Beyond Resilience: A Nuanced Framework for Conceptualizing Resistance Networks

STRATEGY CENTRAL

For and By Practitioners

By Maurice "Duc" Duclos & Chad Machiela - March 16, 2025

“The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.”

— Japanese Proverb

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

— Charles Darwin

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Introduction

The Resistance Operating Concept (ROC), published by the United States Special Operations Command Joint Special Operations University (USSOCOM JSOU) and the Swedish Defence University in 2020, advanced resistance planning discourse. However, its conceptualization of building resilience as primarily a preparatory activity presents critical limitations. While the ROC provides essential frameworks for understanding how societies can prepare for and carry out resistance operations when conventional deterrence and defense measures fail, it offers an incomplete picture for assessing and preparing the operational environment through network development.

The language used to describe resistance capabilities shapes how capabilities are evaluated, developed, and employed. When planners and practitioners lack precise terminology to distinguish between organizational qualities, strategies may be incomplete, and valuable resources may be misaligned. A more nuanced vocabulary and assessment framework enables a more effective assessment of strengths and vulnerabilities, precise development of specific capabilities, and more effective employment of resistance networks. Critical gaps may remain unaddressed without precision, and scarce resources may be allocated to redundant capabilities.

Some planners equate resilience solely with a society's psychological "will to resist" occupation (Fiala, 2020. p. 5). While societal determination and a population at the mobilization threshold certainly contribute to resistance potential, assessing resilience primarily as a psychological measure overlooks the structural and operational capabilities required of resistance networks. Rather than a precondition to resistance, societal resilience should be evaluated as a resource that can simultaneously support deterrence, defense, and resistance efforts. The will to resist must be evaluated further to distinguish between psychological resilience or readiness and the practical capabilities needed for resistance networks to function effectively under pressure. While assessing the will to resist is essential, the resulting measures will not address resilience operational requirements, which must be evaluated separately.

Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion (where resistance occurs in concert with conventional defense) and ongoing tensions in regions like the South China Sea (where nations face incremental territorial encroachment rather than violent seizure) demand a more sophisticated analytical framework for measuring and developing resilience. Russia's "creeping annexation" in Georgia, China's island-building in the South China Sea, and Russia's tactics in eastern Ukraine, where specific territories are occupied rather than complete national conquest, demonstrate the requirement for nations to develop resistance capabilities to complement conventional military defense.

These “gray zone” activities short of war (Lin, et al., 2022), or what may be termed "micro-occupations," involve the capture of strategically valuable territory, critical infrastructure, or terrain from which to exert further influence. In this context, resistance should not be viewed merely as the final phase in a linear progression. Instead, nations must cultivate multidimensional capabilities encompassing the entire spectrum of conflict, with resistance elements potentially activating before or alongside conventional operations or in areas where traditional defense has faltered.

Resilience should not be viewed as merely a preparatory phase for resistance, nor as a catch-all term for the varied organizational attributes required for resistance networks to survive and thrive under pressure. Biology, sociology, and other fields provide concepts useful in assessing network characteristics ranging from individual psychology to group behavior in complex adaptive systems and provide valuable parallels that can enhance understanding of how resistance networks function, adapt, and even strengthen through adversity.

Effective resistance requires three distinct qualities: resilience, robustness, and antifragility. Each quality describes a distinct network quality requiring different development requirements. Organizational theory, complex adaptive systems research, and historical resistance case studies demonstrate how distinguishing between these critical attributes may give scholars and practitioners more precise conceptual tools for resistance planning.

Theoretical Foundations

While resilience, robustness, and antifragility are sometimes used interchangeably in security literature (Fiala, 2020, p. 1), for network and social movement theorists, these terms carry significantly different implications for how resistance networks should be designed, trained, and operationalized.

