Impact Of Nonviolence Movements

Nonviolence movements have potential to cause a positive impact. A model nonviolent demonstration would be when Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March which directed the Indian citizens towards independence from British rule. However, the Syrian conflict counters this outcome. This conflict started out as a demonstration of nonviolence after a group of school children were arrested and tortured for graffiti that spoke out against the Assad regime; but the Syrian state quickly elevated it to a nationwide uprising demanding the president’s resignation . President Bashar al-Assad led a movement against Syrian activists that were speaking out against the actions of the state and wanted civil liberties and economic prosperity, as well as more political

freedom from the Syrian regime. Although the conflict used to be anti al-Assad versus pro al-Assad reign, it has shifted toward a sectarian conflict between the Sunni majority and the Shia minority.
Over two hundred thousand people have died due to this war, a majority of them civilians.

The UN commission of inquiry deemed that both sides have committed war crimes like rape, murder, and torture as well as revoking access to water and food as a method of war. The UN Security Council demanded these acts to stop, however, civil civilian gatherings have been targeted by the state and such acts have been deemed a massacre. Along with weapon violence, chemical warfare has been used as well. Since 2013, Hundreds of people have been killed through chemicalized rockets and the United States threatened military intervention if the weapons were not destroyed. Following the current Syrian state, four million people have fled Syria and 7.6 million have been displaced, these numbers add up to half of the state’s pre-crisis population. This has generated a humanitarian crisis and one of the largest amount of refugees fleeing from a single event in history. A side effect to this Syrian conflict is the allowance for the up rise of the Islamic State, an extremist group that now controls land throughout Syria. The United States countered the Islamic State by launching air strikes against them and assisting the stateless nation of

Kurdistan.
The Syrian conflict has brought to light the severity the uprisings in the Arab spring and the gross mistreatment a sovereign state can inflict upon its citizens.

The basic human rights that have become the norm in a society have been stripped away and infringed upon and there has been little done on the international front to help the displaced and victimized citizens. However, humanitarian efforts have been working to assist refugees and provide aid relief. In just humanitarian assistance, Syrian refugees have received over 1.5 billion USD in aid relief and is one of the top ten countries to receive the most humanitarian aid. The world is increasingly interconnected and foreign policy today stresses the necessity for helping other countries that are in crisis in order to help protect the innocent citizens in the corrupted state.

The conflict in Syria shows how fragile an independent state can be, even though the Syrian state has been established since World War I. Syria has proven that if people witness social injustice, they will speak out about it and the way the government retaliates can set the course for a peaceful solution or civil warfare. The dynamic of a state is delicate and once one peg falls, the rest have the ability to fall too, sending the sovereign state into a state of corruption and allowing for continual violations against basic civil liberties, much like in

Syria.
The dynamic of a corrupted government and its mistreated citizens is extremely prevalent in today’s global political economy. It tells you that little is being done to restrict this behavior and punish those committing these acts on a global front and that the citizens suffer while those in power thrive. It shows that the world requires a delicate balance and that society stresses conflict and self-interest over the global good. Political Realism is the mindset that the world is in a continuous cycle of power and self-interest and that the principle actor in international relations is the state who’s only concern is their own security which is placed above all else. According to Global Political Economy, state behavior is inscribed with combatively self-interested actions through the assumption that it is human nature to be self-serving and to chase gains solely for oneself.