Modernizing the Unconventional Warfare Enterprise: The Case for Nonviolent Resistance

“When one man is enslaved, all are not free” – John F. Kennedy

Abstract:

This paper argues that U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) should modernize its unconventional warfare (UW) training and education to improve its ability to support nonviolent resistance. Resistance scholars such as David Ucko and Dr. Erica Chenoweth argue that resistance movements in the 21^st century have increased in frequency and are more likely to be nonviolent, but paradoxically are also less successful than ever. This modern resistance dilemma offers an opportunity for the US to gain an asymmetric advantage over its authoritarian adversaries through nonviolent, unconventional warfare. Despite this opportunity, most, if not all, UW training focuses on violent resistance, such as raids and ambushes. To prepare Army Special Forces (SF) to support nonviolent resistance, USASOC should augment the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) and Special Operations Forces Training and Experimentation Center (SOF-TEC) with specially trained cadre and role players that possess appropriate knowledge of nonviolent resistance. This paper also addresses potential arguments against SF more directly supporting nonviolent resistance by reviewing the conditions to support any UW campaign, such as political feasibility.

The Age of the Dictator?

Will the 21^st century belong to the dictator? The United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are competing to decide this existential question. The U.S.-led liberal world order is built on democracy, free trade, and universal human rights, while the PRC’s vision is based on survival of the Chinese Communist Party, civil obedience, and preeminent global influence. For the US to prevail in this struggle, it must be able to support those who seek to resist the authoritarian rule modeled and exported by the PRC. Consistent with integrated campaigning, a critical Department of Defense (DoD) role in great power competition is to conduct unconventional warfare (UW). Joint doctrine defines UW as activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. U.S. Army Special Forces are the only Department of Defense element authorized to conduct UW. To cite a well-known example, U.S. Special Forces conducted a UW campaign in Afghanistan supporting the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban in 2001. Although this campaign was successful, the Taliban exerted only tenuous control over their country.

More modern authoritarian states wield sophisticated internal security apparatuses that cannot be easily defeated by the likes of the SF “horse soldiers” in Afghanistan. While resistance movements have increased in the past decade, their success has greatly decreased (see Figure 1). This resistance paradox presents both a problem for aspiring democracies and an opportunity for the US to gain strategic initiative over authoritarian states. Research by Harvard professor Dr. Chenoweth shows that most successful modern resistance movements are largely nonviolent (see Figure 2).  While current U.S. military resistance doctrine acknowledges the growing importance of nonviolence, UW education and training still emphasize a protracted, violent struggle – reminiscent of a Maoist insurgency campaign of the early 20^th century. However, the character of modern 21st-century resistance demands an evolution of the UW enterprise to account for these new trends toward nonviolence.

Figure 1. The Rise of Resistance Movements

Source: Chenoweth et al., Major Episodes of Contention Dataset (Harvard Kennedy School, 2019)

Figure 2. Resistance Movement Success Rates

Source: Chenoweth et al., Major Episodes of Contention Dataset (Harvard Kennedy School, 2019)

Resistance in the 21^st Century

In 2011, Time Magazine named “The Protester” as the Person of the Year. Across the world, massive demonstrations raged from Wall Street to the Middle East, Europe, and Russia. All of these resistance movements relied on social media to quickly communicate and organize. These groups also used social media to share lessons learned and elicit foreign support. For a moment, the future seemed bright for the common people to take back control of their governments. Then dictators caught up. That same year, regimes quickly clamped down on the protest movements by exerting control over social media companies and internet infrastructure to conduct mass surveillance and arrests. For all the initial optimism, the 2011 protests achieved very little and often exacerbated issues for the participants. The recent failures of the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests further illustrate Dr. Chenoweth’s findings that states still have the upper hand through digital repression. Now, resistance movements face an additional virtual layer to the enduring paradox of how to confront state oppression while avoiding a severe backlash.

David Ucko illustrates how resistance movements of all types are adapting this century in The Insurgent’s Dilemma. Through extensive case studies, Ucko argues that modern resistance movements can no longer win by slowly transforming into rival states as Mao’s Red Army did. Any resistance movement that tries to beat the state at its own game sacrifices the inherent strengths of a resistance: camouflage, dispersion, and fluidity. While resistance movements have always faced this paradox, authoritarian states increasingly gain significant control over their populations through more sophisticated mass surveillance and individualized repression. Ucko goes on to argue that modern resistance movements must adopt one of the following three strategies to succeed: a localized insurgency, an infiltrative insurgency, or an ideational insurgency.

In a localized insurgency, the resistance movement aims to control its own portion of territory within an existing state. Resistance movements conducting infiltrative insurgency seek to gain power through legal and illegal actions to co-opt institutions against the government. For the newest emerging strategy, the ideational insurgency, resistance movements exist primarily online centered around a common ideology without a clear structure or leader. Of note, the infiltrative and ideational insurgencies rely on more indirect nonviolent methods to overthrow the state than purely violent means. While the localized insurgency does directly employ violence, it is more defensive and never threatens to directly topple its opposing state. Ucko offers a well-researched basic taxonomy of modern resistance that emphasizes the importance of nonviolence in the 21^st Century.

