Countering hybrid war: civil resistance as a national defence strategy

Lithuanian interest in civil defence dates back to their experience of waging nonviolent defence against Soviets in the late 1980s and early 1990s to win independence. One tactic involving transnational solidarity was dubbed ‘the Baltic Way’ – a chain of people hundreds of kilometres long across three Baltic states, formed to increase visibility of these populations’ struggles for independence. Wikimedia Commons/Rimantas Lazdynas. Some rights reserved.

Since the
annexation of Crimea and the start of conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Russian
form of hybrid war that spearheaded these events has raised significant
concerns among eastern European states about an effective response to non-traditional warfare.
Russia’s hybrid war – a
term meaning a mixture of conventional and irregular warfare –
has presented a vexing problem to
conventional armed defense. It also demonstrates the need to determine whether
a national strategy of nonviolent civilian defence can be a viable option for
the current and potential victims of hybrid war to fight back non-militarily.

The meeting between former Russian and US defence and intelligence officials in March gave us a glimpse into the Kremlin’s
thinking about hybrid war. Instead of sending troops without insignia across
the border with the Baltic states, Moscow would use at first non-military means
to entice local, mainly Russian but sometimes non-Russian populations (like the
Polish-speaking minority in Lithuania) toward Russia. This would hardly
constitute a rationale for deployment of tanks and warplanes and would put a
defending military in a dilemma of whether or not to shoot at unarmed civilians.
As the
commander of the US army in Europe, Lt-Gen Frederick "Ben" Hodges observed recently: Russians “don't want a clear attack, they want a situation where all 28
[NATO member countries] won't say there's a clear attack." If the alliance decided to go
heavy-handed against mobilized and seemingly peaceful minorities it would turn
itself into an aggressor, offer Putin a propaganda coup for more interference
and rally Russian society even closer around the Kremlin’s belligerent policies.

Despite facing such
unconventional threats, the western response has been predicated on a show of
military force, while nonviolent strategies have largely been absent from
defence plans. The most recent Operation Dragoon Ride publicity stunt saw hundreds of US
soldiers and their armed vehicles meandering through the roads of central
Europe in a public display of force. Meanwhile, countries such as Poland
have beefed up their armouries while civilians have
volunteered to join shooters’ clubs and paramilitary groups to prepare for potential armed resistance.

Thinking beyond the 'fight or capitulate' dichotomy

The choice society
has in facing foreign aggression seems rather simple: fight with arms or
surrender. That sentiment was reflected in the 2014 Gallup survey conducted in more than 60 countries that asked: “Would
you fight for your country?” Globally, 60 percent were willing to fight or, as it was
interpreted, “take up arms,” while 27 percent would not. By default, “fight”
was understood as armed struggle while
its opposite – not to fight – as a capitulation.

A recent opinion
poll in Poland, however, showed a far more nuanced gamut of responses. Last
month, the survey asked Poles what they would do if their state faced armed
invasion by another
country. Tellingly, 37 percent of respondents –
the equivalent of almost 12 million Polish adults if applied to the nation’s
population – said they would resist foreign aggression “not
by fighting with arms, but by engaging in other, non-military activities.”
Only 27 percent declared it would take
up arms. The remaining would emigrate, were undecided or would surrender.

Many more Poles –
a population that could very well find itself in Russia’s
crosshairs – are ready to engage in nonviolent resistance than in armed
struggle to defend their country. While at first blush, Gallup’s
global survey suggests the default is armed struggle, responses by Poles
indicate that when given more choices, nonviolent resistance has more support
than is often recognized.

That point is not
lost on Russia and China. My study published by the Krieger School of Johns
Hopkins University in March 2015 on countering hybrid war with nonviolent civilian defense shows that these countries are
preoccupied equally with shielding themselves against nonviolent
resistance, while at the same time using civilian mobilization to propel
their hybrid war machines. The new Russian military doctrine released at the end of 2014 identifies social movements
and civilian-led demonstrations as a major weapon in territorial conflicts.
This strategy is no doubt the result of Russia’s
lessons from the so-called colour revolutions, the Arab Spring and the Ukrainian Euromaidan.

Nonviolent resistance as part of a nation’s
defence strategy?

