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ABSTRACT
This essay addresses the critical need to apply a more advanced human-centric model in assessing current levels of governmental and societal resilience and resistance to subversion and coercion, as well as internal and/or external aggression. It proposes a method of analysis and assessment of the will, potential, and sustainability for national and/or sub-national resilience, as well as the potential for resistance to malign indigenous governance or external aggression. Finally, it examines, from a prospective external supporter’s perspective, the likely success of support to a partner’s resiliency or the potential to enable resistance to inspire change in adversary behaviors.
Disclosure statement
The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not reflect the U.S. Government or the Department of Defense.
Notes
1. Assesses Ukraine’s Progress: A Rare Interview with America’s Defense Intelligence Agency” The Economist 9–15 Sep. 2023: 25.
2. Ibid 25–26.
3. Army Technical Publication 5–0.1: Army Design Methodology (Headquarters: Department of the Army July 2015) 3–1.
4. DIGEST (Drugs Infrastructure Governance Economics Structures & Tribes) was developed by Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005 to analyze the environment; SWEATMSG (Sewer Water Electricity Agriculture Trash Medical Schools & Governance) was used by 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq in the 2005 timeframe; and MIDLIFE (Military Information Diplomatic Law-Enforcement Intelligence Financial & Economic) comes from an article by Wendt ‘Strategic Counterinsurgency Modeling’ 2–13.
5. ASCOPE primarily used by the U.S. Army includes (a) areas (b) structures (c) capabilities (d) organizations (e) people (f) events. METT-TC another used by the Army and Marine Corps is (a) mission (b) enemy (c) terrain and weather (d) troops (e) time available (f) civil considerations. PMESII-PT represents another popular Army mnemonic which stands for (a) political (b) military (c) economic (d) social (e) information (f) infrastructure (g) physical environment and (h) time.
6. The term human terrain ‘is analogous to geographic terrain but in the terms of people in sociogeographic space… Human dynamics over space can be conceptualized as a multilayered surface of hills and valleys corresponding with sociocultural attributes. Human terrain is often focused on cultural/ethnic traits but should also include characteristics of all systemic components affecting human behavior (e.g. demographics economics politics human-environment interactions). Humans operate in open social and physical systems and thus are affected by and affect surrounding elements of society and their physical environment’. Quote from Median ‘From Anthropology to Human Geography: Human Terrain and the Evolution of Operational Sociocultural Understanding’ 140.
7. Gordon McCormick The Shining Path and Peruvian Terrorism (Rand Corporation 1987).
8. Diagram by authors and based on Gordon McCormick’s ‘Magic Diamond’.
9. Resilience and resistance have several definitions depending on disciplines and contexts. The ones offered in this essay gear more towards international relations political science and military science. The Merriam-Webster definition of resilience is ‘an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change’. Oxford describes resilience as ‘the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties’. The APA dictionary of psychology describes it as ‘the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences especially through mental emotional and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands’. The U.S. Army defines resilience as ‘resilience is the ability to grow and thrive in the face of challenges and bounce back from adversity’. See https://www.army.mil/article/52143/building_resilience_across_usarpac.
10. Merriam-Webster describes resistance as ‘act or instance of resisting’. Oxford describes resistance as ‘the refusal to accept or comply with something; the attempt to prevent something by action or argument’. Currently the Department of Defense has no standard definition. However in 1961 the Army described it as ‘- the act of opposition of one individual or group to another’. FM 3–21 Guerilla Warfare and Special Forces Operations (Washington D.C.: Headquarters Department of the Army 1961) 5. A study by John Hopkins University and sponsored by U.S. Army Special Operations Command describes resistance as ‘a form of contention or asymmetric conflict involving participants’ limited or collective mobilization of subversive and/or disruptive efforts against an authority or structure’. See Cosgrove and Hahn Conceptual Typology of Resistance 1.
11. For the purpose of this essay resilience specifically describes governmental resilience within the context of intrastate and interstate conflict. For a definition of community resilience see Chandra et al. ‘Understanding Community Resilience in the Context of National Health Security: A Literature Review’. For a definition of economic resilience see U.S. Economic Development Administration’s definition as ‘economic resilience aims to better prepare regions to anticipate withstand and bounce back from any type of shock disruption or stress it may experience’ found at https://www.eda.gov/grant-resources/comprehensive-economic-development-strategy/content/economic-resilience.
12. See the U.S. Army definition for a resistance organization Army Technical Publication 3–05.1 Unconventional Warfare at the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Level.
13. Otto Fiala Resistance Operating Concept (Tampa: Joint Special Operations University 2020) xv.
14. Nolan Peterson ‘Resistance Is Now the Law’ Coffee or Die 7 January 2022. https://coffeeordie.com/ukraine-national-resistance-law/.
15. Sandor Fabian ‘Professional Resistance Forces as a Defence Framework for Small Countries’ Bezpieczeństwo. Teoria i Praktykay Issue 3 2022 193.
16. This is the definition for nationalized resistance from Fiala Resistance Operating Concept 238.
17. Illustration by authors.
18. See the Central Intelligence Agency Factbook at https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook.
19. See the ‘Fragile States Index’ by The Fund for Peace at https://fragilestatesindex.org.
20. See the governance statistics provided by the World Bank at https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi.
21. For one version see ‘Resilience Index 2022: Risks to Resilience on the Rise Again After a Year of Respite’ ResSwiss Re Institute 2022. Found at https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:3f36e9da-fe0f-401d-8648-9a12770ffc0f/2022-june-sigma-resilience-index-en.pdf.
