A 10-15-page essay exploring the relevance of one or more of the theories of global politics (realism, liberalism, neo-Marxism, constructivism, post-structuralism, feminism, green politics, post-colonialism, etc.) for conceptualizing or explaining an international conflict, event or issue selected by the student and approved by the instructor.

It is a well-known fact in the international community that cyberwarfare is a growing threat for nation states. As a response, many countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, India, China, Israel, Iran, and North Korea have active cyber operation teams for offensive and defensive operations. There have been several incidents where a cyber-attack has had material effects – such as the Stuxnet attacks in 2010 from the US to Iran, and Russia’s NotPetya towards Ukraine during the 2014 Crimea occupation – and so there is rising credible threat to the cyberwarfare capacities of adversaries. In a controversial approach to this fact, in May 2019 the Israel Defense Forces completed an airstrike against Hamas (a paramilitary group operating in Gaza) as part of the ongoing Palestinian-Israel conflict. This event is the first observed kinetic action taken against a cyberattack, either in response (retaliation) or for the threat of (preemptive action), crossing the barrier between traditional warfare and cyberwarfare. While controversial in nature, this attack closes and exemplifies how cyberwarfare is the current iteration in the evolution of warfare.

Warfare refers to the “activity of fighting a war or strongly competing, with reference to the type of weapons used or the way the fighting is done” (Cambridge University, 2008). Similarly, war refers to “armed fighting between two or more countries or groups, or a particular example of such fighting” (Cambridge University, 2008), but is also referred as “any situation in which there is a strong competition between opposing sides or a joint effort against something harmful” (Cambridge University, 2008). These definitions are important when discussing war – and by consequence, warfare – in different historical context and will be referred to continuously in the following essay. The former definition of war will be referred to as ‘traditional war’ and the second, as ‘new war’.

Traditional War

War has historically and traditionally been used as a method of solving conflicts and as an exercise of sovereignty. Before international law was formalized under customary law, there were little to no formal elements – such as treaties or agreements – pertaining to the relationships between states (Epps, 2014). Instead, the relationships between states were considered independent of one another (i.e., the relationships between state A and B would not affect the relationships of A and C). As such, whenever a conflict or disagreement would arise between two states, there were no formal elements to serve as a diffusion mechanism and, given the prevalence of physical needs, armed conflict would ensue. Each country would push for their own goals with physical force as a weapon of choice, as that is something that all countries could respond to: economic sanctions are also a popular choice, but there are no sanctions to place on a country that is not a trade partner. War and trade are the two prevalent mechanisms of international relationships: if one is not present, then the other one will follow. This is, of course, not true in the modern era, where states do not interact in a relationship vacuum, and the alliances and partnerships of each other matter; this becomes important in WWI. Before the establishment of governments and democracy, how a country or state would behave, and relate to other countries, was largely dependent on the intention of the royalty or equivalent leading figure.

The types of conflicts between states from early civilization to around the 19th century were dominated by access to resources (Environmental Literacy Council, 2015). Supply access is a driving point in both the continued existence of a state as well as any human being: as living beings, each person has needs, which are supplied with resources. As states are composed by people in a territory, they will use their territory to obtain these resources, using land, forests, lakes, oceans and any other physical element. With different climates in different territories, as well as the skills and specialties of populations in different locations, communication and exchange between states becomes important to supply for needs that cannot be supplied for in the limited space of a state. In peaceful times, or between cooperating civilizations, this is trade: the exchange of goods in a mutual accord by both parties. When there is no peace, or an agreement cannot be reached and tensions grow, alternative methods must be explored to obtain the necessary resources (Hyatt, 2016). Sometimes that alternative is another trade partner; other times, because of the nature of the resource (i.e. land and territory), will fall into war, where one states intends to purposefully relieve the other state from the resource they want. Some consider war to be inevitable and part of human nature, and this might as well be true if we consider that the desire or need for something may never be satisfied until obtained – meaning, there are no alternatives, and the end justifies the means. Others, however, note that just as trade is possible, cooperation is possible, and that each state has in its best interests to work together and not resort to aggression. Each of these views respond to realism and liberalism respectively.

