A Plan B: An Australian Support to Resistance Operating Concept

The Defence Strategic Review (DSR) was a call for action, which bluntly stated that we have seen ‘the return of major power strategic competition, the intensity of which should be seen as the defining feature of our region and time’.^[1] Yet the DSR offers little insight into the nature of the competition that is being advanced by regimes such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and others. Terms such as ‘grey zone’, ‘irregular warfare’ and ‘proxy warfare’ simply do not appear in the DSR, even though these are the conditions under which Western competitors are choosing to compete. Simply put, Australia’s response is misaligned to the day-to-day threat. 

A rising sense of international competition has escalated in recent years as Russia’s security strategy has become increasingly belligerent. For well over a decade, the international community has, at some level, been in a state of confrontation with Russia. This situation reinforces the need for Australian policy options that directly respond to sub-threshold grey-zone activities. The ways in which Russia chose to compete—to punish Estonia in 2007, to block Georgia’s drift towards the West in 2008, and to seize Crimea from Ukraine in 2014—have been termed grey-zone actions or ‘hybrid warfare’. Since at least 2014, Eastern Europe has been adapting to these hybrid warfare threats. Facing the rising influence of autocratic governance regimes within our own Indo-Pacific region, it would be remiss of Australia to overlook the insights available from recent developments in Eastern Europe to inform us as to how countries in the Indo-Pacific might similarly adapt to hybrid approaches.

Examining the ‘state of competition’ globally might also help explain what it is that Australia is competing for. Given the CCP’s drift towards autocracy, extrajudicial policing, and suppression of international criticism through tools such as economic coercion, we are competing to preserve our democratic values and independence. While this is true for Australia, it is important to recognise that the same situation applies to other countries and commercial businesses in our region, and that they might also be expected to resist attempts by autocratic regimes to erode their sovereignty and/or independent decision-making capacity. Few entities willingly become vassals. By recognising this alignment of interests, it may be possible to achieve unity of purpose in efforts to defeat or at least contain autocratic repression in an environment of strategic competition.

Last year, I wrote about the key lessons Eastern Europe has been learning in developing national resilience to grey-zone subversion and coercion employed by autocratic power.^[2] Certain countries, such as the Baltics and Ukraine, have taken action to develop national resistance capabilities with the aim of deterring conflict or, if such deterrence fails, compelling an invader to withdraw from its occupied territories. In this context, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has learnt lessons in how to provide support to countries that have chosen to enhance their capacity for national resilience and resistance. Based on my analysis, I argued that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) should develop the capability and capacity to support likeminded nations in Australia’s region who might seek to develop resistance capabilities. Such capabilities could provide a ‘Plan B’ method to help Australia achieve its strategy of deterrence by denial.^[3]

In my previous analysis, I highlighted the geographic reality for Australia that almost all physical threats to our sovereign territory will first need to compromise the sovereignty of one or more of our northern neighbours. This realisation aids in developing a unity of purpose among likeminded countries in the Indo-Pacific to ‘roll back’ autocratic influence. Enhancing our neighbours’ resilience (or, if they choose, supporting their ability to resist armed coercion) adds strategic depth to Australia’s own defence. By signalling that Australia will disrupt, impose cost on, or possibly deny an aggressor’s ability to achieve their strategic aims, the global rules-based order might be strengthened. Given its prohibitive cost, major power conflict in our region must be dissuaded. 

This paper seeks to expand on Australia’s articulated concept of deterrence by denial. It argues a strategic logic and an evidence-based approach to resistance strategy. In doing so, it identifies recommendations for an Australian concept of operations for support to resistance. Its purpose is to inform the development of an ‘unconventional deterrence’ option within the Indo-Pacific region. While military officers might be concerned that such a concept is being explained in an unclassified and open manner, this is done deliberately. After all, how can a concept deter if it is not communicated to a potential aggressor? How is their calculus impacted if they do not understand the breadth of disruption, the level of cost that they should expect to incur? Indeed, how is civil society—both Australian and international—to be mobilised to support a country subjected to aggression if the argument sits behind a risk-averse security classification?

