Winning Without Fighting: Military Strategy for Small States in the Transparency Battlefield
Dr Joan Swart ; Forensic Psychologist and Military Strategist
For most of modern military history, strength meant concentration. Victory came from massing combat power at decisive points faster than the enemy could respond. Larger formations, heavier platforms, and superior firepower created momentum that defenders struggled to stop once contact was made.
The Military Implications of Modern Coercion
The economic and institutional aspects of modern coercion are now widely discussed. Less examined are the military implications: how armed forces should be structured when conflict begins not with invasion, but with pressure intended to produce rapid political effects. Military force enters only when those pressures appear likely to succeed quickly. The role of armed forces is therefore not simply to defeat an attacker, but to prevent external pressure from becoming immediate political outcome.
Advances in surveillance, precision strike, and networked targeting have steadily weakened the advantage of concentration. Forces that mass become visible; forces that become visible become targetable; and forces that are continuously targetable struggle to maintain operational coherence.
The battlefield is increasingly defined by transparency
Satellites, drones, passive sensors, and distributed reconnaissance compress time between detection and engagement. Concentration, once the precondition of decisive manoeuvre, now generates vulnerability.
For smaller and middle powers this shift is decisive.
They cannot match the scale of larger militaries, but they no longer need to. Their objective changes from defeating a stronger adversary in battle to denying him the ability to translate entry into control. Military effectiveness is measured less by territory taken than by outcomes prevented.
When a state appears unable to resist, internal actors adapt faster than external forces advance. The purpose of military design is therefore psychological as much as physical: to demonstrate that pressure will not produce quick compliance.
Traditional force structures were designed for a battlefield in which survivability depended primarily on armour, distance, and escort. Airbases concentrated aircraft to generate sortie rates, fleets massed to protect capital ships, and ground forces assembled into formations capable of sustained manoeuvre. Protection came from defensive layers and the difficulty of locating targets over large areas.
Transparent and Transient Battlespaces
In a transparent battlespace those assumptions erode. Fixed installations can be mapped in advance. Large platforms are tracked continuously. Concentrated formations generate signatures detectable across multiple sensors simultaneously. Precision strike does not need to destroy every unit; it only needs to disrupt enough critical nodes — fuel, command, air defence, logistics — to halt coordinated action.
Vulnerability is redefined. Instead of asking whether a force can win a battle, planners must ask whether it can remain functional while being persistently observed and periodically struck. Large bases, dense headquarters, and tightly grouped assets become single points of operational failure. Even if losses are limited, disruption spreads faster than orders can compensate.
For smaller states the implication is stark: replicating the structure of major-power militaries produces forces that appear strong in peacetime yet degrade rapidly under pressure. Deterrence then fails not because the force cannot fight, but because it cannot keep fighting long enough to shape political decisions.
Modern conflict therefore punishes concentration and rewards continuity. Survival of function, rather than preservation of platforms, becomes the prerequisite for strategy.
Continued Organised Resistance
Recent conflicts show the pattern clearly: forces unable to match firepower still prevented consolidation simply by continuing organised resistance. The expectation of quick resolution collapsed, and with it the strategic logic of the operation. The decisive factor was not battlefield victory, but the absence of immediate control.
If concentration creates vulnerability, the alternative is not passivity but a different operational aim. Instead of seeking decisive engagement, smaller states design forces to impose continuous friction. The purpose is to prevent an adversary from converting initial success into stable control.
This approach rests on dispersion and autonomy. Units must be able to operate locally with limited direction, drawing on pre-planned sectors, redundant communications, and simplified command relationships. Rather than protecting every platform, the force protects its ability to function: sensors, mobility, and the capacity to reconstitute after disruption.
Firepower follows the same logic. Systems are chosen less for maximum range or prestige and more for survivability and replaceability. Mobile air defence complicates air superiority. Coastal denial weapons restrict maritime approach without requiring fleet combat. Precision ground fires target movement and logistics rather than front lines. Each action alone is limited; together they slow tempo and erode momentum.
