STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS
- Military occupancy and subjugation is a highly complex process reliant on the smooth transition of governance and power.
- It relies on incredible investments that cannot be sustained indefinitely without sacrificing resources (Militarily, economically, politically, and mentally) in other theaters.
- To maintain their external and internal support, the occupiers often suppress the press and long-distance communications and lie about events to preserve their chosen narrative.
- Do not let them. Truth is the natural enemy of oppression. Their claims of rectitude are eroded by the truth of extrajudicial killings, torture, kidnappings, and other crimes against sentients.
- Develop underground communications networks: printing presses, hidden comlinks, illegal holonet stations. These require skilled operators and extensive supplies to function. Integrate them into your logistics.
- Leaders are both a rallying point and a vulnerability. If necessary, reveal their identities. Do not rely on them to maintain a sustained resistance movement.
- Instead, let a popular cause be the central rallying point that people can support. You know your world and culture best. What would motivate them?
- Stages of Resistance:
- Gathering Support: Gaining credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of the wider populace. Do not engage the occupiers directly. Rather, focus on spreading the message of resistance to occupation.
- Direct Action: When the timing is right, through a strengthened movement and a weakened occupying force, begin small-scale, low-intensity engagements to disrupt the occupation and subjugation process.
- Open Military Confrontation: After building enough strength, engage in a localized conventional war to break the power of the occupying military.
- Timing: Military occupation and subjugation are the most fragile at the beginning of the process and after they feel they have succeeded.
- The chaos of the transition period allows you to operate covertly without the occupiers' awareness of your actions. Once they establish their security system, it will become more difficult.
- Time your actions based on the ebb and flow of the occupying force's resource availability.
- Cohesion & Friction: Cohesion and friction are the fundamental principles you rely on. Cohesion is how well a military force functions as a unified whole in the face of Friction. Friction comprises the challenges a military force faces in pursuing its objective. A force is most cohesive in friendly territory, at the base, and with a simple, popular objective under direct observation of its supreme commanders. The further from this status a force moves, the more friction it encounters, which increases the rate at which the force's cohesion decays. When cohesion decays far enough, the force cannot pursue its objectives.
- The ideal method of resistance is nonviolent, especially regarding autocracies and military dictatorships. Their underlying philosophy is predicated on using violence as a political tool to achieve their desired ends through the forceful imposition of control. Peaceful resistance shatters this illusion by forcing the occupying force to make one of two choices:
- 1. Concede to the demands of the people. In an ideal world, this would always happen. However, such action undermines the illusion of strength and control upon which their authority is based. From a Palpatist or Tarkinist perspective, it is a sign of weakness.
- 2. Use violence to suppress peaceful resistance. This is the most likely result of overt peaceful resistance. Any defiance is proof of a lack of control, often portrayed as essential to protect against an external or internal threat. Nonviolent resistance shows that the resistance movement is not a military threat and therefore does not justify the existence of a heavily militarized state to protect against.
- Choice 2 is most likely. Be prepared to suffer retaliation and retribution, ranging from beatings to imprisonment and torture to the possibility of execution. That will infuriate the rest of your world and likely erode support in the occupying force's homeworld.
- Always conduct a cost-benefit analysis of overt peaceful resistance. Are the sacrifices worth the gain? Will it motivate your people or cow them?
- Much lower risk than overt peaceful resistance. Less likely to have dramatic effects either.
- The primary goal is to increase Friction faced by the occupying force to hasten the decay of Cohesion.
- Confusion, uncertainty, and discomfort are your primary tools. Soldiers, unless battle droids, are sentient beings, no matter how large propaganda builds them up to be. This applies to Sith, Imperial Knights, Jedi, and other Force sensitives.
- Change signs and directional beacons to take advantage of your superior understanding of the local geography. If asked for directions, mislead and misdirect for further occupying force dispersal.
- Use graffiti to deface and undermine the occupying force's propaganda claims and the illusion of invulnerability.
- Conveniently "lose" important papers and documents, especially during the development of the occupying government.
- Ignore collaborators and members of the occupying force when they try to engage in conversation.
- Force-sensitives can sense thoughts and emotions. Use that to your advantage by thinking and feeling things that will leave them uncomfortable and uncertain.
- Prolonged, passive rudeness can leave occupiers feeling homesick and isolated.
- That can be used as a source of information.
- Creating a new government is a lengthy, complex process that occupying forces will have to attempt to accomplish rapidly.
- Anything that disrupts the smooth transition of power and prevents the establishment of perceived legitimacy will hamper this process.
- Creating an impression of incompetence and servile passivity can lead to being deeply underestimated by the occupying force, which can later be exploited.
- In attempts to maintain order, stringent identification requirements can be expected.
- Disrupting this process will leave great gaps in the occupying forces counter-revolutionary and intelligence abilities.