The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to inform national security stakeholders as to the utility of (what I term) an ‘unconventional deterrence’ option within the Indo-Pacific region. Accordingly, it aims to guide practitioners who may need to implement the concept, to educate policymakers as to the requirement for such a concept, and to ‘crowdsource’ support for the implementation of such a concept. 

Background—What Needs to Be Understood about Resistance?

A security strategy of resistance can be defined as: 

a nation’s organised, whole-of-society effort, encompassing the full range of activities from nonviolent to violent, led by a legally established government (potentially exiled/displaced or shadow) to re-establish independence and autonomy within its sovereign territory that has been wholly or partially occupied by a foreign power.^[4]

The most important element of this definition is the words ‘whole-of-society’. In reality, resistance is founded upon the achievement of whole-of-society national resilience, which is prepared in peacetime, preferably with likeminded partners. Resistance may include the development of violent and non-violent methods of resistance to be employed if conflict occurs.^[5] So defined, resilience is the ‘ability of a nation-state to preserve its societal cohesion when it is confronted by external and internal stresses caused by socio-political change and/or violent disturbances’.^[6] The continuity in such whole-of-society efforts has utility in the event of an aggressor’s partial or complete violent occupation. It is this continuity that disrupts grey-zone activities. As an illustration, the digital resistance movement currently supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression is emblematic of this broadened perspective of defence.

By contrast to resistance, subversion is employed by autocratic regimes with an intention to weaken society, to expand fissures and exacerbate tensions. The resulting societal ruptures, in turn, disrupt a country’s capacity to achieve a coordinated response to crisis. Specifically, a fragmented society will likely struggle to mobilise in response to aggression, or it might lack the political mandate or will to respond. It was this kind of fragmentation that characterised Ukraine’s political environment when Russia seized Crimea in 2014. That situation can be contrasted with the stoic policy in Kyiv from February-March 2022 through to the present day.

Beyond events in Ukraine, the broader historical record offers several lessons to help educate policymakers and military commanders about the concept of resistance, what is needed to achieve it, and how it might constitute an effective strategy in response to external repression. These lessons will be examined in turn.

Resistance can deter aggression. During World War II, the Swiss had a pre-planned, mature concept of national defence. This concept included key variables of defence-in-depth, pre-prepared plans for demolition of mountainous lines of communication (holding at risk the key assets Hitler wished to seize), and a mobilised population. The Swiss strategy deterred Hitler from invasion in 1940 and again in 1943—the expected costs of an invasion were too great given concurrent Axis operational commitments.^[7]

Non-violent resistance is historically more effective.^[8] Perhaps counter-intuitively, non-violent, coordinated actions are a more effective means of denying an autocrat power than directed military operations. Non-violent does not mean not coercive—non-violence still imposes costs and asserts sovereignty.^[9] These points are well demonstrated by the valiant non-violent resistance of the Danish population to Nazi occupying authorities during World War II. History is replete with similar examples of effective non-violent coercive responses to armed aggression. Indeed, non-violence has recently been shown to be approximately twice as effective as the use of violent resistance.^[10] Such effectiveness was well noted in the Kremlin following the string of ‘Colour Revolutions’ that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and was amply demonstrated to international observers of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. In addition to their direct role in resisting aggression, it is worth observing that non-violent resistance networks may deliver subsidiary benefits to military operations such as the conduct of personnel recovery, intelligence collection, and propaganda functions.

