Resilience and Resistance 2.0: initial lessons of Ukraine and the implications of resilience and resistance efforts to deter and respond to invasion and occupation by revisionist powers
Resilience and Resistance 2.0: initial lessons of Ukraine and the implications of resilience and resistance efforts to deter and respond to invasion and occupation by revisionist powers

Summary/Abstract: Civil-defence resilience capacities focus on man-made threats to national security. While terror attacks like 9/11 drove civil-defence efforts throughout the 2000s, the Russian invasion of portions of Ukraine in 2014 forced nations to build resilience against new threats. These included covert grey-zone and disinformation operations. Additionally, the 2014 events forced nations bordering or within the sphere of influence of revisionist nations to begin to prepare for possible invasion and occupation. Recognition of these threats resulted in two multinational doctrinal concepts that set the stage for what is collectively referred to as resilience and resistance (R&R). Resilience is the efforts by a nation prior to a conflict to build pre-crisis capacity to resist a host of threats, including invasion and occupation, in hopes of deterring threat actions. If deterrence fails, then the efforts transition into resistance to invasion and occupation. The Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the need for R&R and the strengths and weaknesses of national resistance in action. This event is a strategic R&R inflection point. Nations developing R&R should reflect on and apply the lessons learned from Ukraine’s efforts and ultimately establish R&R 2.0 as an irregular deterrent on par and mutually supporting conventional and nuclear deterrents.

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