Modern campaigns rely on rapid political effects. When resistance remains organised and continuous, operational success no longer guarantees strategic outcome. The attacker must either escalate, commit greater resources, or accept uncertainty, all of which carry political cost.
In this sense the objective is not battlefield victory but decision disruption. A force that remains present, coordinated, and capable of repeated interference prevents the conflict from resolving quickly. For smaller powers, that delay constitutes deterrence: it signals that entry will not produce control.
This is why military structure cannot be separated from national resilience. Armed forces do not operate in isolation; they reinforce institutional stability by ensuring that government authority continues to function under pressure. When administration, economy, and defence all persist simultaneously, coercion struggles to produce political change.
Translating this logic into force design requires abandoning familiar hierarchies of prestige. The question is no longer which platforms demonstrate strength, but which capabilities continue functioning under sustained observation and intermittent attack.
In the air domain, denial replaces dominance. Rather than maintaining large fleets intended to control airspace continuously, smaller states prioritise survivable ground-based air defence, deception, and electronic interference. The aim is not to eliminate hostile aircraft but to make persistent presence costly and uncertain.
At sea, control gives way to access restriction. Shore-based anti-ship systems, maritime surveillance networks, and unmanned surface and subsurface systems complicate approach routes without requiring fleet engagements. The coastline becomes an active defensive system rather than a boundary to be patrolled by major vessels.
On land, mobilisation matters more than standing mass. A trained reserve, territorial organisation, and distributed logistics sustain resistance even when primary formations are disrupted. Precision fires focus on movement corridors and supply rather than positional battles. The force’s effectiveness lies in continuity of action rather than concentration of strength.
Sensors, communications redundancy, and the ability to reconstitute units matter more than individual high-value assets. Systems that can be dispersed, repaired, or replaced maintain deterrence; systems that must be protected at all costs invite early neutralisation.
Such a structure may appear less imposing in peacetime, yet it presents a more complex problem in crisis. By reducing single points of failure and preserving operational function, it denies an adversary the rapid, demonstrable success upon which modern coercion depends.
Cahnging the aggressor’s expectations of outcome
Deterrence in this environment no longer depends primarily on the threat of decisive retaliation. For smaller states it rests on altering the attacker’s expectation of outcome.
Political objectives rely on demonstrating inevitability before external actors react and before domestic pressure constrains escalation. If resistance remains organised beyond the initial phase, the conflict changes character: what was intended as a short operation becomes an open-ended commitment. Costs accumulate, risks expand, and strategic clarity erodes.
Military forces designed for continuity exploit this dynamic. By remaining functional — even at reduced intensity — they prevent the creation of a stable post-entry situation. Control cannot be consolidated, administration cannot normalise, and the political narrative of quick success cannot be sustained. The question facing the attacker shifts from how to win to whether the objective justifies prolonged uncertainty.
This is the essence of winning without fighting decisively.
The defending state does not need battlefield superiority; it needs endurance credible enough to deny rapid resolution. When the expected duration of conflict exceeds the anticipated political benefit, coercion loses its attraction.
Military endurance only matters if the society behind it can endure as well. Defence forces create time; national resilience determines what that time achieves. Economic continuity, administrative competence, and public confidence extend the time horizon within which defence forces operate. Without that foundation, even well-designed forces merely postpone defeat; with it, they transform delay into deterrence.
A military that can repeatedly interfere, recover from disruption, and continue operating makes outcomes uncertain. In modern conflict, uncertainty — not destruction — protects sovereignty.
This article forms part of a broader discussion on resilience and coercion in modern statecraft.
Dr Joan Swart
Author bio: Dr Joan Swart is a forensic psychologist and military analyst specialising in security studies, geopolitics, and strategic affairs, with a particular focus on Africa. She is currently completing a PhD at the University of Stellenbosch Military Academy. Previous and more articles on military strategy by Dr Swart can be read in previous editions of Nongqai, available on-line at Nongqai.org, and in the Nongqai Archives at Akademia Universiteit, Centution, South Africa.
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