In ecology, Holling (1973) defined resilience as a system's ability to absorb change while maintaining its essential function and structure. This concept was later expanded by Walker and Salt (2012), who distinguished between engineering resilience (the speed of return to equilibrium) and ecological resilience (the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed). Organizational theorists like Weick and Sutcliffe (2007) explored resilience as high-reliability organizations' capacity to maintain operations during crises through mindfulness and adaptation. In military contexts, resilience traditionally focuses on a force's ability to absorb attacks, recover quickly, and continue functioning despite adversity.

Robustness, often conflated with resilience, has distinct characteristics relevant to resistance planning. Jen (2005) defines robustness as a system's ability to maintain its basic functionality across various conditions without the requirement to adapt or recover. In network theory, Albert, Jeong, and Barabási (2000) demonstrated how some network structures exhibit robust characteristics against random and targeted attacks through redundancy and distributive properties. Doyle et al. (2005) further distinguished robustness from resilience by noting that robust systems "do not change significantly under perturbation," whereas resilient systems may change substantially while maintaining core functions. In defense planning, robustness emphasizes hardened systems that resist compromise through structural characteristics rather than recovery capabilities.

Antifragility, introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012) describes systems that endure stress and benefit and improve. Robust networks endure stress without fragmentation, and resilient networks recover quickly from stress and damage. Antifragile systems strengthen and grow when subject to stressors. Weightlifting exercises, for example, stress the human body by tearing muscle fibers, which recover and grow to make the body capable of lifting more weight. Antifragile systems thrive in disorder. Johnson and Gheorghe (2013) applied antifragility to military systems, suggesting that forces can be designed to enhance their effectiveness through systematic exposure to adversity. Antifragility provides a groundbreaking approach for resistance movements encountering conventional superiority where pressure from occupying forces becomes a catalyst for organizational strengthening rather than degradation.

These three qualities describe a network’s reaction or vulnerability to external pressure: robust systems resist shock, resilient systems recover from shock, and antifragile systems improve after shock (if these systems have sufficient robustness to survive the shock). Each represents a distinct organizational characteristic that resistance network planners must cultivate to operate effectively against often better-equipped conventional forces. Understanding these distinctions enables resistance planners to develop comprehensive preparation strategies that address all three qualities rather than focusing exclusively on the ability to recover quickly.

Resilience: Adaptation and Recovery

Resilience in resistance networks manifests as the capacity to recover quickly from shocks, adapt to changing conditions, and recover operational effectiveness following setbacks. This attribute focuses specifically on flexibility and regenerative capabilities—how networks reconstitute themselves after significant disruption.

European resistance movements during World War II demonstrated resilience while recovering from devastating security breaches. The Norwegian resistance rebuilt itself multiple times following Gestapo penetrations in 1942-43, developing increasingly sophisticated compartmentalization protocols after each wave of arrests. Similarly, Danish resistance networks reconstituted their leadership structures and communication channels following the German roundup of resistance leaders in 1944, resuming sabotage operations within weeks.

More recently, Syrian opposition networks demonstrated remarkable resilience during the civil war, reconstituting command structures and adapting operational methods following the effective regime targeting of leadership figures in 2012-2013. Despite losing entire command cells in Damascus and Homs, these networks reestablished operational capabilities through pre-planned succession mechanisms and distributed decision-making authority.

Resilient resistance networks develop specific mechanisms that enable recovery from disruption:

1.    Reorganization protocols allow networks to restructure compromised cells while preserving unaffected components, often through decentralized decision-making units that activate after leadership losses and information-sharing processes that connect specific knowledge of changing tactical conditions with decision-makers.

2.    Alternative capabilities include backup systems, redundant communication channels, and contingency plans that provide operational continuity during organizational stress.

3.    Learning processes that extract lessons from failures and translate this knowledge into adapted tactics, techniques, and procedures.

For resistance planners, increasing resilience requires establishing distributed leadership development programs, creating effective information sharing systems, and implementing regular "stress test" exercises that simulate network disruption and practice recovery procedures. These investments must occur during peacetime to ensure recovery mechanisms function effectively under occupation. Planners must, however, balance the increased effectiveness of responsive communication systems against the decreased operational security inherent in centralized networks. Too many connections between cells increase the vulnerability of all cells if one resistance cell is compromised.

