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Measuring Resilience and Resistance

  • Published
  • By JSOU

Resilience and resistance comprise psychological, physical, human, and material approaches to competition, deterrence, and irregular warfare. Such methods can include the transformation of infrastructure to support irregular activities, the hardening of or redundancy of institutions, and preparation of populations for conflict. For military planners struggling for numerical data to evaluate, the quantifiable effectiveness of asymmetric approaches to conflict can prove challenging. What are the measures of effectiveness and measures of performance for SRR in an irregular or conventional threat? One method of evaluating a region or country is through analyses of political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time (PMESII-PT) metrics. Can PMESII-PT or other doctrinal analytical tools usefully measure the capabilities of a resistance movement or the resilience of a nation state? Are there lessons from the application of these analytical tools to counterinsurgency that could be applied to SRR?