Resistance movements emerge organically.^[11] During World War II, non-violent and violent resistance movements were rarely pre-planned and, when they were, they generally took time to mobilise.^[12] Instead, resistance emerged at a grassroots level in response to perceived threats to socially prevalent values and ways of life. There are two implications from this fact. The first is that planning for national defence needs to assume that elements of a local population will mobilise with or without external support.^[13] Further, these people will likely be amateurs, who will face a high probability of death, capture or other forms of neutralisation. The provision of government support to resistance efforts can better prepare civilians to participate in organised violence by exerting control over mobilisation dynamics and thereby reducing mortality rates. Failure to organise civilians who may otherwise participate in heroic but ultimately foolish violence carries a moral cost that may prove detrimental to an intervening nation’s long-term strategic interests. An example of this is the rise of the Shi’a and Kurds in 1991 against Saddam Hussein, which resulted in their brutal repression when no aid was forthcoming.

Notably, the resistance model exemplified by French resistance to the Nazi occupation of France is not representative of a pre-planned resistance effort. In an atmosphere of widespread fear, repression and resentment, the Resistance emerged with limited external command and control. Indeed, it was never a unitary organisation. In its early stages, its capacity to undermine the Reich was limited largely to anti-Nazi propaganda efforts. It was not until it gained military and logistic support from elements of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) that the French resistance effort was able to organise violence against the Reich. While the French experience in World War II was unique to the circumstances of the occupation and the character of the French people themselves, there are nevertheless important lessons that can be drawn from this example. Notably, even when resistance movements emerge organically, they have the potential to be leveraged by sympathetic states to impose costs on their political opponents.^[14] In other words, regardless of its genesis, a resistance movement can be ‘good enough’ to support Western strategic objectives.

Clandestine networks are designed for a purpose. By comparison to general uprisings or guerrilla networks, sabotage networks have a higher requirement for operational security. For example, in France during World War II the SOE found that networks needed to be designed for their intended function and that the repurposing of networks carried the risk of counter-intelligence infiltration and reduced military effectiveness. Given that different arms of the Australian Government have varied roles and functions, the issue arises as to how best to support partners to develop resilience and (possibly) resistance capability, in ways that span Australian bureaucratic divides. Unity of purpose is essential, yet it will be difficult to achieve with a partner if we echo Australian policy approaches. 

Historically, most violence that occurs during irregular warfare campaigns is not directed toward enemy combatants. Instead it involves the killing or intimidation of civilians, predominantly informants or collaborators within an occupied territory.^[15] There are several implications that can be drawn from this fact. The first is that the existence of uncontrolled violence within a society risks the instigation of fratricide that may fuel civil insurgency beyond the control of the occupation forces. An astute occupation force (such as the Soviet Union in the early Cold War period) deliberately seeks to engineer violence among and within community groups directed toward the occupying power. A second implication is that there are almost never situations of all resistance and no collaboration, or of all collaboration and no resistance. Key factors that might mitigate the level of violence perpetrated against civilians include dissuading collaboration, polluting human intelligence networks operated by occupation forces, using less-than-lethal dissuasion tactics (such as legal post-war punishment frameworks and intimidatory propaganda), and developing subversive collaboration agents. Finally, the disciplined employment of violence is essential. An emphasis on sabotage and violence against occupation forces should be prioritised over the emotive desire to kill fellow countrymen who choose (or who are coerced) to collaborate. 

The majority of the population are ambivalent to hostilities.^[16] Most people need to be convinced that a military occupation is a sufficient threat to their immediate interests to accept the risks entailed in resistance—these risks varying widely dependent on national context and histories. Policy and military planners must therefore expect that the level of support available from a population to counter an occupying force will be limited, regardless of international perceptions as to the threat posed by the oppressor. Planners should nevertheless seek to grow an environment in which local resistance to subjugation is more likely to emerge. Achieving this will require a sequence of interventions starting with support to the development of national resilience, followed by the generation of non-violent resistance capability (that engages broadly across society). Only then should consideration be given to the sponsorship of armed resistants who might hide amongst the population. 

