THE MORAL PERMISSIBILITY OF AUTOMATED RESPONSES DURING CYBERWARFARE

Automated responses are an inevitable aspect of cyberwarfare, but there has not been a systematic treatment of the conditions in which they are morally permissible. We argue that there are three substantial barriers to the moral permissibility of an automated response: the attribution, chain reaction, and projection bias problems. Moreover, these three challenges together provide a set of operational tests that can be used to assess the moral permissibility of a particular automated response in a specific situation. Defensive automated responses will almost always pass all three challenges, while offensive automated responses typically face a substantial positive burden in order to overcome the chain reaction and projection bias challenges. Perhaps the most interesting cases arise in the middle ground between cyber-offense and cyber-defense, such as automated cyber-exploitation responses. In those situations, much depends on the finer details of the response, the context, and the adversary. Importantly, however, the operationalizations of the three challenges provide a clear guide for decision-makers to assess the moral permissibility of automated responses that could potentially be implemented.     

Countering global insurgency

This article suggests that the War on Terrorism is actually a campaign against a globalized Islamist 1 1 In this article, the term ‘Islamist’ describes the extremist, radical form of political Islam practiced by some militant groups, as distinct from ‘Islamic’, which describes the religion of Islam, or ‘Muslim’, which describes those who follow the Islamic religion. In this article the term is used to refer primarily to Al Qaeda, its allies and affiliates. View all notes insurgency. Therefore, counterinsurgency approaches are more relevant to the present conflict than traditional terrorism theory. Indeed, a counterinsurgency approach would generate subtly, but substantially different, policy choices in prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda. Based on this analysis, the article proposes a strategy of ‘disaggregation’ that seeks to dismantle, or break, the links in the global jihad.2 2 This article uses the short form of the Islamic term jihad to mean ‘lesser jihad’ (armed struggle against unbelievers), rather than ‘greater jihad’ (jihad fi sabilillah), i.e. moral struggle for the righteousness of God. View all notes Like containment in the Cold War, disaggregation would provide a unifying strategic conception for the war – a conception that has been somewhat lacking to date.     

Past as prologue: USMC small wars doctrine

Africa is arguably the most important regional setting for United Nations peacekeeping challenges. In the 1990s, extensive efforts have been made by the United Nations in the fleld of peacekeeping with the speciflc aim of reducing the levels of conflicts on the continent. Another significant development relates to the fact that organisations in Africa have started to feature as important peacekeeping instruments in recent years as it is increasingly being accepted that there is a need for such institutions to take care of their own security requirements. However, a key issue at stake is the need to achieve greater consistency with regard to third-party intervention in African conflicts. A look at the more glaring examples of multinational operations in the name of peace and security gives a sense of the magnitude and difficulties often experienced during such endeavours. In addition, both past and current operations have brought to light certain perspectives and lessons that require careful analysis and study. In this article, an overview is given of some of the perils and challenges associated with multinational operations in the realm of peace and security. Specifically, the focus is on Africa and on key issues and challenges regarding the strategic and operational management of such operations in view of the need to consider a more integrated approach towards multinational operations in support of peace and security in Africa.     

France and the Gulf War of 1990–1991: Political‐military lessons learned

Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War 1914–1918. Boston and London: Allen &; Unwin, 1985. Pp.x + 286; £20.00.

Keith Jeffery, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire 1918–1922. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. Pp.viii + 200; £21.00.

Carlo D'Este, Decision in Normandy. London: Pan Books in association with Collins, 1984. Pp.xii + 555; £3.95.

R. J. Overy, Goering: The ‘Iron Man’, London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1984. Pp. x + 310; bibliography; index; £14.95.

John Barron, KGB: The Hidden Hand. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1983. Pp.489. $15.95.

Edward Van Der Rhoer, The Shadow Network: Espionage as an Instrument of Soviet Policy, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. Pp.359. $19.95.

David Holloway and Jane M. O. Sharp (eds.), The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition? London: Macmillan Press, 1984. Pp.290; £25.

A. Ross Johnson, Robert W. Dean and Alexander Alexiev, East European Military Establishments: The Warsaw Pact Northern Tier. New York: Crane, Russak, 1982. Pp.xiii + 182; $19.50.

Condoleezza Rice, The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983: Uncertain Allegiance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp.xiv + 303; £40.40.

Trevor Taylor, European Defence Cooperation (Chatham House Papers, No. 24). London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul for RIIA, 1984. Pp.97; £4.95.

Phil Williams, US Troops in Europe (Chatham House Papers, No. 25). London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul for RIIA, 1984. Pp.87; £5.95.

Daniel Frei, Assumptions and Perceptions in Disarmament. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1984. Pp.xiv + 321; NP.

Joseph Rotblat and Alessandro Pascolini (eds.), The Arms Race at a Time of Decision, Annals of Pugwash 1983. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984. Pp.xxiv + 291; £20 (hardback) and £7.95 (paperback).

Philip H. Frankel, Pretoria's Praetorians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. xx + 215; £23.50.

Brian May, Russia, America, the Bomb and the Fall of Western Europe. London: Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1984. Pp.vii + 248. £11.95.

Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984. Pp.203; $19.95.     

Political Scientists and Historians in Search of the Bomb

Britain's failure to cut military commitments in spite of escalating defence costs was not the result of blocking policies by disgruntled services. Rather, there was no determination among Whitehall's political departments to cut commitments even before the service departments could obstruct a decision on force levels. The Conservative governments under Macmillan and Douglas‐Home showed a propensity for substantial force reductions in Europe rather than in out‐of NATO areas. This remained London's long‐term aim even after it had been accepted to build up British troops in Europe to agreed force levels. During Alec Douglas‐Home's premiership Britain's global military role, especially east of Suez, gained a greater significance. An Anglo‐American military axis operating in the Far East and the Indian Ocean became a prominent feature. Ultimately, Anglo‐American military interdependence outside NATO was to ensure that Britain would be able to pursue a policy with more room for independent action.     

Non-lethal weapons and the long tail of warfare

This paper examines whether non-lethal weapons (NLWs) enhance the capability of the US armed forces to conduct irregular warfare (IW) operations. With expectations that the operational environment will only continue to become more complex in the future, NLWs may reduce the level of violence received, as well as dispensed, by US forces while performing tasks in the IW spectrum. We argue that NLWs increase the ability of US forces to address the long tail of warfare and their deployment should be increased in the near term.     

Waypoint analysis for command and control

Command and Control (C2) in a military setting can be epitomized in battles‐of‐old when commanders would seek high ground to gain superior spatial‐temporal information; from this vantage point, decisions were made and relayed to units in the field. Although the fundamentals remain, technology has changed the practice of C2; for example, enemy units may be observed remotely, with instruments of varying positional accuracy. A basic problem in C2 is the ability to track an enemy object in the battlespace and to forecast its future position; the (extended) Kalman filter provides a straightforward solution. The problem changes fundamentally if one assumes that the moving object is headed for an (unknown) location, or waypoint. This article is concerned with the new problem of estimation of such a waypoint, for which we use Bayesian statistical prediction. The computational burden is greater than an ad hoc regression‐based estimate, which we also develop, but the Bayesian approach has a big advantage in that it yields both a predictor and a measure of its variability. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004