The French Resistance exemplified resilience after the catastrophic arrests of key leaders in 1943. Rather than collapsing, the movement reorganized into smaller, more distributed networks, adapted communication procedures, and ultimately emerged with improved operational security. Similar patterns appeared in the Lithuanian Forest Brothers' resistance against Soviet occupation, where the movement repeatedly adapted its structure and tactics despite overwhelming pressure.

Robustness: Structural Integrity Under Pressure

While resilience describes recovery and adaptation after shock or disruption, robustness describes a resistance network's ability to withstand pressure without fragmentation and continue functioning. Planners building resilience assume that damage to a network will occur and create recovery processes. Planners building robustness create processes, structural design, and redundant systems, allowing a network to maintain function despite shocks.

Robust networks maintain their core functionality through structural characteristics that minimize vulnerability to disruption. These networks can be assessed through several metrics, including the number of nodes that must be neutralized to disable critical functions, the degree of redundancy in command and communication systems, and the network's ability to maintain operational tempo despite adversary operations (Zeng, Gao, Lim et al., 2022).

The cellular structure pioneered by communist underground movements and refined by numerous resistance organizations demonstrates robustness in practice. These networks create inherent protection against cascading failure following security breaches by compartmentalizing information and limiting connections between cells. This organizational design ensures that the compromise of one cell does not automatically lead to the exposure of others, enabling continued operations despite partial network penetration (USASOC, 2015).

Redundant systems—duplicating leadership, communication channels, and resource caches—prevent single points of failure from compromising the entire network. This redundancy appears in physical resources and capability distribution, where multiple cells possess similar operational skills, allowing the network to maintain functionality even when specific units are neutralized.

Since 2014, Ukrainian volunteer networks have demonstrated exceptional robustness through their decentralized logistics systems, which continued delivering critical supplies to frontline units despite Russian targeting efforts. Their use of multiple, independent supply chains with minimal central coordination created inherent robustness against disruption. Similarly, Hezbollah's development since the 1980s illustrates organizational robustness. Its layered security measures, distributed command structure, and redundant communication systems allowed it to maintain operational continuity despite intensive Israeli targeting efforts.

Physical manifestations of robustness include the extensive tunnel complexes and dispersed supply caches maintained by the Viet Cong, which provided material robustness that sustained the movement through years of American offensives. These hardened infrastructures—both physical and organizational—reduce vulnerability to detection and neutralization.

Robustness is particularly crucial during the initial phases of occupation when counterinsurgency forces typically launch their most intensive efforts to prevent resistance from establishing itself. Without inherent structural protection, nascent resistance networks may be eliminated before developing the resilience mechanisms needed for long-term survival and effectiveness.

The distinction between robustness and resilience carries significant implications for resistance planning. While resilience involves developing procedures for recovery after disruption, robustness requires fundamental structural decisions about network architecture, communication protocols, and resource distribution that must be implemented before a crisis occurs. Procedures for developing resilience and robustness must consider associated changes in operational security and network efficiency. Resistance networks require both qualities, but planners must recognize that resilience and robustness require balanced approaches.

Antifragility: Converting Adversity to Advantage

Ideal resistance networks exhibit antifragility—not merely withstanding or recovering from disruption but leveraging it to become stronger. A resilient network will recover quickly from an adversary’s disinformation attack. A robust network will maintain operations despite an adversary’s disinformation attack. An antifragile network will incorporate the adversary’s disinformation into its information operations and use its messages to mobilize support from the populace and target the adversary’s delivery method. An antifragile network converts adversary pressure into organizational advantages.

Antifragile resistance networks develop four critical capabilities that transform adversity into strength. First, they implement rapid tactical learning cycles that allow innovations to emerge and disseminate throughout the network in response to enemy actions. Second, they utilize staged escalation protocols that activate increasingly sophisticated capabilities as pressure intensifies. Third, they establish stress-triggered growth mechanisms where recruitment, popular support, and operational legitimacy increase during heightened repression. Finally, they maintain a distributed innovation system where tactical and strategic improvements emerge organically from field units rather than relying solely on centralized authority.

