Irregular Warfare Podcast - Stay Behind Operations

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Episode 98 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast delves into resistance warfare—with a specific focus on stay behind operations.    Our guests begin by contrasting conventional conflict with resistance warfare. They then discuss the utility of stay behind operations by examining how small states can impose outsized costs on occupying powers. More specifically, they address how distributed resistance elements can frustrate aggressive powers by operating behind enemy lines. Finally, they end by providing policymakers with a framework for crafting indigenous, stay behind forces in the digital age. 

A conventional military defense that's designed to employ military and security forces, let's stop an invader at the border. If this proposition fails, say the defense collapses or your security forces are routed, and we have lots of historical examples of that, then preparing some type of a regular resistance plan might be a prudent choice. So stay behind forces as a component of resistance, that is not a separate proposition than overall national defense.

It's an additive method. And I would like to highlight some of the things that you can achieve with stay behind forces and operations. One is preparing the ground for reinforcement, so allied reinforcement. Two would be carrying out actions and activities that could change the strategic thinking of the enemy. Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jett, and my co-host today is Adam Darnley-Stewart.

Today's episode delves into resistance warfare with a specific focus on stay-behind operations. Our guests begin by contrasting conventional conflict with resistance warfare. They then discuss the utility of stay-behind operations by examining how small states can impose outsized costs on occupying powers. More specifically, they address how distributed resistance elements can frustrate aggressive states by operating behind enemy lines. Finally, they end by providing policymakers with a framework for crafting indigenous stay-behind forces in the digital age.

Brian Petty is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel with more than a half-decade's experience serving abroad in combat and conflict zones. Brian currently teaches and consults on leadership, strategy, planning, resistance, and special operations. In November of 2023, he authored an article on stay-behind operations and war on the rocks, which served as the anchor for today's conversation. Marta Koepp is a Senior Defence Analyst at the RAND Corporation. Her research interests include national resilience, unconventional warfare, and European security cooperation.

She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security. Prior to joining the RAND Corporation, she worked with the Latvian Ministry of Defence, the NATO Advisory Team in Kosovo, and the National War College. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point. of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Brian Pettit and Marta Kepi. Brian and Marta, thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. It's great to have you. Thanks for having us, Ben. Thank you for the invite. Glad to be here. So today's conversation is going to be about stay-behind operations and resistance warfare.

And just to start, Brian, we found your War on the Rocks article on stay-behind operations to be fascinating. Could you just talk about what motivated you to publish this piece in a public national security forum? Yeah, thanks. I wrote this article to highlight that any conversation on stay-behind operations or the use of stay-behind forces must be well-informed by the type of invader and the subsequent occupation environment in which stay-behind forces might operate. So theoretically, one can be a champion of stay-behind forces as a component of a defense strategy. And I believe I'm one of those champions. But practically, we must be clear-eyed about the severity and the brutality of the occupier. So this article aims to parse out the different types of occupation environments and how that

is either a dominant factor, if not the dominant factor in employing stay-behind operations. Regrettably, we're witnessing the Russian occupation of portions of Ukraine. And however inadequate we feel the Russians were as invaders, we can see that they're quite ferocious and competent as occupiers. And that's certainly on my mind. Marta, could I ask why it's so important at the moment and going forward into the future to have this resistance operations conversation in the public domain? So essentially, why is this conversation so important at the moment? Today, we're really seeing a lot of changes in the security environment across the world

globally, but also in and around Europe. And that has a direct importance for our thinking about resistance, also our thinking about stay-behind operations as part of that. My work specifically has focused on the European theater, Baltic states, and Eastern Europe. So I'll use that as an example. Essentially, what we have is an increased understanding within Europe and within the NATO context of the need to prepare for potential threats from Russia. And that includes the potential threat of a large-scale operation, military invasion, not only sort of gray zone

activities. Both of those would mean irregular gray zone threats, but also both of those could require irregular types of capabilities in order to address the threats. Now, the Baltic states and Eastern Europe has for a long time been concerned about Russian threat and resurgent Russia. They have also been concerned about the military and human cost of resistance behind enemy lines and what it means to regain occupied land from Russian invasion. Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that started in February 2022, but also Crimea 2014, really brought this point to the Baltics, but also to the rest of NATO. And Russian invasion of Ukraine and the progression of war in Ukraine since 2022, and particularly the horrific scenes of mistreatment of civilians, triggered a renewed