Because war was centered around resources, the intention of the attacking state would be to preserve the resources of the state they wish to capture. For this reason, the military is and was a core aspect of the security and existence of a state, as they would be the acting body that would represent the sending state in these types of conflicts.  Skirmishes between states would be limited to the conflicts between the military forces; if the invaded state lost, the invading one would move in to capture cities, farms, etc. Civilians would not normally be affected, unless they resisted the invasion, in which case they would become an obstacle to the aggressive state (and so would need to be dealt with appropriately). In other words, it was not a goal to destroy or affect civilian life or infrastructures, but to move them from the control of one state to the other. It is worth noting, however, that violence against civilians did exist; this is usually seen as the “cost” of armies, where the violence against civilians is differentiated from being committed on the military as representatives of the state, and the military as people with agency and free will. In fact, war usually results in significant deterioration of infrastructure and the ecosystem, a decrease in social spending, famine, large-scale emigration from the war zone, and often the mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilians (Baxter, 2013). Because states accept this and rarely seek to hold those responsible accountable, and because of the disruption of civilian life, war is not merely seen as a “conflict” between states to be solved with a contest of sorts, but rather as a horrific event that should be avoided at all costs. Realists would argue that while it should be avoided it is still inevitable and therefore can only be stalled; liberals would say that, as the costs are too great, it is not inevitable if so the states wish. 

Because war has been around for almost all the history of civilization and humankind, laws have emerged on how to fight them, what is acceptable and what is not. The laws of war dictate how may states enter, behave in and exit armed conflicts, including but not limited to prisoners of war, the treatment of civilians and military personnel, the right to surrender, etc. There are two types of laws of war: jus ad bello and jus ad bellum. Jus ad bellum refers to “the conditions under which States may resort to war or to the use of armed force in the general” (ICRC, 2015), and jus ad bello to “the conduct of parties engaged in an armed conflict” (ICRC, 2015). War is a double edged sword in that while it may be of primordial importance for a state and the state’s continued existence, it is also notoriously hard and dangerous for civilian life because of the infrastructure it changes and the damages it causes, not to mention the possibility of mortal danger. This is why these two laws are kept separate: jus ad bellum makes note of the necessity for a state to defend itself and use its sovereignty (which may include armed conflict depending on the case), while jus ad bello limits the actions and types of attack a state may take during an armed conflict, seeking to protect the victims of armed conflict regardless of affiliation (Scott, 2017) (ICRC, 2015).

Total War

Despite the effect on civilian life and people’s welfare, the aims of war have not been to destroy civilian life, and instead this has been an unfortunate side effect for most of history. This changed with WWI and WWII with total war, described as “a war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded” (University of Oxford). Without any respect for the laws, and without any restriction regarding targets, war’s impact on human life becomes exacerbated beyond comparison. All forms of production and infrastructure from countries stop serving the needs of civilians, but rather the needs of the army and the military. Entire communities revolve around what the country needs: with the use of propaganda, rationing and drafting, the attention is changed from anything else into the home front, and how can or should the average person contribute. The level of national mobilization of resources on all sides of the conflict, the contested space, the scale and size of the armies, navies, and air forces raised through drafting, the active targeting of non-combatants and non-combatant property, the general disregard for collateral damage, and the unrestricted aims of the belligerents marked total war on an unprecedented and unsurpassed, multicontinental scale. This was acknowledged by heads of state, and with the experience of WWI, prepared to use all resources in the country accordingly:

“(…) There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere to be seen. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage.”

Churchill, 1940

With total war, the aim is no longer to capture and preserve resources. This type of war was made possible because of the differences in motivations and causes for war: international relationships become a more relevant and integral cause with the fall of the gold standard, the existence of multi-country alliances, the role of diplomacy, and the rise of ethnic nationalism beyond a country’s borders. When one country is in an alliance with another, the war between this country and the other will now include the ally as well. And when both sides have multiple allies, then the world gets divided into who allies with who, how does one or the other side interact with its members, resulting in a divided world where neutral parties are rare. The connections and partnerships between countries, the continued state of peace between them, allows for such alliance to emerge – or, in the right circumstances, convenience and self-interest. But in either of those, this dynamic is a more extreme version of the historic war-or-trade: alliances are formed in a bigger scale as evidence of cooperation (trade), which then translate into bigger conflicts that are born out of the sum of incorrigible offenses, ending in armed conflict (war). It differs in that both exist at the same time and are not between two countries, but many more, therefore making the impacts of war and benefits of trade (between allies) much greater.