Non-violent methods can survive autocratic repression. Indeed, they routinely have. The growth of the Solidarity movement in Poland and underground printing presses in the Baltics during the Soviet occupation of the Cold War are indicative of the challenges autocratic nations face in suppressing narratives.^[17] Beyond European examples, during the early years of the 20th century the African National Congress (ANC) engaged in non-violent resistance. This approach was necessitated by the cordon sanitaire formed around South Africa by Portuguese and Rhodesian counter-insurgency efforts in Angola, Rhodesia and Mozambique. It was not until the 1974 Carnation Revolution, with the accompanying collapse of Portuguese colonialism, that guerrilla training camps could be broadly established beyond South Africa’s borders.^[18] In other words, the ANC survived almost 70 years of repression before resorting to armed conflict (although it is unlikely it could have resorted to violence prior to 1974).

The growth in non-violent resistance movements has accelerated in the digital age.^[19] Methods that capitalise on the ubiquitous reach of information technology proliferated and were refined through the Colour Revolutions, the Arab Spring, and more contemporary revolutions such as Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella’ protests against electoral reform in 2014 and related resistance efforts in 2019–20.^[20] These examples demonstrate the capacity of civilian populations to achieve asymmetry against autocratic governance regimes. Further, internationalised resistance movements that engage diaspora communities have an ability to ‘pivot’ towards emerging resistance hotspots anywhere in the world and to provide them with symbiotic benefits. While powerful, these movements, however, are not immune from being effectively countered.^[21]

Finally, a non-violent intent does not preclude a resistance movement from the option to employ violence (or to revert from violent to more passive measures). For example, the ANC pivoted from non-violent resistance to violent sabotage and guerrilla action following the 1976 Soweto students’ uprising.^[22] The counterinsurgency maxim of employing military to non-military activities at a ratio of 1:5 is relevant to decisions concerning how best to conduct insurgency. A robust non-violent resistance capability can enhance the efficacy of violence should it be employed. It follows that any national strategy that Australia may adopt to support likeminded nations’ efforts to resist coercion should foster non-violent capabilities before providing assistance to violent methods.

Support to Resilience/Resistance Operating Concept

A concept of support to regional nations that enables them to resist the imposition of control from an autocratic actor upholds the global rules-based order and the democratic values that guide Australian policy. This approach supports the simplest of international rules: that war must be avoided between countries, and that aggression will be punished by the collective global community. It is a position that communities within Australia and its regional partners, whether uniformed or not, can rally around. This being a support concept, however, Australia will not be able to (and should not) dictate the level of violence or the breadth of destruction of infrastructure that a nation might be willing to endure in its own defence. These are matters of self-determination that rightfully exist within the polity of a supported nation. Therefore, support for non-violent preparations is the most prudent means of assisting regional partners now. Coincidentally, these preparations are also the essential foundation upon which any support to violent resistance would need to be built in the future. 

A key benefit to Australia of supporting non-violent resistance is the relative ease of engaging with its neighbours around such a concept. Of particular relevance, the supported nation retains agency in regard to decisions concerning the degree to which it would be willing to conduct sabotage, guerrilla warfare or insurgency in response to an external threat. In a region characterised by a relatively recent history of colonialism and conquest, retaining such autonomy matters. Further, there are readily accessible resources to support nation-to-nation engagement on the topic of non-violent resistance. For example, the topic is well covered in publications such as the World War II era Office of Strategic Services Simple Sabotage Field Manual. It, among other sources, provides a basis from which a supported nation might better understand how they could and should prepare.^[23]

The strategic purpose of a support to resilience/resistance concept is fundamentally to dissuade and thus avoid conflict. Even though it is proactive, it nevertheless contributes to a deterrence by denial strategy which is inherently defensive in character. As a matter of strategy, the concept reinforces the global rules-based order in which aggression is illegal and human rights are protected. Indeed, it is strongly arguable that a moral ‘right to resist’ exists on the part of a partially or fully occupied nation which is being subjugated and denied its former democratic freedoms by an autocratic regime. When applied properly, the strategy is highly sensitive to the rights of assisted nations to make sovereign decisions about how best to resist aggression against them when it occurs, and it eschews the temptation of supporting governments to impose their own political objectives on assisted nations while they are at their most vulnerable. While acknowledging the right of national self-determination, the strategy is also cognisant that, in a globally interlinked economic environment, unnecessary damage and suffering should be prevented to minimise the adverse second- and third-order effects of conflict. Seen in this way, the concept of support to resilience and resistance remains firmly aligned with the azimuth set by the DSR. To sustain legitimacy domestically and among international audiences, the foundational concepts that underpin lawful resistance must, however, remain at the forefront of any related military strategy adopted by the ADF. 

