Chapter 2 Understanding Resistance Movements as Asymmetric Warfare: Lessons for Today 2. Understanding Resistance Movements Keith D. Dickson Keith D. Dickson

Introduction

As we examine resistance movements in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, it is important to understand that there is a lack of clarity on what constitutes a resistance movement. Within a number of countries in Eastern Europe, re- sistance movements are characterized in two ways: as courageous actions of individuals and groups fighting for freedom from Communist oppression, or as inconsequential acts of criminals and hooligans. Those who support the former seek to recognize these heroes as part of national identity; those who support the latter want to minimize the memory of these activities and those who participated in them. Resistance movements require some definition. I will use a contemporary source from the 1950s to offer some clarity. The Central Intelligence Agency provided three categories to describe resistance movements, specifically as they related to the Warsaw Pact states. Resistance was defined as ‘dissidence translated into action’ Organized re- sistance was ‘carried out by a group of individuals who have accepted a com- mon purpose,’ and had a common leadership and communications structure. Unorganized resistance tended to form spontaneously, either through indi- viduals or loosely organized groups with ‘limited objectives, without an overall plan or strategy.’ Active resistance included violent or nonviolent acts directed against the government from intelligence collection and sabotage, to open defiance and guerrilla operations. Passive resistance involved the ‘deliberate nonperformance or malperformance’ of individual daily duties, or ‘deliberate nonconformity’ with the standards of conduct expected by the regime.1 Taking these definitions into consideration, for the U.S. intelligence com- munity it is clear that perceptions of what constituted resistance and how it manifested itself were quite broad. Limited information on events and

1 Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Estimate 10-58: Anti-Communist Resistance Potential in the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 4 March 1958, 2.

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2020 | doi:10.30965/9783657703043_003 12 Keith D. Dickson activities within Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe were often hard to analyze to provide a clear demarcation of whether the event or activity even consti- tuted resistance, or what category of resistance it represented. So, just as intel- ligence professionals approached the concept of resistance movements with caution, so should we. Carefully judging what constitutes resistance, examin- ing the unique dynamics that sustain a movement, and identifying trends and activities over time will validate the assessment and allow a clearer picture to emerge. This chapter offers an approach for understanding these three factors of a resistance movement under the rubric of what I call asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare is considered a subset of social conflict involving value commitments (related to prescriptive norms and beliefs) related to a change in relative power between actors or groups based on the mobilization of a collec- tive identity. I also define warfare in its broadest sense, as a contest, armed or otherwise, for political purposes to restructure political, economic, and social environments, while also shaping individual and collective actions.2

Understanding the Nature of Resistance: Asymmetries and Asymmetric Warfare

At its heart, resistance is based on asymmetry. Asymmetry in its most basic form relates to variances, dissimilarities, or inequalities between adversaries. Asymmetry is often understood as a condition in which one actor is signifi- cantly stronger than another. Put another way, asymmetry is ‘the absence of a common basis of comparison’ between a dominant and weaker actor’s capa- bilities, interests, and commitment.3 These dichotomies between actors that resist comparison can lead to the weaker actor initiating asymmetric warfare against the dominant actor, an operational method employed by a weaker actor to engage in a level of resis- tance intended to prevent a dominant actor from gaining its goals by increas- ing the level of cost for the dominant actor to an unacceptable level, leading

2 Stathis N. Kalyvas, Warfare in Civil Wars, in: Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom (eds.), Rethinking the Nature of War (New York: Frank Cass, 2005), 88-91, passim. 3 David L. Buffaloe, Defining Asymmetric Warfare (= The Land Warfare Papers 58, Arlington, VA: The Institute of Land Warfare, Association of the United States Army, 2006), 3. Buffaloe reviews the difficulty the U.S. military had in applying the term and concludes that ‘due to a lack of concrete understanding, the term became meaningless.’ Quote from General Montgomery Meigs, page 11. Patricia L. Sullivan, War Aims and War Outcomes: Why Powerful States Lose Limited Wars, in: The Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, June (2007) 3, 509.