After the world wars and the observation of all the damage caused and atrocities committed, the world joined forces to correct the failed treaties and organizations that were set up after WWI, but still allowed WWII. The motion to ‘outlaw war’ from the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Paris was adopted by the United Nations in the United Nations Charter: “The members of the Organization shall abstain, in their international relations, from resorting to the threat or use of force (…)” (UN, 2945). The laws of war, and international law in regard to hostilities, were reaffirmed and amended to protect civilians by including humanitarian law in its content (see jus ad bello), and the use of certain weapons – such as land mines, biological weapons and chemical weapons – was outlawed because of its unparalleled damage output and potential for incredible impact to civilians. The worldwide motion was to bring the perpetrators of war to justice, but also to avoid something similar from happening again. And so the Security Council, the General Assembly, and many other international bodies were created for countries to mediate and solve their conflicts without resorting to violence.

New Wars

While the widely accepted motion to ‘outlaw war’ was codified, this did not actually mean that war could not happen. In fact, all the laws of war were still preserved and formalized. It is unrealistic and untenable to truly outlaw war, as a physical confrontation is the ultimate step in the confrontation between two forces. However, it was in everyone’s best interests to avoid it, specially with the existence of weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear weapons) and with the possibility of mutually assured destruction. The lack of possibility of physical confrontation, either due to distance or law or technological limitations, meant that conflicts would manifest differently. Shortly after the end of WWII, the Cold War started between the US and the USSR, including several other countries but with these countries as the principal players. 

While we refer to the Cold War as a very particular war – the tensions between the US and USSR after WWII, ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall – there are various types and instances of conflicts revolving around tension. Cold wars are, essentially, a rise in tensions and disagreements between countries that do not end in armed conflict, instead depending on measures taken by either country to compete with, undermine or sanction the other one. In the case of the Cold War, this was seen in the arms race and the space race, where both countries stockpiled and created huge amounts of weapons as a precaution to the chance of armed conflict between each other (which did not happen, but was very close) and invested into space exploration and research programs in an attempt to weaponize it and expand their power and influence. More recently, the trade wars between the US and China are also a type of cold war, as well as the well-stablished economic sanctions between countries when in disagreement or as a form of punishment or coercion. 

In the increasing hostilities between countries, the intelligence department and agencies become extremely important for reconnaissance and assessment of the enemy as each side seeks information on their adversaries and ways to improve themselves in response to their findings. Such is the impact and importance of the intelligence community that they come immortalized in media: espionage and subterfuge are both incredibly valuable, and the source of inspiration and topics of several popular culture works, most of them inspired by war-time events. The growth of these departments was at its peak during the Cold War, as emerging technology made it easier and cheaper, but it was sustained and still growing well past the 90s.

The end of the Cold War brought optimism to the international community and propelled Fukuyama’s “End of History”, where liberal democracy is portrayed as the only viable socio-political organization. However, this was quickly shot down after the 9/11 attack on the World Trace Center in New York City by Al Qaeda, marking the start of the War on Terror. This ongoing conflict brings two new elements into warfare: first, the type of enemy and second, the surveillance state. 

Terrorism is characterized by not being bound to territory, in that the perpetrators of acts of terror are not acting on behalf of a state. Their actions also disproportionately affect civilians: while there are attacks against governments and states directly, terrorism relies on the impact of its actions to the whole country, which is mostly made of civilians (CIA, 1976). These attacks will target or be placed at public spaces or events, such as a marathon, park, street or building, which are not owned or operated by the state. They are highly destructive, using elements such as pipe bombs, car bombs and, infamously, commercial airplanes as their choice of weapons; they take advantage of and repurpose existing, widely available elements, thus improving their chances to remain undetected and amplifying the damage caused. Terrorists then becomes a complicated issue: they are not states or representing states but they are attacking the country; they are politically motivated but instead of targeting the state directly they (mostly) attack civilians; and they do not use military weapons but rather rely on using or combining consumer goods for their purpose. None of the traditional elements of war follow this threat, and states are not adequately prepared to deal with these changes. Wars and conflicts have been fought between states, not between independent groups and states. The laws of war do not apply completely either, since an independent group has no sovereignty or territory and therefore has no jus ad bellum to justify their actions.

