Book Description

This ambitious work which took the better part of a decade to produce will be essential reading for all serious defence study students, and of absorbing interest to military professionals and lay people concerned with the future of warfare and all aspects of response to military attack.Its ultimate aim is to demonstrate that the advent of Cyberwarfare has pushed traditional legal thinking regarding the regulation of forcible action beyond traditional boundaries. It attempts to do so by critically analyzing specific characteristics which are inherent to Cyberwarfare such as stealth, speed, untraceability, the availability to State as well as Non-State sponsored agents, their defiance of traditional borders, and an unprecedented potential for destruction, all of which have played a major role in making obsolescent traditional legal norms relied upon for the effective regulation of the use of force. It follows from the above that no defence system can be effectively regulated, especially one as new and unconventional as Information Warfare, unless all its specific aspects are explored as deeply as possible. The best means to achieve such a purpose have been deemed to be through the inclusion as well as the careful analysis of as many real life examples of Information Warfare operations as possible in order to illustrate the special nature of Information Warfare and its various individual features. The examples compiled for inclusion have been selected not on the basis of being the most recent, but on the basis of their factual background being as fully known as possible. Consequently, this book has been constructed around the concept of legality, starting with a section outlining currently existing legal norms of individual self-defense, then applying those norms to Information Warfare Operations including a presentation of existing international legal instruments with provisions applicable to Information Warfare which could serve as additional essential guidelines for a future legal framework specifically crafted to regulate the use of force in cyberspace. Last but not least this book sets a paradigm with regard to Cyberwarfare as well as with other methods of warfare which escape the boundaries of the traditional State monopoly of the use of force. It ultimately shows the extent to which traditional legal thinking, which is shaped around the premise of regulating typical forms of State forcible action, when faced with such methods of warfare is totally obsolete.