In this comment, I use “should” in the tactical sense of “how to get your side to win”. I do not intend to imply anything about which side (if any) holds the moral high ground.
Cut off from food, and the fuel cans that have so infuriated Ottawa residents as they’re carted in with total impunity, their position would grow weaker each day.
When I see “the government cuts off food to peaceful protesters” my impulsive counter-strategy is “hunger strike”. The objective would be make the convoy participants look like peaceful idealists and the Canadian government appear to be inhumane.
I don’t think the convoy would actually do a hunger strike (I don’t think they’re committed enough and it doesn’t seem like truckers’ style—I could be wrong). But if the truckers did hunger strike then that could make a blockade backfire in the Canadian’s government’s face disastrously. Though small, this possibility is something the authorities are right to consider.
I think the worst part about blockading the blockade it that blockades are slow. If blockading the blockade fails to quickly end the blockade then you are now blockading the transportation corridor in the name of not blockading the transportation corridor. Your government would be the butt of jokes around the world.
Threats of going after drivers’ licences and seizing vehicles are also intended to convince those who may be wondering if they’ve made a terrible mistake that it’s time to pack up and head home while they still can.
Which all seems to me like reasonable and proportional. If you use your vehicle in such a fashion, it seems tough but fair to threaten to seize the vehicle. If you drive in ways that cause major disruptions, taking away your license also seems tough but fair. Similar things happen for a lot less. And all orders of magnitude smaller than the damage being done.
This is the way. The government should frame their response as a case of “enforcing traffic law” and “keeping vital infrastructure operational”. The government should ignore the protesters’ demands entirely. I’m not saying the protesters’ demands are unreasonable or that they don’t matter. I’m saying that the government’s narrative should be “we are impartially enforcing traffic law”. Whatever the government ultimately resorts to, the government should start by enforcing existing traffic law because the government unambiguously has both the obligation to enforce traffic law and the authority to do so. Bring in lots of cameras. Emphasize how reasonable and by-the-book the police are being.
If such lighthanded tactics end the protest then great! If such lighthanded tactics don’t end the protest, they still make the Canadian government appear reasonable (which can be leveraged to suggest the protesters aren’t being reasonable (even though that’s not how logic works)). If the government appears reasonable but the protesters don’t then the government can use its political capital to escalate. (The government has an army. They could blow up the trucks if they needed to. The government restrains itself because the government needs to appear reasonable even more than it needs to to clear away the convoy.) The government should throw the book at the protesters. If such paper threats fail too then they can use force against the small number of holdouts (who are no longer licensed to be operating their vehicles). All of this backs the narrative “our democratically-elected government supports the rule of traffic law”, which is so reasonable it’s boring.
The disadvantage of such an approach is it gives protesters the time to dig in. The opportunity to dig in comes from static fronts. The government should have been constantly taking actions that forced the protesters to be reactive (as opposed to proactive). Instead, the government voluntarily (by omission) yielded the tactical momentum.
By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King.
The US government did arrest Martin Luther King (MLK). The first time MLK got arrested, he broke down in tears of joy to discover he was going to jail because it meant he wasn’t going to be non-judicially executed by the police. The rule of law is asymmetric. The rule of law gets in the way of peaceful protesters, but it gets more in the way of oppressive governments.
In this comment, I use “should” in the tactical sense of “how to get your side to win”. I do not intend to imply anything about which side (if any) holds the moral high ground.
When I see “the government cuts off food to peaceful protesters” my impulsive counter-strategy is “hunger strike”. The objective would be make the convoy participants look like peaceful idealists and the Canadian government appear to be inhumane.
I don’t think the convoy would actually do a hunger strike (I don’t think they’re committed enough and it doesn’t seem like truckers’ style—I could be wrong). But if the truckers did hunger strike then that could make a blockade backfire in the Canadian’s government’s face disastrously. Though small, this possibility is something the authorities are right to consider.
I think the worst part about blockading the blockade it that blockades are slow. If blockading the blockade fails to quickly end the blockade then you are now blockading the transportation corridor in the name of not blockading the transportation corridor. Your government would be the butt of jokes around the world.
This is the way. The government should frame their response as a case of “enforcing traffic law” and “keeping vital infrastructure operational”. The government should ignore the protesters’ demands entirely. I’m not saying the protesters’ demands are unreasonable or that they don’t matter. I’m saying that the government’s narrative should be “we are impartially enforcing traffic law”. Whatever the government ultimately resorts to, the government should start by enforcing existing traffic law because the government unambiguously has both the obligation to enforce traffic law and the authority to do so. Bring in lots of cameras. Emphasize how reasonable and by-the-book the police are being.
If such lighthanded tactics end the protest then great! If such lighthanded tactics don’t end the protest, they still make the Canadian government appear reasonable (which can be leveraged to suggest the protesters aren’t being reasonable (even though that’s not how logic works)). If the government appears reasonable but the protesters don’t then the government can use its political capital to escalate. (The government has an army. They could blow up the trucks if they needed to. The government restrains itself because the government needs to appear reasonable even more than it needs to to clear away the convoy.) The government should throw the book at the protesters. If such paper threats fail too then they can use force against the small number of holdouts (who are no longer licensed to be operating their vehicles). All of this backs the narrative “our democratically-elected government supports the rule of traffic law”, which is so reasonable it’s boring.
The disadvantage of such an approach is it gives protesters the time to dig in. The opportunity to dig in comes from static fronts. The government should have been constantly taking actions that forced the protesters to be reactive (as opposed to proactive). Instead, the government voluntarily (by omission) yielded the tactical momentum.
The US government did arrest Martin Luther King (MLK). The first time MLK got arrested, he broke down in tears of joy to discover he was going to jail because it meant he wasn’t going to be non-judicially executed by the police. The rule of law is asymmetric. The rule of law gets in the way of peaceful protesters, but it gets more in the way of oppressive governments.