recognition of horrors of war for the civilian populations in occupied areas. And in Eastern Europe, Baltic states, that really reminded them of the atrocities that they themselves endured during and after World War II under German and then later after Soviet occupations and as the Soviet occupation continued. So the war has really served as a warning about the need to act fast and to prepare for the worst eventualities. After all, what we saw in Ukraine is that Russia managed to occupy a large amount of land, somewhere near 54,000 square miles. That is more than twice the territory of Lithuania in just the first month of the expanded invasion. So with that in mind, the geographic position and the strategic depth of the Baltic states, so the small territories, but also the relatively small populations and

capabilities make them vulnerable to Russian military threat. Despite the fact that they are and have been investing in their military defense, they have been working on their resilience preparations, there's only that much they can do. Yeah, before we actually dig into the specifics of stay-behind operations, Brian, you write that stay-behind ops are a specific form of resistance. So just to better frame the conversation, could you go over what is resistance and how does the concept of resisting differ from conventional military plans? Sure, Ben. This article discusses one specific type of resistance, and that is state-sponsored resistance activities taken to repel a foreign invader or occupier inside of a sovereign state.

So let's say if a state is invaded, our mental model is that it defends with a military-style formation. And we know that is true. But states can also resist invasion and occupation with civil functions, nonviolent means, multipurpose territorial defense forces, and of course, means multipurpose territorial defense forces, and of course, skilled guerrilla units or special operations type units. So that is one form of resistance, national resistance against a foreign occupier. Let's distinguish this from other types of resistance briefly. Let's say revolutionary resistance, where an armed group seeks a new political arrangement, right? We often call that insurgency. Another type of resistance might be revisionary resistance, which I believe characterizes the U.S. civil rights movements in

the 1950s and 60s. The goal of Martin Luther King, and let's say his strategy was not to overthrow or revolution, but it was to force changes and concessions from a government, right, slash occupying power. So all these types of resistance, national resistance, revolutionary resistance, revisionary resistance, they all have different political goals, but we do know that they share similar characteristics, organization, strategy, tactics, modes of operation, and so forth. So Ben, to the second part of your question, a conventional military defense that's designed to employ military and security forces, let's stop an invader at the border, let's fight something that generally resembles your own military,

army infantry, artillery tanks, etc. If this proposition fails, say the defense collapses or your security forces are routed, and we have lots of historical examples of that, then preparing some type of a regular resistance plan might be a prudent choice. So stay behind forces as a component of resistance. That is not a separate proposition than overall national defense. It's an additive method that often happens organically or, you know, even better, let's preconceive this and snap link this pre-crisis into the conventional defense plan with the proper, let's say, malice of forethought. Thank you so much, Brian, for the contextualization of the definition to progress the discussion today. I might throw it to Marta for a second.

Marta, could you briefly discuss a few historical case studies of different countries or forces that have employed resistance concepts? I know you discussed some World War II examples before, leading all the way now to 2014 and now from Crimea to Russia. Could you just give a few more details on some specific ones you think the audience would need to know about before we progress into the details? you think the audience would need to know about before we progress into the details? Yeah, thanks. So when we talk about resistance, we really have a rich history of examples throughout the history. And this is really because resistance, but also unconventional means of warfare, have been present throughout history and throughout the history of warfare. In fact, we can talk about how unconventional means of warfare

were actually the initial means of warfare until we started talking and starting formalizing warfare, particularly in the West, and started viewing war as something that is primarily waged by states, where the focus really became conventional war and unconventional means of warfare became a sort of additional side element. But that is sort of more general history. The last hundred years offer numerous examples of resistance, particularly the kind of resistance that Brian just defined. that Brian just defined. The Second World War, I do like to talk about it because it does offer an abundance of examples. So that's the period during World War II, but also right after World War II, when resistance was still continuing in a number of areas that were occupied by the Soviet Union. So during World War II, an abundance of examples.