22. Connable ‘Structuring Cultural Analyses: Applying the Holistic Will-to-Fight Models’ 153–167.
23. See McNerney et. al. ‘National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting and Others Don’t’.
24. includes: (a) the Central Intelligence Agency factbook found at https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook; (b) the fragile state index found at https://fragilestatesindex.org; (c) the resilience index by Swiss Re Institute (d) military moral calculations by Connable; (e) national will to fight calculations by McNerney et. al.; and (f) the World Bank statistics on evaluating governance.
25. Hastings 67.
26. As an additional resource in 2022 the United Nations released as special report entitled New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene: Demanding Greater Solidarity. Instead of a country-to-country comparison this U.N. study shows global trends on human security and their impact. A link to the United Nations report is found at https://hs.hdr.undp.org/pdf/srhs2022.pdf. Another aspect of resiliency that one might consider is legitimacy of current governance. Scholars for decades have attempted to measure a regime’s legitimacy. Christian von Haldenwang published one such methodology titled ‘Measuring Legitimacy – New Trends Old Shortcomings?’ Haldenwang advises five primary methods for surmising legitimacy including: (a) polling/surveys of the population (b) data analysis on both violence and political participation (c) investigation of local media discourse (d) the opinions of subject matter experts and (e) reading qualitative secondary works based on data.
27. See the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development trust in governance data at https://data.oecd.org/gga/trust-in-government.htm.
28. includes Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development trust in governance data.
29. State Department official relations information can be found at https://www.state.gov/u-s-bilateral-relations-fact-sheets.
30. This site on foreign assistance is established by both the Department of State as well as USAID and found at https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd.
31. The Security Assistance Monitor is maintained by the Center for International Policy and found at https://securityassistance.org.
32. includes: (a) State Department official relations found at https://www.state.gov/u-s-bilateral-relations-fact-sheets; (b) U.S. foreign aid statistics found at https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd; and (c) violent forms of aid monitored by the Center for International Policy and found at https://securityassistance.org.
33. Quote from the Department of Defense definition of foreign internal defense found in Joint Publication 3–22 Foreign Internal Defense.
34. The website TheGlobalEconomy.com was initially established as an extension of The Global Economy class at Georgia State University and set up by professor Neven Valev. It currently has three professors who maintain it at http://www.theglobaleconomy.com//
35. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace manages a protest tracker at https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/protest-tracker.
36. The University of Maryland manages terrorist statistics at https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd.
37. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project employees over 200 team members to maintain data on political violence found at https://acleddata.com.
38. The Institute for Economics and Peace produces the Global Peace Index at https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#.
39. Freedom House manages this dataset at https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world.
40. See the Central Intelligence Agency Factbook.
41. Chase Sova and Eilish Zembilci ‘Dangerously Hungry: The Link between Food Insecurity and Conflict’ Center for Strategic and International Studies 21 Apr 2023. Found at https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-between-food-insecurity-and-conflict.
42. includes information from: (a) https://www.theglobaleconomy.com//; (b) https://acleddata.com: (c) https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/protest-tracker; (d) https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd; (e) https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#/; (f) https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world; and (g) the CIA Factbook.
44. For more information see the U.S. Army War College website at https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/soic-study-methodology/. Also see Mason ‘COIN Doctrine is Wrong’ 19–34.
45. includes both the websites https://www.state.gov/u-s-bilateral-relations-fact-sheets and https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/soic-study-methodology.
46. Map of Moldova derived from CIA factbook found at https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ accessed on 23 Aug. 2023.
47. This information sourced from CIA factbook. found at https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ accessed on 23 Aug. 2023.
48. All following percentiles indicted as percentages in comparison with other nations.
49. Percentile rank indicates rank of a country among all countries in the world with 0% as the lowest and 100% as the highest. See the Worldbank indicators at https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/ accessed on 23 Aug. 2023.
50. Map of Moldova derived from CIA factbook found at https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ accessed on 23 Aug. 2023.
51. State Department official relations information can be found at https://www.state.gov/u-s-bilateral-relations-fact-sheets accessed 23 Aug. 2023. See U.S. Assistance to Moldova section.
52. For more information on U.S. support to Moldova see https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd accessed 23 August 2023.
53. For more information on U.S. arms sales foreign military training and security sector assistance see https://securityassistance.org/ accessed 23 Aug. 2023.
54. Percentile rank indicates rank of a country among all countries in the world with 0% as the lowest and 100% as the highest. For these statistics see www.theglobaleconomy.com accessed 23 Aug. 2023.
55. See https://acleddata.com/ accessed 23 Aug. 2023.
56. See https://carnegieendowment.org/ accessed 23 Aug. 2023.
57. See https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ accessed 23 Aug. 2023.
58. Percentile rank indicates rank of a country among all countries in the world with 0% as the lowest and 100% as the highest. See https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#/, accessed 23 Aug. 2023.
59. See https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/, accessed on 23 Aug. 2023.
60. Ibid.
61. Even the United States ended official recognition of the Republic of China in 1979. See ‘Countries that Recognize Taiwan, 2023’, World Population Review, found at https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-recognize-taiwan, accessed on 28 Sep. 2023.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Robert S. Burrell
Robert Burrell is the Academic Program Director for Support to Resilience and Resistance studies at Joint Special Operations University.
John Collison
John Collison is a Contractor with Huntington Ingalls Industries and works in J59-Concept Development and Integration (CD&I) at U.S. Special Operations Command.