Countries are vulnerable to grey-zone coercion when they stand alone. After all, the autocratic playbook is to first isolate a target through the exertion of an asymmetry in power, to intimidate into submission. To counter this effort at intimidation, any deterrent support concept can (and should) be articulated at an unclassified level. The communication of active preparations to help countries to resist armed occupation, and to articulate that democracy reserves the right to resist a backsliding of universal human rights, aids in deterring such aggression in the first place. 

The strategic premise of supporting resilience and resistance is one of security with Asia, as opposed to security from Asia (Defence of Australia doctrine) or security in Asia (Forward Defence doctrine). Its operational assumption is that, within the Indo-Pacific region, a primarily non-violent, indigenous-led and pre-prepared resistance movement has the best likelihood of survival against autocratic repression and is most likely to defeat efforts at territorial occupation. It is, however, also appropriate to acknowledge that any organically generated effort to resist aggressive encroachment on a nation’s independence will need external support from likeminded countries.

A support to resistance concept is founded upon the tactical premise of cost imposition, the creation of doubt in the minds of the occupier’s operational planners, and the generation of support to combined or joint force operations. In order to maintain legitimacy and to garner public support, costs must be imposed through the disciplined delivery of resistance effects that minimise harm to local populations. Accordingly, the central focus of any supported resistance strategy should involve sabotage (i.e., violence against things rather than people). Guerrilla activities, when supported, should be deliberate, directed and compartmentalised, and should be executed at range (i.e., with standoff). Such operations should also be conducted over geographically dispersed ranges in order to break up occupation forces and create doubt as to where the resistance will strike next. Further, targeting by resistance elements should aim to maximise economic, military, social and reputational costs to the oppressor, while minimising collateral effects on local populations. Importantly, violence must remain disciplined and consistently focused towards the strategic centre of gravity—support of the local population—regardless of whether this comes at the expense of operational tempo. 

Without a strong base of local popular support for resistance movements, the provision of external support for these efforts risks the generation of guerrilla organisations that ultimately abuse the local population.^[24] Importantly, the supporting nation risks losing its legitimacy if it comes to be seen as simply a puppet of external interests.^[25] Therefore, support to resistance efforts should be limited to the achievement of effects which simply cannot be realised by the local population by themselves. Further, any military capabilities that are designed to support national resistance should be simple, and innovation should be encouraged. These approaches help mitigate dependence on external support networks that might be disrupted by an occupier. They also ensure that any externally supported resistance effort remains anchored to the local political and economic situation within which it operates. Further, these measures constitute the most sustainable strategy for supporting an occupied nation in the event of prolonged hostilities. 

While it is easy to fall back on World War II mental models of resistance movements, the international strategic environment is no longer limited by the influence of industrial era capabilities. Today, the concept of resistance is being shaped by the rapid rise of digital technology. This shift has been occurring ‘in contact’ in Ukraine, as civil society—at a global level—has mobilised to resist the Russian threat. Within three months of Russia’s February 2022 escalation, the Ukrainian ‘IT Army’ had successfully drawn upon some 500,000 civilian cyber specialists world-wide to support digital resistance activities.^[26] This capacity to spontaneously generate resources has shifted paradigms. For example, in World War II, resistance in the South Pacific was predicated on the Coastwatcher network of some 700 volunteers. By contrast, today every smartphone-equipped citizen has the potential to be part of an open-source intelligence network.^[27] In the contemporary Ukraine example, this network has attempted to deter further Russian war crimes by using digital forensic tools (e.g., the platform #MoyaViyna) to document evidence of criminal activity that can support subsequent investigations.^[28] More broadly, the Ukrainian cyber resistance movement has performed humanitarian tasks by, for example, supporting data collection to help prioritise and inform citizens of locations for aid distribution (i.e., the eDopomoga platform).^[29] The Ukrainian experience not only shows the value of a digital resistance mindset but also suggests that ‘quantity’ (through civic mobilisation) has a certain ‘quality’ of its own. Such a mindset has been referred to by the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats as ‘beehive mentality’.^[30]