We can talk about the French resistance, various groups that opposed German occupation, assisted Allied invasion of Normandy, offered intelligence on German defenses, for example. We can talk about resistance in Norway, where groups carried out attacks on German supply lines, carried out espionage and sabotage activities as well. There is Dutch resistance. There's also the Polish resistance movement, resistance also in Ukraine and many other parts of Europe and also elsewhere. Now,

all of these movements really entailed some form of resistance gathering, intelligence collection, sabotage actions, but also more sort of civilian, unarmed, peaceful resistance type of activities. occupied zones and were required to do, say, be employed in various positions, activities that were aimed at protecting or smuggling out the people who were prosecuted, saving Jews from the Holocaust, but also helping community leaders and other people who were prosecuted by the occupying power, often for ideological reasons or political reasons, and armed components. Armed components of these resistance examples were often emergent because of the occupation situation. They were not necessarily pre-planned, pre-designed stay behind forces, but they were often created because of the continuous occupation scenarios. Now, one of the most probably well-known examples of where resistance activity took place was, for example, Operation Anthropoid, the assassination attempt

of a commander of the German security office in Prague. And he was killed in 1942 by Czech resistance operatives. But during the Cold War, what we see is basically two strands of development in the sort of broader European theater. One is the development of resistance strategies and guidelines basically under a peacetime environment. So that means the NATO plans about how could stay-behind forces work in case, say, Western Germany was occupied. But that also means neutral or non-aligned countries,

such as Sweden and Switzerland, developing their own resistance strategies that often entailed such lines of efforts of preparing for unconventional military resistance operations, protecting vital infrastructure, preparing civilian resistance activities, establishing caches and camouflaged positions near key locations. Thank you very much, Marta, for setting some of the contextual and historical backgrounds for resistance. I think the audience will find some of the past hundred years fascinating, especially if they do their own research and start diving into those specific case studies in and around World War II and post-World War II. It's very pertinent

to the stay-behind operations that we're about to dive into the meat of the detail for. So let's start some of the good oil of the conversation based on Brian's article. Brian, I'll throw to you first. Could you explain what stay-behind operations are with some tangible tactical examples and what is the utility of this concept to irregular warfare? Yeah, thanks, Adam. So Marta mentioned several types of stay-behind operations. Let's focus in on one. That is preparing a mobile, survivable, and likely clandestine network that can do what? Prevent the enemy from consolidating control, creating confusion as an enemy invades or attempts to occupy, introduces chaos, friction, and ultimately attempts to exact costs in an enemy's rear area. So that type of stay behind, what is its utility? It tries to buy time,

tries to stretch the enemy's resources, tries to create psychological effects. And if possible, if it's operating at a higher grade, it wants to truly degrade capabilities, right? Destroy men, material, weapons, equipment of the enemy, of the potential occupier. As I do mention in the article, this is not a defeat mechanism, or I don't consider it a defeat mechanism. It is to stay behind operations or part of a layered approach to resist an invasion or to raise the cost of an occupation. I think that hits your utility question on the head. I hope it does. Also, I think in the long term, a viable stay-behind force provides external supporters

something to plug into, something viable to reinforce or support that you're going to get a return on investment. Let's use Ukraine as an example. I think it's a perfect example. When Ukraine's invaded in February 2022, Ukraine enacts their conventional defense plans. They combine that with citizen-centric, widely distributed resistance operations. And one component of that is specially trained and skilled commando-type units. So it's like a triple combination of defense, citizen units, and specialized forces. You take that together, and that prevented the Russians from achieving their operational objectives. And in

many cases, that actually prevented the Russian forces from consolidating control in areas that the Russians did occupy. Brian, your article discusses two different general categories of stay-behind forces. The first are specialized military units, and the second type of organization is, I think the kind of generally quote from your article, a shadowy, pre-prepared clandestine network run by intelligence organizations. Can you kind of dig into these two categories? Why might one organization be preferred over another? Yeah, Ben, good question.

To keep this somewhat simplistic, I'm breaking stay-behind forces into two categories. Number one, that's external supporters. And number two, that's the actual indigenous resistors. So the first category, let's talk about external supporters. That is typified by commando units, right? The British Special Air Service, or the SAS, as they're commonly known. Our historical example in the article is World War II. The SAS is in North Africa. They're operating in the rear area of German occupation forces. And what do they do? They give great

headaches to Rommel's Afrika Korps, particularly in the area of degrading his aviation. The U.S. 10th Special Forces Group, and that's a unit that I did serve in previously, I think that's another example of an external supporter of a stay-behinder. Here's a unit designed specifically to operate in rear areas. And as we talk about in its founding in the early 1950s, the intent was to operate in the rear area of the Red Army invading Central Europe. That's one type. The second category of stay-behinders are the indigenous clandestine network type or the shadowy type, as we say. That's organized inside of an occupied nation or a potentially occupied nation. This type of stay-behind force is often run by intelligence,