History offers many examples. The mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation demonstrated remarkable antifragility, developing increasingly sophisticated tactics and weapons systems in response to Soviet operations. Each Soviet offensive generated new tactical innovations that spread throughout the resistance. Initial Soviet armor attacks prompted the development of advanced ambush techniques; subsequent Soviet air mobility operations triggered new counter-helicopter tactics; and later, Soviet counterinsurgency sweeps accelerated the mujahideen's transition to more mobile operational structures. Rather than degrading the resistance, each Soviet adaptation inadvertently strengthened it.

Similarly, the Irish Republican Army's evolution during the Troubles demonstrated organizational antifragility, as British security measures paradoxically accelerated the IRA's transformation into a more secure, cell-based structure. The introduction of internment without trial in 1971 dramatically increased recruitment and popular support, while enhanced surveillance operations prompted the development of counterintelligence capabilities that significantly improved operational security. By 1977, British pressure had transformed the IRA from a conventional military structure into a sophisticated cellular organization with greatly enhanced resilience and robustness.

The Taliban's evolution against NATO forces provides a compelling contemporary example. Rather than being degraded by coalition operations, the movement continually adapted and improved over two decades. Coalition targeting of leadership figures accelerated their development of distributed command systems. Surveillance and signals intelligence operations drove innovations in communications security. Counter-IED efforts prompted the development of more sophisticated explosive devices and trigger mechanisms. By 2021, the Taliban possessed greater tactical sophistication and improved command and control systems. They exercised more territorial influence than before NATO’s intervention, demonstrating that pressure can paradoxically strengthen resistance movements with antifragile characteristics.

Antifragility is the most challenging quality to cultivate, as it depends upon organizational culture and information-sharing processes rather than easily codified hierarchical structures. However, its potential strategic value is immense—the ability to systematically convert adversary pressure into organizational advantage fundamentally alters the traditional calculus of asymmetric conflict. While conventional wisdom suggests that superior forces should eventually degrade resistance movements, antifragile networks invert this assumption by growing stronger through adversity.

Nietzsche observed, "What does not kill me makes me stronger," a principle that applies as much to resistance organizations as to individuals. By developing antifragile characteristics, resistance movements can transform the strategic landscape, converting the occupier's primary advantage—superior conventional force—into a potential liability that inadvertently strengthens the resistance it aims to defeat.

Implications for Resistance Planning

These distinctions between resilience, robustness, and antifragility carry significant practical implications for nations developing resistance frameworks. Rather than focusing exclusively on resilience as conceptualized in the ROC, planners must cultivate network attributes through distinct preparation strategies that balance network effectiveness against operational security and distributed decision-making against effective mission command and resource management.

Developing resilience requires investing in leadership succession planning, distributed knowledge management, and systematic learning processes. Training programs should emphasize adaptability to rapidly changing circumstances and procedures for reconstitution following network disruptions. Exercises must regularly practice recovery from simulated network compromise, allowing operators to develop experiential knowledge of how to rebuild damaged organizational components. Most importantly, resilience development requires creating an organizational culture that expects disruption rather than being paralyzed by it—one that views recovery as a standard operational function rather than an exceptional circumstance.

The Norwegian Home Guard's creation of "stay-behind" networks during the Cold War exemplifies effective resilience planning. These networks established multiple leadership succession plans, distributed operational knowledge across numerous independent cells, and conducted regular exercises simulating network penetration scenarios. Similarly, Baltic resistance preparations include detailed planning for leadership continuity and knowledge preservation under occupation conditions.