Organising Principles for Resilience/Resistance

The analysis above sets out the key considerations necessary for implementing a support to resistance concept. This section proposes an organising nomenclature for characterising the concepts most relevant to the concepts of resilience and resistance. Designating definitions in this way has several purposes. First, it advances the theory of resistance by offering a ‘ladder of escalation’ for generating ‘deterrence by denial’ capabilities, including the identification of relevant considerations for different countries. Further, in the event of autocratic coercion, it helps inform resource requirements, supports inter-agency coordination efforts, and enhances the likelihood of successful strategic planning.

Resilience. Resilience can be understood as: 

a measure of the sustained ability of governance or a society to utilise resources and processes to respond to, withstand, and recover from natural or man-made shocks to its environmental norms and sustain systems of order.^[31]

A country is resilient if it has robust capabilities and an ability to weather efforts at armed coercion while defending its territory. Preparations to protect local civilians from hostilities might include considerations such as civic defence (to provide emergency shelter), medical care, firefighting, and urban search and rescue. The primary focus of resilience efforts should be on whole-of-government and whole-of-society functions as opposed to military functions. Resilience defends national sovereignty (in 2021, Ukraine arguably met this categorisation, certainly in comparison with its preparations for national defence in 2014). A resilient country is unlikely to deter armed aggression solely through the threat of a prolonged insurgency, as there is unlikely to be sufficient national will and coordinated non-military activity to overwhelm the occupier. It may, however, be capable of deterrence through the combination of regular and irregular military and other capabilities.

Resistance. Resistance can be understood as ‘a measure of an actors’, groups’, or populations’ will and ability to withstand external pressure and influences and/or recover from the effects of those pressures or influences’.^[32]A country is resistant to foreign occupation and violent coercion if it has resilient capacity, with an ability to wage violent and non-violent resistance over a prolonged period without reliance on the nation’s internal armed forces (i.e., it can wage an insurgency). Resistance preparations are predominantly military in nature (i.e., the use of coercive force for political purposes).

A nation developing a resistance strategy needs the capacity to retain tight control over such pre-prepared networks. This includes the ability to coordinate violence from a government-in-exile if required, over a prolonged period of hostilities (e.g., Estonia, Switzerland and Finland likely meet this categorisation). A country capable of resistance should immediately be able to instigate offensive and defensive irregular and conventional warfare activities against a hostile state. It is likely, therefore, that such a country is able to deter aggression by denying an adversary the opportunity for partial or complete military occupation. By preparing prior to conflict, it maximises the likelihood of retaining its national sovereignty when it ultimately comes under threat. 

Dissidence. The terminology of ‘dissidence’ is used to identify a ‘latent’ form of resistance, such as that which characterised Eastern Europe’s struggle against the USSR’s repression during the Cold War. Dissidence is defined as ‘a state of mind involving discontent or disaffection with the regime’. ^[33] This state carries an ability to engage in non-violent resistance through patriotic fervour, national service, or forms of irregular warfare activity in response to the writ of the occupying regime to rule. It does not necessarily result in tangible or overt action. Stay-behind intelligence networks might be present. Characterised in this way, dissidence is inherently defensive in mindset. It is therefore unlikely to be capable of deterring armed aggression. Nevertheless, the existence of dissidence within a subjugated population is a predictor of potential for rapid social mobilisation (as was the case with the Eastern European Colour Revolutions at the end of the Cold War).