The most useful research on the topic of resistance efficacy comes from Harvard’s Professor Erica Chenoweth. Chenoweth and her colleagues have analyzed an extensive amount of information on resistance movements from 1945 to 2017. Her Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) data project examines over 250 resistance movements broken down into 1,726 campaign years to account for changing strategies. The NAVCO dataset includes over 50 independent variables such as the size of the resistance movement, its overall goals, diversity, amount of international support, and how it uses social media. NAVCO also includes information on the state responses such as discriminate or indiscriminate repression, degree of international support, and number of casualties inflicted. All these independent variables correlate to the resistance campaign’s progress and overall success. This research does have to make certain subjective judgments, such as what constitutes progress, but it is well-researched, cited, and fully transparent. Chenoweth concludes that successful resistance movements rely on primarily nonviolent tactics, recruit diverse membership, and indirectly recruit state elites.

Expanding the UW Enterprise to Include Nonviolence

While research shows the importance of nonviolent resistance this century, current UW training still emphasizes protracted violent struggles. Special Forces candidates in Robin Sage culminating exercise spend more time planning ambushes and raids than any of Gene Sharp’s 198 methods of nonviolent action. More advanced SF training at the Sage Eagle exercise also focuses on violent resistance.  Furthermore, no SF unit has support for nonviolent resistance as a mission-essential task. To prepare for a more realistic modern UW campaign, SF units should instead look to civilian organizations dedicated to nonviolent resistance.

A diverse collection of civilian organizations offers models for nonviolent resistance training that should inform more robust future SF resistance training. The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict offers scalable in-person training through customized workshops and more formal academic courses. The Leading Change Network offers classes on building organizations and developing narratives. Beautiful Trouble is an impressive digital collection of nonviolent resistance strategies and tactics. Effective training can also be indirect and virtual. For example, the computer games A Force More Powerful and People Power teach players how to organize a nonviolent resistance movement. These civilian nonviolent resistance organizations are the successors of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. The Civil Rights Movement conducted realistic training to successfully prepare their members for the harassment they’d face. While civilian organizations can provide nonviolent training models, direct military participation in such venues could jeopardize the integrity of these independent organizations supporting real-world campaigns against authoritarian regimes.

U.S. Army Special Operations Command should update the SFQC curriculum and advanced UW training such as Sage Eagle based on tactics proven by civilian nonviolent resistance organizations. In the same way that tabletop rehearsals cannot replace live fire iterations, nonviolent resistant training must be conducted in person. To make the training realistic, a professional cadre and range of specific role players are required to manage the training and represent the spectrum of resistance components: civilian leaders, resistance members, neutral civilians, and counter-resistance members—including military and civilian law enforcement. Modernizing the SF UW enterprise requires an important mental re-orientation and investment in nonviolence education and training—which does not have to be cost-prohibitive. If Army cadets at West Point could train on nonviolent resistance astride the Hudson River on a shoestring budget back in 2017, then seasoned Army SF teams and the USASOC schoolhouse can make it happen at scale today in 2025.

Counter Arguments—Why Not Nonviolent Resistance?

Some could argue that it is inappropriate for the military, even Special Forces, to engage in nonviolent resistance because it risks the integrity of these movements. After all, authoritarian states already falsely claim that local resistance organizations are merely pawns of Western powers. Maintaining resistance legitimacy should indeed be a top concern for UW practitioners and policymakers. Directly supporting a resistance movement with SF is not a decision to be made lightly. Current UW doctrine accounts for the political risks of supporting a resistance movement through a feasibility assessment. Before committing to a UW campaign, U.S. support to a resistance movement must analyze the stability of the opposing regime, the will and means of the resistance organization, its willingness to cooperate with the US, and perhaps most importantly, compatibility of objectives and ideology. If the US is willing to support violent resistance with military support such as the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, then why not support nonviolent resistance when similar conditions exist?

Preventing SF from interacting with nonviolent resistance movements removes a critical political-military option of exerting influence over these groups to advance U.S. national interests. Instead, SF should be able to provide senior decision-makers the option to support both violent and nonviolent resistance movements—independently, in parallel, or sequentially. In fact, many modern resistance movements use a combination of both violent and nonviolent strategies. Dr. Chenoweth warns that violent resistance often undermines nonviolent movement in the long run. However, the recent successes of violent resistance movements in Afghanistan and Syria cannot be ignored. As with any application of power, policymakers must consider the amount of violence necessary weighed against the second and third orders effects it may produce.

There is a wide variety of military capabilities that are thankfully rarely employed but present credible options to policymakers – nuclear weapons being a clear example. Support for nonviolent resistance is a unique and important implement for policymakers to wield carefully.  However, due to the lack of current education and training, this capability does not exist. Dr. Chenoweth and her team have studied third-party intervention in resistance movements and concluded that the actions of the local resistance movements are of paramount importance, but third-party support to nonviolent resistance can prove decisive. Given these findings, USASOC should expand its UW enterprise for the 21^st century to include education and training for support to nonviolent resistance.

Unconventional Warfare in the 21^st Century

Contemporary research into resistance movements from scholars such as David Ucko and Dr. Erica Chenoweth emphasizes the preeminence of nonviolent resistance in the 21^st century. Even though Army Special Forces are the Department of Defense’s only organization specifically manned, trained, and equipped to conduct UW, the UW enterprise has not kept pace with contemporary trends illustrating the criticality of nonviolent resistance. USASOC should support nonviolence resistance education and training as a key element of its curriculum, not as an outlier, beginning with the SQFC and expanding into more advanced training like at SOF-TEC.

Like all conflict, resistance is inherently chaotic, unpredictable, and political. Engaging in support to nonviolent resistance is not a decision to be made lightly, nor is it a panacea to great power competition. However, enhancing SF’s ability to combine nonviolent resistance effects with other military and interagency efforts offers a valuable asymmetric option to compete with authoritarian adversaries that the United States would be remiss to neglect.

(Disclaimer: These views presented in this article represent the author and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, or any element of the United States Government.)