Building robustness requires careful consideration of organizational design, especially cellular structures with connections between units that balance effectiveness against operational security. Centralized, well-connected networks often operate more quickly and effectively than decentralized networks, with efficient resource allocation. This effectiveness and efficiency come at a cost: vulnerability to detection and interdiction. Network architecture must maximize effectiveness while managing the network's vulnerability to cascading failure. Effective implementation of security protocols, counterintelligence capabilities, and redundant systems necessitates significant investment during peacetime. Physical infrastructure, including secure communication systems, resource caches, and covert facilities, must be established before a crisis occurs. This infrastructure requires time to develop, test, and rehearse securely and cannot be rapidly created during occupation.

The Swiss resistance preparation model demonstrates effective robustness planning through its distributed resource caching, redundant communication systems, and carefully designed organizational compartmentalization. Finland's comprehensive security approach emphasizes robustness through physically hardened infrastructure and distributed command capabilities.

Cultivating antifragility may pose the most significant challenge to military planners due to their familiarity and comfort with their own units' hierarchical structure and processes. Counter to standard US mission command, where authority is often maintained at the operational level to manage risk and resources rather than delegated to tactical commanders, resistance planners must create an environment where innovation, hazard mitigation, and risk acceptance are implemented at the tactical level. Planners must develop systems to capture and share successful adaptations across the network and establish recruitment mechanisms that trigger during increased pressure to take advantage of rising anti-occupation sentiment within the populace and external actors. Perhaps most importantly, antifragility requires developing leaders who view pressure as an opportunity for organizational evolution rather than merely a hazard to be mitigated.

Taiwan's whole-of-society resistance preparations incorporate elements of antifragility by emphasizing dispersed innovation capacity and mechanisms to accelerate capability development under crisis conditions. Similarly, Ukrainian territorial defense planning includes provisions for expanding recruitment and capability development in response to occupation pressures.

Resistance preparation requires the intentional development of resilience, robustness, and antifragility, recognizing the complementary nature of these attributes. Resilience without robustness creates recovery-dependent networks that waste resources on continuous reconstitution. Robustness without resilience produces brittle networks that collapse without recovery capability once compromised beyond their inherent protection thresholds. Robust, resilient networks without antifragility condemn resistance movements to gradual degradation against persistent adversaries.

Conclusion: A More Sophisticated Framework

The language and conceptual frameworks used to understand resistance preparation require greater precision than the broad term "resilience" allows. By distinguishing between resilience, robustness, and antifragility, planners can develop more sophisticated resistance frameworks tailored to the complex challenges of modern conflict. This refined vocabulary facilitates more targeted capability development, more accurate vulnerability assessment, and more effective preparation and operational deployment of resistance networks.

The Resistance Operating Concept has contributed to our understanding of resistance preparation, particularly by highlighting the criticality of pre-crisis planning. To build on this foundation, we must expand our conceptual framework to address the complex organizational needs of effective resistance networks. The network attributes discussed in this analysis provide complementary yet distinct strategies for maintaining operational effectiveness under pressure: resilience allows recovery from disruption, robustness averts disruption through structural characteristics, and antifragility transforms disruption into organizational advantage.

Recent conflicts highlight the critical importance of a more nuanced understanding of networks. Russia's operations in Ukraine have shown how resistance functions alongside conventional defense rather than merely supporting it. China's gray zone activities in the South China Sea demonstrate how territorial encroachment and loss of territory occurs through limited "micro-occupations" instead of full-scale conquest. In both scenarios, resistance requires capabilities beyond mere resilience; it demands strong operational security against sophisticated surveillance and the antifragile ability to turn escalating pressure into improved capabilities.

Assessing Capabilities: Practical Metrics

For resistance planners seeking to evaluate their current preparedness, specific metrics can provide valuable assessment tools for each attribute:

Resilience can be measured through:

• Recovery time following leadership compromise (how quickly can command functions be restored)

• Knowledge retention rate after network disruption (percentage of operational knowledge preserved)

• Adaptation speed (time required to implement new tactics following adversary countermeasures)

Robustness can be assessed via:

• Network fragmentation threshold (percentage of nodes that must be compromised before critical function loss)

• Communication redundancy ratio (number of alternative communication pathways per critical connection)

• Resource distribution index (geographical distribution of caches versus operational requirements)

Antifragility indicators include:

• Innovation diffusion rate (speed at which tactical innovations spread throughout the network)

• Pressure-triggered recruitment ratio (increase in recruitment during periods of heightened repression)

• Tactical adaptation frequency (rate at which new techniques emerge in response to adversary actions)

These metrics provide concrete starting points for resistance planners to evaluate their capabilities and identify areas requiring further development.