What Next?

Lessons continue to be learnt from the Russo-Ukraine war. Until two years ago, there existed only a theoretical understanding of how a resistance movement could survive autocratic repression in the digital age. Lessons from the Soviet repression of the Forest Brothers movement in the Baltics, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Romanian anti-communist partisans, and the Polish Home Army following the end of World War II were forward cast. ^[34] Such lessons implied a role for ubiquitous technical surveillance, ‘social credit scores’ and commercially available telecommunications monitoring systems, among other contemporary tools. Russian repression of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces has now tested these assumptions, and adjustment in light of their effectiveness will undoubtedly be necessary. Technical threats may require technical solutions, demanding that external nations provide resources to a subjugated population if modern resistance efforts are to survive. 

Despite its growing prevalence on the battlefields of international competition, there is a significant educational gap regarding irregular warfare and the phenomenon of resistance across the ADF. With the recent raising of an ADF ‘Special Warfare’ capability, however, efforts to address this deficiency now have a point of focus. Over time, joint staffs will need to leverage Special Warfare officers and senior non-commissioned personnel to integrate resilience/resistance plans within joint force contingency planning. Without resourcing and prioritisation, however, it will take considerable time to generate a sufficient collective understanding of these concepts. Equally, however, preparations for resistance take time. The opportunity still exists to achieve the levels of education required. But closing the gap needs to become an ADF priority now. 

Beyond education there must also be training. Staff officers must be trained in how to effectively coordinate regular and irregular armed forces; self-mobilising cyber actors and sensitive cyber warfare capabilities; and ‘crowdsourced’ intelligence and national technical means. Some of this training can be achieved by leveraging doctrine known as ‘resistance operating concept’. Further, it is incumbent on ADF members to remain attuned to the relevance of Eastern European adaptations to the Russian threat. This appreciation can be achieved, in part, through routine wargaming, on promotion courses, and during major exercises. It is important that such opportunities incorporate aspects of the real-world complexity that underscores sovereign resilience and preparations for resistance. 

In short, there is much to do if we are to meaningfully compete in a world of hybrid warfare and grey-zone activity. 

Conclusion

As the DSR identifies, a ‘business-as-usual approach is not appropriate’.^[35] The world has changed from when the Defence of Australia mindset of defence from Asia sufficiently addressed national security concerns. Nor is the World War II (into early Cold War) mentality of Forward Defence—defence in Asia—appropriate to today’s context. Instead, if Australia is to be a responsible middle power and secure its interests, it must become adept at generating security with Asia—of reinforcing democratic regimes, enhancing their resilience to grey-zone subversion and coercion and, if need be, supporting the development of resistance networks that can impose costs on an aggressor. By developing such capabilities with our northern neighbours, the ADF might deter aggression against our own sovereign interests by denying an adversary’s ability to expand its influence against others within our strategic neighbourhood.

In this way, the development of resilience and resistance capabilities might achieve an ‘unconventional deterrence’ capability that complements Australia’s existing conventional deterrence modernisation efforts. Australia might thus enhance its security, and that of likeminded partners, while mitigating the risk of crisis escalating into conflict. In short, the achievement of deterrence by denial constitutes a ‘Plan B’ for Australian national security strategy. The lessons of contemporary competition and conflict in Eastern Europe provide a firm basis upon which to generate a forward trajectory for Australia and its likeminded regional partners. The time to take action is now. 

About the Author

Dr Andrew Maher is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He has been a postgraduate lecturer on irregular warfare and special operations for over five years and has specialised on the analysis of proxy warfare. His forthcoming book Riding Tigers: The Strategic Logic of Proxy Warfare (2025) will explore the nature of strategic competition over the past 400 years. Dr Maher has also taught with Arizona State University, Joint Special Operations University and NATO Special Operations University, and through volunteer work at the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Dr Maher is a 20-year veteran of the Australian Defence Force, with extensive service in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Endnotes