right, or these shadowy organizations that are compartmented because they need to survive enemy counterintelligence operations. We know that the Soviets and now the Russians are quite good at counterintelligence operations and cracking into those networks. I do think the resistance operating concept, commonly called the ROK, which was published in 2020, That was a joint project of Special Operations Command Europe, fellow European partners. I believe you've hosted the contributors or authors on your show. I think the resistance operating concept does a great job in detailing out these organizations, both the resistors, indigenous, and the external supporters.

And then to clean up the question, look, this is not one or the other. The key is to marry up these two organizations. One is localized and indigenous and operates on home turf. The second is the external supporter who, by design, is supposed to survive and operate in a rear area and ostensibly provide external support like weapons, munitions, signals, intelligence, fires, etc., to these localized networks. If we combine these, then what we're really describing is the doctrinal definition of U.S. unconventional warfare, and that is a mission of U.S. Special Operations Command. However, as many of your listeners know, the term unconventional warfare and the definition, it doesn't necessarily translate across the Atlantic perfectly. So you see sometimes the term unconventional warfare scraped away and you see support to resistance

or other terms, but that's really what we're talking about. Taking an external supporter, grafting it onto an indigenous resistance and trying to create effects against invaders or occupiers. Great. Thanks, Brian. Marta, could I get your views, please, on why different organizations choose different types of strategies for stay-behind operations? So I think in response to this question, I would like to highlight some of the things that you can achieve with stay-behind forces and operations. From my point of view, and these are only some of the examples, one is alluding to something that Brian just said, is preparing the ground for reinforcement, so allied reinforcement. thinking of the enemy, impose costs, degrade their capabilities, and similar activities. So something that would affect the enemy's thinking about continuing the occupation. Then the third one would be organize the resistance, provide resistance networks,

ensure that there is resistance armed and unarmed within the occupied territory. And last, but certainly not least, and there may be many more, is the motivational factor. So maintain morale and motivation for resistance and for liberation of the occupied area among the people in the area, in the broader country, in case not all of the maybe country or region is occupied, but also provide this motivational factor for external support. And that is also something that Brian mentioned. I think that the continuous resistance, the core of which can be provided by these elements, is really important for motivating continuous political, financial, military support for resistance. Now, why different organizations or different countries may choose different types of stay-behind forces, is the occupying power. How your activities post-occupation pan out are in fact very much

informed by what are the occupier's capabilities, what are their reasons, what are their motivations for the occupation. It is in fact in my report that I co-authored with Annika Binadijk that is called Resistance in the Baltic States, Peacetime Preparations and Historical Precedents, where we do note this aspect that essentially an occupier that seeks to control territory for, let's say, political or nationalistic reasons might really respond differently to some of the dimensions of your resistance strategy than another occupier that is motivated primarily by control of natural resources, or maybe an occupier for who this occupation really is only part of a broader military objective. So Marta's last few points actually kind of serve as a perfect segue to a particularly

and theoretically dense part of Brian's article. So Brian, in your piece, you describe four different occupational environments, decapitation, pacification, subjugation, and liberation. How does the occupational environment, or in other words, has the type of campaign launched by an aggressor state actually alter the stay-behind calculus employed by those who are resisting occupation? Ben, I tried to describe four different occupiers or occupation environments. I mean, there are more than four. Just to paint a picture of what a stay-behind force is confronted with. This is an enemy template, I suppose. Describing territory as simply occupied, that's not good enough.

Or it's not good enough in which one might undertake something as dangerous and high risk as a stay-behind operation. Marta's research is very good at this. She gave us lots of examples. So I offered one way to visualize an occupation environment using four occupier approaches, decapitation, pacification, subjugation, and liberation. If we better describe how occupiers approach governing and controlling occupied space, we can better judge if in fact a stay-behind operation is even feasible or is smart. And not surprisingly to the listeners,

this involves finding the vulnerabilities of the occupier and then judging if one's stay-behind forces are a suitable tool to attack that weakness. If you can do this analysis and then move this left to, say, a pre-crisis war game, you might be surprised what type of stay-behinders will be useful and survivable. It may not be commandos. It may be something else, neighborhood watch intelligence or the like. Marta mentioned Operation Anthropoid. I think let's unpack that for a minute. Operation Anthropoid is the name of a Czech resistance operation in 1942. Czechoslovakia is occupied by the Nazis, and the Czechs and Slovaks decided to target a very high-level target, Reinhard Heydrich. He's the Reich's protector of Bohemia and Moravia, then occupied by the Nazis. Heydrich gets sent in because the Czech resistance is starting to actively resist Nazi occupation.

