (Southern Vietnamese who wanted reunification with the North). This was also of benefit to the N. Vietnamese regular army.
I think the internal demoralization, from the states point of view, of the US military and the increasing size, frequency and militance of domestic protests ended the war in southeast Asia, with all due respect for the Vietnamese.