The most common areas of peace movement activity, such as negotiations, disarmament and transferring spending, do not challenge the power of the military in any fundamental way, nor offer any way to overcome the use of military force against reforming goverments. Instead of controlling the military, another way to get beyond military control is to replace the military. Of these two, the possibility of a resurgence of the military is larger with guerrilla warfare. In many anti-colonial struggles, guerrilla warfare has been superseded by regular military forces, as in Vietnam. We believe the best prospects for truly getting beyond military control lie with social defence.
Social defence is a nonviolent alternative to military defence.
It is based on widespread political, economic and social non-cooperation in order to oppose military aggression or political repression. It uses methods such as boycotts, refusals to obey, strikes, demonstrations and setting up alternative government. Social defence is based on the principle that no regime whether a democracy or military dictatorship can survive without the passive support or nonresistance of a large fraction of the population. Since social defence relies on resistance by large sections of the population, it is the nonviolent equivalent of guerrilla warfare. However, the similarities between social defence and guerrilla warfare are limited since the basic thrust of social defence is the replacement of the centralised military system that we know today.