This article is Part One of an eight-part series by Iliana Drakonis — a child of war, and later, a practitioner of it. Through this series, she unpacks both personal memory and professional experience to examine how nations and individuals endure under the weight of conflict. Her reflections bridge the emotional and the analytical, offering a rare, lived perspective on the psychology of survival and the modern realities of resistance and asymmetric warfare.
When a small nation is invaded by a much larger force, the battlefield isn’t only on the frontlines — it runs through the mind of every civilian and soldier. Asymmetric warfare isn’t just missiles versus molotov’s. It is identity versus annihilation. It is the human spirit versus the machinery of conquest.
The invader counts on fear collapsing society from within.
The defender counts on resilience doing the exact opposite.
This is where psychology becomes national defense.
The Survival Mindset
Empires invade with the belief that size guarantees victory. But in asymmetric conflict, the critical question is simpler:
Do the people believe they deserve to survive?
Small states cannot rely on overwhelming firepower, so they invest in something far more difficult to destroy: the internal conviction that surrender is impossible. That belief transforms everyday life into resistance. Every decision — to stay, to fight, to rebuild a blown-out building — becomes a statement:
We’re still here.
That mindset alone can derail an empire’s expectations.
When Everyone Is the Frontline
In this kind of war, the uniform does not define the defender.
The street they live on does.
Students become drone operators. Parents become medics. Artists become information warriors. The separation between “combatant” and “civilian” dissolves into a single societal force driven by survival instinct.
Psychological resilience becomes distributed, like a neural network. You can destroy pieces of it — but not the whole.
This frustrates invaders because they cannot seize what is not centralized.
The Power of Smallness
A small nation doesn’t fight for prestige or spheres of influence.
It fights not to vanish.
That gives it a terrifying advantage: a lack of acceptable alternatives.
A big state can retreat and remain a big state.
A small state cannot lose once and still exist.
That asymmetry of stakes creates asymmetry of courage.
Fear as Fuel — Not a Weapon Against You
Invaders weaponize fear, expecting paralysis.
But fear can mutate into defiance when channeled through shared identity.
People discover agency:
• I can protect this road.
• I can share intelligence.
• I can keep others alive.
Each act restores control.
Control restores hope.
Hope reinforces the will to resist.
This psychological loop is the true sustainment system of asymmetric defense.
Why Resilience Wins Time — And Time Changes Wars
The goal of a large invading force is speed: shock, collapse, inevitability.
Resilient populations deny them that. They stretch the conflict until the invader’s narrative breaks, until attrition of legitimacy outweighs gains in territory. Every day the small state stands is another day the invader’s confidence erodes.
The clock is not neutral.
It favors those who refuse to stop fighting.
The Unconquerable Idea
Tanks can overrun a border.
Missiles can bombard a skyline.
But no weapon can erase a population that continues to believe:
We exist. We matter. We choose our future.
As one Baltic commander put it: “They can get to Tallinn in two days… but they will die in Tallinn.”
That isn’t bravado — it’s the psychology of survival made policy.
A large invader may look like a bear towering over the forest —
but survival belongs to the ones who become the storm that makes the bear bleed.
No one is coming.
It’s up to you.
And that is precisely why small nations so often endure.
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