Ironically,
authoritarian states seem to give more credit to people power than their
democratic counterparts. Only one tiny democratic state – recognizing both the historical
contribution of this type of warfare to its pro-democratic and pro-independence
struggle in the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, as well as the costs and
risks of armed defence against a militarily stronger adversary –
has explicitly integrated strategies
of nonviolent resistance into its territorial defence. Last January, the Lithuanian Ministry of
Defence published a manual that asks Lithuanian citizens to engage in civil resistance in
case of invasion and occupation. It offers specific examples of how civilians
can wage nonviolent actions against a foreign adversary while referring to Gene Sharp’s 198 methods of
nonviolent resistance. The manual acknowledges that “Civilian-based defense or nonviolent civil resistance is another
way for citizens to resist aggression…This method is especially important for threats of hybrid war.”

Lithuanians
recognized that nonviolent civilian defence could turn a whole nation into a
resistant society as it strengthens its cohesion, solidarity and
self-organization – essential ingredients in a struggle against a polarizing
hybrid war. Nationwide, nonviolent civilian defence turns the whole nation into
a fighting society that is disciplined to wage a long-term, all-encompassing
and targeted noncooperation effort with the aggressor, including its allies at
home and abroad to disrupt their control and undermine their legitimacy in each
area of social, political, economic and cultural life.

Seemingly
weak, occupied populations have in fact been able to exercise direct and indirect
leverage over the occupiers
when they engaged in nonviolent resistance. The experience of the past anti-colonial and anti-occupation
struggles
suggests that civil resisters were most effective when they were able to look
beyond their domestic struggle and extend their immediate battlefield outside
the borders to mobilize external actors, including adversaries’
international allies, as well as drive
a wedge between the aggressor’s government and its own society.

As
a result, organized collective actions of millions of ordinary people were able
to erode the loyalty of the adversary’s allies often more effectively than
arms. During the occupation of the Ruhr after World War I, German citizens were so effective in
nonviolent outreach to the occupying French troops that Paris was gravely
concerned about their loyalties and readiness to continue implementing
occupation orders. This and other civil resistance actions forced the French
government to call up reservists, which increased the cost of occupation,
deepened the budget deficit and raised resentment among the French public.

Civil
resistance has also undermined oppressors’ domestic constituencies, as it did
during the Indian independence struggle when Gandhi effectively reached out to the British media and the
public to put pressure on
the British government. Similarly, during World War II, civil resistance by the
Norwegian teachers and trade unions against the pro-Nazi Quisling regime, the Danes’ collective
nonviolent actions
against the Nazi occupation, the first
Palestinian nonviolent intifada against Israeli occupation and the East Timorese nonviolent pro-independence struggle against the Suharto regime were all
credited with protecting civilians, and reducing civilian deaths particularly
in comparison with violent resistance. Nonviolent resistance also increased the economic, political and social costs on the violent
adversary, often forcing it to offer tangible concessions that were hardly likely to have been extracted through direct violent challenge.

The untapped potential of nonviolent defence

At
its core, nonviolent civilian defence is about engaging the greatest number of people with the
least amount of risk for civilians and greatest number of disruptions for the
adversary, including its key domestic and international supporters.

Historically,
nonviolent resistance has worked far better than its armed alternative. Civil
resistance has been determined to be twice as effective against a violent adversary than armed struggle, able to
mobilize campaigns that are 11 times larger than average armed resistance ones, likely to reduce civilian deaths and tenfold
more likely to bring about a democratic outcome compared to a victory though
arms.

The
untapped powers of nonviolent resistance offer a serious alternative against
the threat of contemporary hybrid wars. Furthermore, as shown in the Polish survey results,
pursuing this form of waging conflict might match people’s own instincts in the face of external aggression. When it comes to
mobilizing the masses, enhancing internal solidarity and unity, limiting
overall human costs, maximizing strategic effectiveness of disruptions to a
foreign adversary and increasing chances for post-conflict stability,
democracies would do well to take note of the potential that nonviolent
civilian defence holds for their defensive capabilities to counter protracted
hybrid wars.

This is particularly relevant to smaller nations and their
populations vulnerable to external threats from authoritarian states who are
equally afraid of people power and eager to manipulate it to their benefit.