So he's really brought in as the hammer. This was a successful commando target. The resistance conducted a targeted killing. It was a vehicular ambush conducted in Prague by Czech and Slovak commandos. As many of you know, conducted by Czech commandos or Czech and Slovak commandos trained by the British. This mission was successful. Heydrich was killed. What did it do? It served to demonstrate resistance capability and will. The Czech government in exile in London showed that it

could influence the fight in occupied Bohemia and Moravia. That lent credibility to the government in exile. It showed that they had, let's say, a shadow government that could enact and, let's say, mobilize the citizenry. Although in this case, the commandos went in separate from the, let's say, the knowledge of the Czech resistance and the shadow government or something akin to that. But overall, what did you see here? It demonstrated resistance capability and the Czechs and the Slovaks showed that they could resist against the occupation forces. Great. Thanks, Brian. I think it does. Those tangible examples always help the audience to bring the academic and the theory component down to some tangible aspects they can place into their workspace, no matter what area of the world they work in. I'll throw to you now,

based on your extensive research about European resistance and occupation and resilience, especially from a civil society perspective, what might some of these ideas offer outside of Europe? From a civilian-based resistance point of view, I think these are all really valid and important conversations. What we see is today in Europe, but also in other areas, is an increased interest in civilian-based resistance building. And part of that is also resilience building. What does the resilience building mean? That is not only psychological resilience,

resilience to disinformation campaigns, misinformation campaigns. That also means improving your resilience, the resilience of your critical and vital infrastructure, ensuring that it is protected from various graze-on type of activities. Maybe that may mean investment or ownership by your state-based adversaries, for example. That also means the building of the resilience of your supply lines through improving port infrastructure, but also through making sure that you have the necessary networks, agreements, cooperation between state actors and also private actors.

Why are private actors so important? I think I don't have to explain it to our listeners. It's quite clear today, a lot of the capabilities that we used for military needs, but also that we use for civilian needs, are owned by private enterprises, companies large and small. That means that we really need to ensure that they're on board, that they are prepared for any kind of crisis, not just military crisis, to be able to ramp up their supply lines, to be able to respond to the needs. We have examples for that. We have response measures to hurricanes. We just went through the COVID pandemic that really had an effect on supply lines. So we have multiple reasons to prepare for that. And there is definitely an increased interest across the world. There's also interest in Asia. And I know that a lot of people are talking about the importance and relevance of civilian-based resistance, for example, Taiwan, and how they could maybe take

over some of the lessons that, let's say, the Baltic states have been learning from their recent preparations, because they have now been working on whole of societal type of resilience plans for now several years. Relevant examples are also available from, let's say, Finland that has continuously been implementing a total defense concept. is also building and ensuring the contributions that the civilian part of society can contribute to state defense and deterrence measures. So what I wanted to really highlight again, maybe in way too many words, is that when we talk about the peacetime preparation for occupation scenarios, we actually talk about activities and policies that have a much, much wider relevance and value for any one country. And that is because these activities can be used to prepare and build your response to any kind of emergency, ranging from floods

to hurricanes, et cetera, et cetera. So this next question is for both of you. I'll pose it to Marta first, but Brian's article discusses that preparing to train and employ stay-behind forces can be seen as somewhat controversial kind of around the world. So why might national policymakers be hesitant to invest in this capability in the first place?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think that's also good question. I think that's also an interesting point that Brian makes in his article. On the one hand, indeed, investing and maybe publicizing your investments and stay behind forces can be seen as controversial. In the earlier days of, let's say, the Baltic preparations many years ago, when the Baltic states started out working on boosting resilience and really talking about what resistance means, there was definitely some discussion about how investing in resistance

is sort of alarmist, because that means, first, that you think that there's a high risk of military invasion, but two, that also means that your country is essentially going to be overrun by enemy forces, which is a scary proposition if you ask me, particularly if you expect that your enemy is going to be quite brutal to your military population, fighting population, but also to your civilian population. So that is a sort of controversial side related to also the