Limitations and Challenges

While the three-part framework offers valuable analytical tools, several challenges merit acknowledgment. First, deliberately cultivating antifragility is difficult, as this quality is created by setting conditions rather than structured development. Resistance planners may find that antifragile characteristics appear unexpectedly or cannot be reliably generated through training alone.

Second, tension may exist between optimizing different attributes in resource-constrained environments. Investments in robustness (physical infrastructure, redundant systems) may limit resources available for resilience development (training, leadership succession). Balancing these competing priorities requires careful consideration of specific threat scenarios and operational contexts while further balancing gains in network resilience or robustness against the potential decreased operational security resulting from the same network refinements.

Finally, antifragility is hard to measure quantitatively without stress; ideally, network stressors are consistent with what the adversary might impose. While resilience and robustness lend themselves to quantitative assessment by counting discrete infrastructure or assessing performance measures during exercises, antifragility's emergent nature makes precise measurement difficult without specific knowledge of the adversary’s capabilities and intentions. Developing applicable models of adversarial capabilities, intentions, and indicators is essential for developing antifragility.

Strategic Implications and Policy Relevance

Beyond academic interest, these conceptual distinctions profoundly affect national security policy and defense planning. For smaller nations facing threats from conventionally superior neighbors, the difference between resilience, robustness, and antifragility may determine whether resistance capabilities serve as a credible deterrent. When potential aggressors recognize that occupation will trigger not merely persistent resistance but resistance that systematically strengthens during occupation, delaying consolidation and increasing costs, the strategic calculus fundamentally changes.

This framework demands reconsideration of defense resource allocation as a matter of policy. Traditional deterrence based primarily on conventional capabilities may be supplemented—or partially replaced—by investments in robust, resilient, and antifragile networks. Such investments may prove cost-effective for nations with limited defense budgets facing adversaries holding significant conventional advantages.

Incorporating these distinctions into defense planning enables more precise capability development and burden-sharing for alliances such as NATO. Nations with geographical vulnerability to rapid occupation might prioritize robustness and antifragility, while allied partners focus on supporting resilience through external assistance capabilities.

Future research should explore the practical implementation of this framework across different regional contexts and threat scenarios. Identifying additional metrics to assess network component attributes and measure improvement would provide valuable tools for resistance planners to prepare the environment and identify capability gaps. Examining how these qualities interact in specific historical and contemporary resistance movements would offer insights into their relative importance under different occupation scenarios.

For nations facing the threat of external aggression, particularly those concerned with territorial defense against conventionally superior adversaries, these distinctions may determine whether resistance efforts succeed or fail. By adopting this more precise framework, resistance planners can develop preparation strategies that address the qualities of effective networks rather than focusing exclusively on resilience. This approach recognizes that effective resistance demands not just the will to resist but the organizational capabilities to translate that will into sustained, effective opposition against superior conventional forces—capabilities that must be deliberately cultivated through distinct development strategies tailored to each attribute's unique requirements.

As irregular warfare and limited territorial encroachments become increasingly significant features of the international security landscape, this refined understanding offers both practitioners and scholars a more nuanced framework for analyzing and developing resistance capabilities that match the complexity of contemporary conflicts.

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About the Authors

CW5 Maurice "Duc" DuClos currently serves as a Guest Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. His professional background includes various positions at the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) and 2/75th Ranger Battalion.

Chad Machiela is a faculty research associate at the Naval Postgraduate School. He retired from the Army as a Special Forces warrant officer with over 30 years of special operations experience working throughout the Indo-Pacific, Central, and European Commands.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations University, or the Naval Postgraduate School.