Given ‘common-sense’ wisdom that violence is required to stop violence, any serious investigation into unarmed civilian protection (UCP) must first address and interrogate widespread beliefs about the protective value of violence, and then identify and explore the range of mechanisms by which nonviolence, in the form of UCP, is capable of preventing violence and protecting civilians. This chapter first examines how collective armed security-seeking practices – on the part of anyone from armed activists to military forces – are unreliable and often generate insecurity for those they are meant to protect. Second, drawing on UCP practice in a range of contexts, I argue that UCP is able to prevent and protect people from violence via four primary mechanisms, most succinctly expressed as UCP as deterrent, as mirror, as bridge, and as support – all of which manifest differently depending on context and especially on whether the particular UCP activity is directed at the perpetrator group, the targeted civilians, the broader community or mutually belligerent armed groups. Ultimately, although neither violent nor nonviolent responses can guarantee protection from violence, the unarmed, nonviolent status of UCP actors facilitates, rather than hinders, these protective mechanisms – while armed approaches to protection can actually weaken them.

Interrogating the protection value of weapons and violence

‘Common-sense’ thinking about the protective value of violence relies on the assumption that violence is effective at stopping other violence. Especially when the stakes are high – when security is at risk – violence is often turned to as the most reliable tool for protection. Even when violence is considered a ‘last resort’, the assumption is that, where other tools did not work, violence will. This air of reliability, though, rather than being grounded in empirical evidence, emerges from violence's ability to ‘produce some things with utter certainty (e.g. dead bodies, pain, screams)’ (Howes, 2009, p 117) – immediate tangible effects that trick us into reading its overall efficacy as immediate, too. In fact, although violence has these reliable effects, its ability to bring about the outcome for which it is being used is far less certain.