discussion about stay behind forces. So yeah, that's basically the hesitation surrounding the public discussion. The other reason why policymakers are hesitant to discuss the investments in resistance, stay behind forces, is also the news that we have been receiving from Ukraine and now more recently, the media coverage of Israel and Gaza. What we see is the reporting of the atrocities, civilian atrocities. And that is something that no policymaker wants to talk about and admit that something like that could happen in your own country. Therefore, the very discussion of stay-behind forces entails the fact that you're going to be occupied. That is, I think, the most controversial part of this discussion. That is also the reason why the discussion within NATO has really turned towards deterrence by denial rather than deterrence by punishment. Building a stay-behind force, as Marta suggests, accepts the idea that your conventional defense plans might not be sufficient to stop a determined invader, or it might signal

that a nation doesn't have confidence in alliances or collective defense agreements like NATO. So that can be tricky political waters to publicly voice. That's one reason. And then, of course, there's a practical reason, which is stay behind forces, investing in, let's say, citizen-centric stay behind forces. They don't all need to be citizen-centric, but it could invite stability problems if a state allows its citizens to arm and organize. I think a good example of that is Joseph Stalin in World War II. He rejected any pre-organized citizen resistance in the USSR. He judged that that would threaten regime survival. Anybody that knows anything about

Stalin and the USSR in the 1940s is not surprised by that. Stalin and the Soviets only allowed it when the Red Army effectively collapsed in the Eastern Front is not surprised by that. Stalin and the Soviets only allowed it when the Red Army effectively collapsed in the Eastern Front after the launch of Operation Barbarossa. Places like Ukraine and Belarusia, it was only after the Red Army was really routed that the idea was suggested and then adopted by the Soviets.

Hey, citizens, let's go ahead and start enacting stay-behind operations. You can imagine that the cost was tremendously high for those populations. So for a policymaker, it can sound defeatist to invest in a force or formation that's going to fight invaders and occupiers. It is safer political territory to invest in something, say, an artillery piece that has a clear weight and measure, whereas it can be harder to assess the relative value of investing in some shadowy organization that has no hard templates, that operates as a shapeshifter, and that we don't know exactly how we're going to employ them in war.

That's a tougher proposition in the policy realm. That said, my belief is that this is turning out to be less and less controversial. I do think the resistance operating concept has helped that. Certainly the Ukraine war has helped that with the public able to visually look at what a citizen resistance tacked on to a general purpose defense looks like. Now the question for policymakers is, okay, if we want this, how does it look? Who owns it? Who controls it? How is it organized? How is it trained? And how is it equipped for purpose? I wanted to add to what Brian said. I wanted to highlight one aspect is the concern about the kind of skills that you may be giving to maybe a broader range of population if you are basing your stay-behind force on other elements of your society,

in addition to maybe special operations forces or other military organizations that you already have. And that is something that we highlight also in some of our RANDS work that needs to be taken account and that requires either specific organizational decisions that you make at peacetime or that requires maybe additional vetting procedures and similar. One way of mitigating the potential that the very specialized skills that you may be offering to broader numbers of population may be used for malign purposes during peacetime, either for criminal activities or activities that may undermine stability in your country, is in fact providing these various means for those civilians who are interested and who know that they will be interested and motivated to become part of stay-behind forces, become active members of

armed resistance, is ensuring different ways how you can be part of your military chain of command, maybe without actually becoming a full-time professional soldier. So one of that is ensuring that there are many opportunities to join whatever national voluntary defense force that may exist in your country. That is also a path that the Baltics and many Nordic and Eastern European countries have taken. So they offer these opportunities to become part of their kitesalit if you're in Estonia or a semisard if you're in Latvia, for example, to offer your skills, which is great, but also to gain the kind of skills that you would need in case there is a military crisis. And you are also part of the military chain of command as well. It's been a great conversation today. So one last final question before Ben wraps up the conversation, and this question is for both of you,

but I'll throw to Marta first to answer. Based on today's conversation, what are the major considerations for policymakers, academics, and practitioners who are interested in resistance and stay behind operations? I think that there are a lot of areas that still need to be explored from the research perspective. We do have a large body of work and resistance, and I want to acknowledge that. But probably we could explore and update some of the body of work that we do have on stay-behind forces. We have amazing work and publications that have been done on, let's say, the nonviolent part of resistance. But we can definitely work more on sort of armed types of resistance within the sort of context of resistance against an occupying power and within the environment of a modern world.