- If elements of your local environment can harm the occupying forces' equipment without their knowledge, maintain this secrecy and deploy it cautiously to cause breakdowns.
- The first stage of direct resistance against an occupying army, covert military resistance, has three primary goals:
- Increase Friction to degrade the operational capabilities of the occupying army.
- Prove the power of your resistance movement by demonstrating that organized, coordinated resistance exists.
- Secure supplies and resources to increase your movement's operational capabilities.
- Hit and Fade: You cannot win when holding and defending territory, especially in the earliest phases of occupation.
- Exchange territory for time. Give up ground to extend the occupying force's logistics network and supplies.
- Operate irregular guerillas within occupied territory. Focus on sabotage, intelligence, and frustrating attempts to impose control.
- Security is critical. Operate in small cells. Limit shared information. What you don't know can't be extracted. No matter how strong, anyone can break under interrogation, especially if faced with Force-sensitives capable of reading minds.
- Your local population is your most critical asset. They can aid, join, shelter, or turn against you. Do not alienate them.
- Operate under a strict code of ethics. Ensure the neutral population is aware of your code so that they know you can be trustworthy, despite any claims from the occupying force.
- Maintain your perceived legitimacy. Overthrowing an occupying force is an excellent opportunity for making changes, but if too radical, there will be little to no perceived difference between you and the occupying force.
- Prioritize the local neutral population. Resistance movements are wars of willpower rather than weaponry. If they can endure in their support, you will always outnumber the occupying force.
- Defeat in Detail, Defense in Depth, and the Guerilla Gas
- A resistance movement in this phase will never win a protracted fight against the massed forces of an occupying government.
- Disperse, like gas, to be scattered and impossible to pin down. Remain flexible and mobile to evade the concentrated forces of the enemy.
- Stay mobile and scattered so the enemy must disperse to track you. When they disperse, ambush and stalk the detached units to wear them down over time.
- Never rely on a single, highly fortified place. Even the most physically fortified hideout will not hold against an orbital bombardment. Attack quickly along the flanks and exposed elements when facing a determined enemy advance before withdrawing as they regroup.
- Continually destabilize their advance and inflict heavy casualties. That will buy time to evacuate the most critical elements of your locations, meaning all of the resources spent by the attack are wasted for meaningless gains.
- Intelligence is the key. Know the locations and movements of your enemies. Cultivate informers and infiltrate enemy organizations, especially in the "invisible" service industries. Protect the sources of your intelligence.
- Counter-intelligence will keep you alive. Leak false information to false informants, and be wary of those you don't know who wish to join you.
- Play the long game. Unless they institute a base delta zero or turn the people against you, your world will always outnumber the occupiers in terms of total personnel, raw resources, and territory. Sacrifice the possibility for small wins to preserve resources for operations of greater impact. If anticipated casualties are high, abort the mission until more opportune moment.
- Force Sensitives are not gods, no matter how high they think themselves. They may sense or predict the future, but the Force does not give details, but instead, it offers possibilities and images. Rely on good tradecraft, careful planning, and an awareness of your surroundings and that can negate most Force-granted visions of the future.
- When faced directly by Force-Sensitive Occupiers, retreat unless you possess the elements of surprise, confusion, and leverage against them.
- The final stage of resistance. At this point, the occupying force is weakened enough that you can survive an open and prolonged engagement. Their weakness may be military, economic, or mental.
- Swift movement is critical to catch them off guard before they can redirect additional resources to suppress you.
- Maintain the same principles as covert military resistance- stay mobile, flexible, and carefully pick your targets.
- Cut off the influx of supplies from the occupying force's home systems, either by operating at an interstellar level, coordinating with a foreign state to act while the bulk of the military forces are occupied, or seizing and preventing the supplies from landing. Perhaps even launch raids against military targets in the home system to make them reprioritize.
Operating across multiple planets increases both the opportunities and challenges of a resistance movement. It increases the geographic distance the occupying force has to cover by a massive amount, but it also separates you from your home planet and the territory you are most familiar with, as well as the populace most likely to trust you.
However, it drastically increases the logistics and challenges of tracking you, further decreasing the overall cohesion of the occupying force, perhaps even destabilizing the occupying force's home government by weakening their political center of gravity. When at all possible, attempt to pit the various agencies of the occupying government against each other. That will weaken them internally and decrease the efficiency of their actions against you. Prevent their counter-revolutionary forces from doing the same to you.
Hyperfuel, starship parts, and rations are harder to supply from a single location. Prepare carefully before moving beyond your home planet to prevent your forces from being over-extended. Ideally, when spreading to other planets, consider sending a small, experienced team to help create a local resistance movement that will not have the disadvantages.
May the Force be with you.
- The Strategy of Star Wars
- That one Tumblr post about the OP's grandfather who was in the Resistance during WW2
- Lessons from the Resistance
- A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (Like, all of it)
- On War, by General Carl von Clausewitz
- T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Local Defense Forces and the Underground
