"I believe that in the event in which the only possible choice were between cowardice and violence, I would suggest violence"

M.K.Gandhi

In these hours, we must try to stick to facts:

1) The alternatives on the Gulf crisis have always been clear, already from the 2nd of August: to accept the occupation of Kuwait in the name of "peace", of Realpolitik, of a fundamental defiance of the law, or to oppose it by all means. There are no alternatives.

For the first time in the history of mankind, the almost totality of governments and the majority of the world public opinion agreed in rejecting the occupation of Kuwait and of charging the United Nations of establishing the procedures to restore violated legality. The U.S. have given the necessary commitment to ensure that the U.N.'s resolutions would not remain empty talk but executive and binding decisions.

It is beyond the point to discuss what the "real" (or allegedly so) interests for this U.S. commitment are; I judge facts now.

Any recrimination on the fact that a similar commitment has lacked in the past or in other occasions is useful for historical discussions, but does not allow us to feel authorized to fail to endorse the U.N.'s decisions in this specific occasion. They will in any case represent a precedent which will not be easily forgotten in the future.

2) The option of political nonviolence basically represents the intention to stress the non-inevitability of war, of violence on human beings to uphold legality. The nonviolent individual's commitment consists in proving that nonviolence is a stronger and more effective means than violence to uphold justice and freedom. It is not, as "pacifists" think, simply a rejection of violence, whatever its source and at all costs: neutrality therefore, or, even worse, objective complicity with those who caused the explosion of violence and infringed legality.

Political nonviolence is therefore the assertion of the need, the urgency and the possibility of replacing the force of violence with the force of legality. In the field of international politics, this means operating to overcome the concept of national defence, replacing it with that of collective defence entrusted to supranational bodies provided both with juridical legitimacy and coercive power.

For the first time, the Gulf crisis underlined the U.N.'s role of "world government" (even if void of its own "police" instruments for the enforcement of its resolutions) as well as its capacity, at least until Resolution n. 678, to use the instruments of political and economic pressure to subdue Iraq.

With Resolution 678, the U.S., the country that assumed the heaviest burden of this police action, as a state responding only to the laws of democracy and not of nonviolence, established a deadline for the passage to the use of military force. In my opinion not everything was done to make the embargo more effective; above all, forms of nonviolent "war" and destabilization have never been tried, despite the fact that it would have been possible to experiment them. Unfortunately, no political government or force of some importance has concretely operated to make the use of weapons avoidable.

But this could be a long discussion, because there is no nonviolent force today in the world capable of countering the prevalently military-oriented mentality. As a Radical, I can say this challenge represents the very reason for the existence of the transnational party. Unfortunately, in these hours, facts force other choices and other decisions on us. Or at least on some of us.

3) What can a nonviolent individual do in this precise situation, the way I described it, and not the way we wished it would be? I have already given an answer in the past, and it is contained in the title, in Gandhi's words.

But a few hours from the expiry of the U.N.'s deadline, I also assume the responsibility of giving a personal evaluation on what could happen, something more than mere hopes.

I don't believe Saddam Hussein can seriously consider the hypothesis of fighting a war against the U.S. To the very last minute, Saddam Hussein must carry on his bluff, and verify the effective determination of the U.S. to end the occupation of Kuwait using force. If there are no ruptures in the anti-Iraq front, a minute before the deadline, when he will have acknowledged the fact that there are no alternatives to defeat, Saddam will have to give up. Moreover, I believe the U.S., in order to avoid a military conflict, would be willing to acknowledge any sign of Saddam's effective will to withdraw from Kuwait, and this despite the forced demonstration of inflexibility.

Reason therefore leads me to hope in this result, sparing human lives and time better spent on that aspiration common to millions of people to simply live in a world in which no one is asked to die, neither for one's country, nor for justice, and not even for revolution.

This would give us a chance to build that international and transnational party of nonviolence, of tolerance, of antimilitarism, capable of preventing the only, tragic choice from being, once again, cowardice or violence.