Regarding the surveillance state, precisely because of how unprepared the world was to these attacks, the intelligence agencies made a comeback in the relevance of their work to fight the enemy. With the rise of the internet and computers, spying and reconnaissance was much easier than before, as physical presence and manipulation was no longer required to gather information. Instead, with the use of software and digital attacks, anyone with the appropriate knowledge could cause a myriad of effects on a target: spy, steal, hijack, damage, control or blackmail are some of the most common actions taken with or through digital means against a target. The NSA grew exponentially during the War on Terror, as their intelligence channels and existing research on computer security gave them leverage and incredible influence on the development of tools and connections for surveillance. Of particular interest is PRISM, a nation-wide surveillance system that collected information on any and all calls done in the US or abroad, including information on the caller, receiver, time, location, carrier and identity of the parties involved (Greenwald, 2015). The noteworthy and concerning element of the rise of the surveillance state is not its capacity – it is, after all, very important to know the enemy and what they are capable of – but rather its use against friendlies. The reasoning behind PRISM was that the NSA needed to know any and every call to determine the movements and communication of terrorists (Greenwald, 2015). One has to doubt, however, how effective this could really be when the amount of communications between terrorists would be several degrees of magnitude smaller than the communications of all citizens, residents and visitors to the US combined, and that the action of parsing all this huge amount of information for what they are actually looking for would be a waste of resources as a result. This program, as well as several others, got hastily approved in wake of the War on Terror, without giving proper thought or care to identify enemies first. However unfortunate, their actions make sense: they did not know how to identify their enemies.

Just as surveillance is possible because of network connections, so is the surveilled element, recruitment and communications between terrorist groups. Groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram grow their numbers through their online campaigns, where they dedicate websites to their ideology and ways to ‘join the fight’. While a significant part of their recruitment is still presential – meaning, they travel and try to recruit people or force them to join with threats – a significant number of  members are drafted from places where they have no access to by having members in social media talking to people who they perceive might be convinced. This is also the attributed reason of why the alt-right movement and Nazism grew in the past years: by exploiting the recommendation software of several media sharing websites and showing vulnerable or impressionable people videos and content with the ideology they seek to share in order to normalize it.

Connectedness

The War on Terror used the internet as a means to an end (surveillance), but did not make much more use of it beyond that. This was possible because of the networks that power the internet: all computers are accessible between each other, at any given time, when they are connected to the internet. This always-on model has driven society and the economy into new territories, amongst them the great benefit of not being limited by a physical space: long distance communication, viable entirely digital products, digital currencies, and new methods of interacting with the physical world and its infrastructure are some of the most relevant elements possible through the internet. As the digital world evolved and the economy with it, the software that powered the world did not keep up with the new types of threats that accompanied its new uses. A computer existing alone, disconnected, would only face interactions with its intended user, who would use it as intended. When it is connected to another (or more), this opens the use of the computer by other parties, who might not care or want to use it as intended, instead having their own interests in mind. A disconnected insecure computer technically exists in a void, and so is in no danger. An insecure computer that is connected is exposed, therefore at the mercy of those who can access it. When a malicious and sufficiently motivated party wishes to use this computer for their own purposes (malicious or otherwise), it will be possible if no safeguards are in place, to the detriment of the intended user. The dangers of the insecurity of software and hardware are most prominent in the systems that support core infrastructure or services. Several systems that are integral of modern civilian life – such as banks and payment options, power grids, water purification and distribution, hospitals – were all augmented with computing and are now at some point controlled or managed by computers; their relevance and importance makes them hard to replace or update, and so are often vastly outdated in comparison to new technological advances (Brasso, 2016).

It is common for cyber crime to be committed by independent parties, either one person seeking to cause damage or a group whose goal and resources give them greater reach. This is not unlike normal crime, where crimes of various types are committed by one person, a gang, or with partners. However, where crime has different variations and classifications depending on the impact, means of being carried out and motivation, cyber crime does not always benefit from such distinction. Some argue that this distinction is unnecessary, as the only characteristic that matters is how it was carried out, which is a digital attack. Others, however, note differences similar to normal crime in its intention, scale, motivation, and impact. In this differentiation arise various definitions: cyberbullying, internet fraud, cyberterrorism, phishing, cyberstalking, cyberwarfare, cyberextortion, etc. (Halder & Jaishankar, 2011) (Parker, 1983). While most of these relate to crimes in the local sense, two of these stand out by their political implications, cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare (Barak & Rustici, 2018).

