International Law How It Affects Rules Of Engagement And Responses In Information Warfare

The importance of reliable, timely information to the success of military operations, while precluding an adversary from accessing information, has been known since wars began. Today, a combination of electronic devices, such as computers and sensors, are creating an "information age" that redefines how we conduct military operations. A major challenge to decision makers and military leaders is to understand the impact of international laws in the information age and its influence on rules of engagement (ROE), and response development. By all accounts, our dependence on information and information systems will continue to grow along with technological advances, enhancing our own command, control, communications, computer, and information capabilities, while also increasing our vulnerabilities. As a result, a key issue our decision makers and military leaders must be aware of concerns the legal considerations in using IW and in responding to IW threats and attacks. Developers of our ROE must provide the guidance for legally, appropriately responding to IW attacks, while ensuring the right to self-defense. Our leaders must also devise appropriate response options against foreign powers conducting IW operations against the US. We must base responses on the level of threat to our national interests, while considering intent, international law, and elements such as proportionality and necessity inherent in the Law of Armed Conflict.

Achieving the full revolutionary impact of information warfare requires distinguishing the methods of information attack from other forms of warfare on policy and legal grounds. Information attack represents a revolutionary new form of warfare from a legal perspective because it allows a severe effect, and therefore intense coercion, to occur with little or no violence and little traditional destruction.

An analysis of the status of computer network attacks in international law.

The book systematically analyses the relationship and interaction between rules of engagement (ROE) and the legal framework regulating armed conflicts, both at the international and national levels. At the international level, the relationship between ROE and human rights law and international humanitarian law is explored. At the national level, the book relates ROE to (comparative) criminal law. A separate chapter analyses the complex relationship between self-defence law and rules of engagement. It is the first monograph to comprehensively examine these issues and to analyse how ROE interact with the various sources of the (international) law of military operations, both in terms of the law as a source for these rules and how the law is reflected and implemented through them. In doing so, and based on the author's own experience, the book provides examples of how complicated, often controversial issues of law can be resolved while keeping the rules understandable at all levels of military operations. Aimed at both scholars and practitioners, the book provides a bridge between the academic world and the operational world. It provides new insights for both of those audiences in terms of understanding how the law applies to - and through - the rules on the use of force for military operations.

Cyber weapons and cyber warfare have become one of the most dangerous innovations of recent years, and a significant threat to national security. Cyber weapons can imperil economic, political, and military systems by a single act, or by multifaceted orders of effect, with wide-ranging potential consequences. Unlike past forms of warfare circumscribed by centuries of just war tradition and Law of Armed Conflict prohibitions, cyber warfare occupies a particularly ambiguous status in the conventions of the laws of war. Furthermore, cyber attacks put immense pressure on conventional notions of sovereignty, and the moral and legal doctrines that were developed to regulate them. This book, written by an unrivalled set of experts, assists in proactively addressing the ethical and legal issues that surround cyber warfare by considering, first, whether the Laws of Armed Conflict apply to cyberspace just as they do to traditional warfare, and second, the ethical position of cyber warfare against the background of our generally recognized moral traditions in armed conflict. The book explores these moral and legal issues in three categories. First, it addresses foundational questions regarding cyber attacks. What are they and what does it mean to talk about a cyber war? The book presents alternative views concerning whether the laws of war should apply, or whether transnational criminal law or some other peacetime framework is more appropriate, or if there is a tipping point that enables the laws of war to be used. Secondly, it examines the key principles of jus in bello to determine how they might be applied to cyber-conflicts, in particular those of proportionality and necessity. It also investigates the distinction between civilian and combatant in this context, and studies the level of causation necessary to elicit a response, looking at the notion of a 'proximate cause'. Finally, it analyses the specific operational realities implicated by particular regulatory regimes. This book is unmissable reading for anyone interested in the impact of cyber warfare on international law and the laws of war.

Based on best-practice rules of global importance, this handbook offers authoritative commentary and analysis of the international law of military operations, encompassing self-defence, peace operations, and other uses of force.

The protection of civilians which has been at the forefront of international discourse during recent years is explored through harnessing perspective from international law and international relations. Presenting the realities of diplomacy and mandate implementation in academic discourse.

Modern technological development has been both rapid and fundamentally transformative of the means and methods of warfare, and of the broader environment in which warfare is conducted. In many cases, technological development has been stimulated by, and dedicated to, addressing military requirements. On other occasions, technological developments outside the military sphere affect or inform the conduct of warfare and military expectations. The introduction of new technologies such as information technology, space technologies, nanotechnology and robotic technologies into our civil life, and into warfare, is expected to influence the application and interpretation of the existing rules of the law of armed conflict. In this book, scholars and practitioners working in the fields critically examine the potential legal challenges arising from the use of new technologies and future directions of legal development in light of the specific characteristics and challenges each technology presents with regard to foreseeable humanitarian impacts upon the battlespace.