Abstract: Due to Russia’s aggressive actions in their neighbourhood, Eastern and Northern European countries were forced to take a critical look at their homeland defence capabilities and realised that their defence capabilities have significant gaps. However, instead of developing strategies and designing defence organisations that reflect their available resources and fit the challenges they are facing, these countries once again implemented solutions that reflect the dominant Western conventional military norms. Although through the implementation of the so-called “total defence” strategies some of these countries have augmented their conventional approach with some paramilitary, unconventional formations, their solutions still reflect how the West thinks wars should be waged and professional military organisations should act and be organised. This article suggests that these countries need to abandon their military orthodoxy and completely redesign their defence approaches based on unconventional warfare foundations and build a new version of state-owned, standardised, and professional military that is organised, equipped, and trained to fight based on different norms than our current ones. To propose some ideas to such changes, the article draws lessons from the case studies of the First Russo-Chechen War and the Second Lebanese War.
Key words: strategy, norm of conventional warfare, Russia, asymmetry, unconventional warfare, total defence, resistance