So what and how does the proliferation of various technologies really impact resistance? Ukraine offers really interesting examples of how cyber technologies are used, how drone technologies are used, but also how does the changing environment, changing society that we live in today also affects how we can do resistance activities. What does the changing society mean for the kind of skills that people have? What does it mean for the way that we communicate with each other? How do individuals and groups could and would interact with each other? Also, more work on the prime of ownership of various infrastructure functions and never-ending sort of problem of how do we ensure interagency cooperation already in peacetime to prepare for

war situation. Policymakers want options, and this provides options. Let's look at Ukraine. There are no more obvious maneuver corridors that are unprotected. The Russians are dug in. There are no easy flanks to attack. The front is a grind of attritional warfare. no easy flanks to attack. The front is a grind of attritional warfare. What there is, is there's a huge rear area. There's a large, newly occupied area that the Russians need to control and they need to regulate. And they're attempting to do so with low quality, low commitment forces. So perhaps this is the only remaining vulnerable front or the only remaining vulnerable front for now until that attritional warfare or advanced rocketry, et cetera, can create maneuver corridors. So who can attack this rear area? You

can do it with information. You can attack it with long range munitions. And we see that line of effort is working its best, but also stay behind concepts, underground, saboteurs, subversionists, acting in accordance with these principles. And of course, Ukraine is well underway in that, and we're seeing a huge spike in that activity in the Crimean Peninsula in the last few weeks and months. The proposition here is to think about this pre-crisis. Let's move away from Ukraine. The proposition here is to think about this pre-crisis and to fashion laws, policies, and build forces that can affect stay-behind operations immediately and effectively, rather than trying to construct this after occupation, as France did in 1940. comment on a point Marta brought up, which is NATO recently adopted a new strategy. They went from deterrence by punishment to deterrence by denial. NATO essentially said, instead of absorbing attacks and then counterattacking, we want to actually stop invasions at the border. And while

I think that is a good and true and just aspirational policy, let me be provocative here. Is it realistic? Do NATO nations, either individually or collectively, have the capability to fulfill the mandate of denying an invasion at borders? The answer is no, they do not. So what are you going to do in order to thicken that layered defense, stop that occupation, prevent consolidation of control? You can aspirationally build more rocketry, artillery, and infantry, but I think that that's probably not going to happen. So you need these asymmetric methods. And instead of creating them in a crisis, let's pre-build them

over time. Let's connect them up to this strategy of deterrence by denial. And then let's look at advertising that. There's a conceal reveal idea that you need to have. You need to reveal enough of it so that it deters, but you need to conceal enough of it so that it survives enemy counterintelligence. And I think that's where we see some countries going. Taiwan is one country that knows it cannot symmetrically contest, right? The People's Republic of China. So Taiwan is looking at new methods. And while I'm not qualified to speak on their use of stay behind forces, certainly this is a type of idea that we certainly think is being entertained,

in addition to the other mechanisms to face a vastly superior enemy. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the question of Taiwan with someone who's, you know, had a little bit of experience and abiding interest in Indo-Pacific. It's interesting to have these sort of conversations where we look at what would you like to do versus what would be the most effective. So I'll be interested to see over the coming years what countries choose to invest in some sort of resistance capability, vice a more conventional deterrence capability. resistance capability, vice a more conventional deterrence capability. However, we've kept you here long enough. And that was a great conversation about a very important but often overlooked aspect of defense and resistance warfare. So Brian and Marta, thanks so much for joining us today on the

Irregular Warfare podcast. It was great to host you. Thank you. It was great to be here. Ben, Adam, appreciate it. Ben, good to see you in person. Adam, good to hear you. You guys run a great podcast. I've heard your voices a lot. So it's nice to be able to see you. Thanks for the awesome work you do. I mean, it's super helpful for someone like me. Marta's work, you know, the grinding research work she does is hugely helpful.

And then this more public facing thing you guys do is super helpful. So I'm a fan. Thanks for having us on. It was awesome, Marta. Good to work with you. I'm sure we'll be in great contact here. Good to work with you too, Brian. And the reason why our research exists is because of practitioners like you and all of your colleagues. And thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast.

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