The assessment of the potential of digital tools to propel political aims began in 1969, with an internal report of the US on communist countries’ computer capacities (CIA, 1969). The reach, dependence and capacity of computers in that decade was not nearly as great as it is now, but it serves to show how great of a concern it was for officials and how they saw the impacts it could have. Fast forward to 30 years later, where the computer capacities of nations are important in their economy, infrastructure, and political reach (Barak & Rustici, 2018). The amount of cyber attacks has increased exponentially since the 1990s, tied to the explosive growth of the dependence of technology. While at first most of the attacks were ‘low crimes’ or economically motivated – such as stealing from a bank, or hijacking a computer and forcing a person to pay the hacker – cyber attacks started to take a political tone and much greater impact when they started to be condoned or performed by nation states. As a growing threat, several states have active cyber operation teams for offensive and defensive capacities, including but not limited to the US, UK, Russia, India, China, Israel, Iran and North Korea. There have been several incidents where an attack has had material effects – such as the Stuxnet attacks in 2010 from the US to Iran, and Russia’s NotPetya towards Ukraine during the 2014 Crimea occupation (Greenberg, 2018) – and so there is rising credible threat to the cyberwarfare capacities of adversaries, leading states to invest and care more for their cyber operation teams. 

All these wars and technological advancements culminate in information warfare, a new type of war that uses multiple types of attacks with the intention of gaining superiority over an adversary. It involves the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology by manipulating the information trusted by the target without the target’s knowledge, making it so that they make decisions that benefit the attacker and are against their own interests, being none the wiser. As it relies heavily on manipulation and subterfuge, information warfare has no clear beginning or end, not is it evident at first sight how destructive or effective it might be (Jerome, 1989). Because it depends on the target believing the information fed into them, it also relates heavily to psychological warfare (Kiyuna & Conyers, 2015), using propaganda, demoralization, manipulation, disinformation, among others to achieve this end. 

Information warfare culminates all the points that make previous wars anomalous. It does not respond to resource control, differentiating from traditional wars; it has a disproportionate effect in civilian and non-combatants and society as a whole, it has the public as the manipulation target, and the effect to civilians can be compared to total war albeit without the lethality; it does not resort to physical confrontation but instead relies on alternative methods to ‘one-up’ their adversary and create tensions as a result; it can and has been performed by non-state actors that are not bound by nationality, with or without the sponsoring of another state, as well as by state themselves. Just as each new war was an evolution from the previous one in response to changes in the international environment, this is as well the next step in the types of warfare, international conflicts and interstate relationships.

On May 5, 2019, the Israel Defense Force launched an airstrike to a building in Gaza. With the ongoing Palestinian-Israel conflict, such military actions are not unheard of and are more commonplace than many would like. What differentiates this airstrike from the preceding ones is the cause: alleging a cyber attack from Hamas, the ruling paramilitary political group in Gaza, Israel attacked a building in an urban area with the pretense of eliminating the cyber operation capacities of their adversaries. The attack leveled the building, killed at least 31 people, and wounded more than a hundred. The IDF said that Hamas attacked Israel with a cyber attack designed to “[harm] the quality of life of Israeli citizens” (Gross, 2019), that the attack was not sophisticated and that it was quickly stopped, alleging that this attack came from the attacked building. This is the first time in history that a “digital attack has been retaliated against with a physical response in real time” (Liptak, 2019), and remains controversial not only in nature (kinetic response to digital attack) but also in the proportionality of the retaliation. This is better explained in the nature of the conflict: Israel sees Palestine’s attempt of independent an attack to Israel’s sovereignty, as the land of Palestine would no longer be of Israel. 

It comes full circle, then, from wars over resources, to total war, to cold war, to non-state actor’s involvement in war, to information war, to war over resources once again. While the Israel attack is not necessarily representative of the future of information warfare or warfare in general, it is noteworthy nonetheless, and exemplifies how despite all the changes in the way it is fought, the types of conflicts and how they manifest, war is still war and allows for destruction, no matter the target, perpetrator or means of attack. The changes in the way warfare and international conflicts manifest are a direct consequence of the changes in international relationships, treaties, covenants and organizations that aim to make the world a better place: banning war will not outlaw war, it will outlaw the way that war has been fought to that point. It is only natural that the conflicts, and the way they are solved or responded to, will change as a result.

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