自动化武器的发展及对未来战争的影响

在信息技术和生命技术革命的双重影响下，人工智能发展突飞猛进，剧烈改变着现代军事技术发展方向。战争形态由信息化逐步向智能化转变。自动化武器作为智能化装备重要的组成部分，其发展经历了三级进阶，愈发趋向人机一体和全自主化方向改变。这种发展趋势对引领未来战争产生重要而深远的影响。伴随着武器无人化、智能化、自主化的发展趋向，如何有效研发、利用、管控自动化武器成为未来无人化战争的重要议题。同时世界各国对自动化武器的研发部署也加剧了国际军控的紧张，特别是致命性自主武器的出现将有可能对战争伦理和法律构成前所未有的挑战，这将成为国际社会必须认真审视的问题。     

The ‘first’ surge: the repulse of the Easter Invasion in South Vietnam, 1972 – implications for Iraq and Afghanistan

In a military intervention, do surges work? I compare the failed ‘surge’ in Vietnam, the repulse of the Easter Invasion in 1972, as a means of assessing the more ambiguous surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. I identify four features of a surge for this analysis: the military dimensions and strategy of the surging forces, the military capabilities of the host forces, the political vitality and will of the host country, and the political commitment in the domestic politics of the intervener. I find that the last feature is the most critical; and, in all three surges, the American political commitment was lacking.     

Surrogate warfare: the art of war in the 21st century?

Airpower, drones and cyber-weapons are employed by states in conjunction with local armed non-state actors in an effort to coercively intervene in the crises of the twenty-first century. While the externalization of the burden of warfare is a return to pre-modern war, it is the change in the underlying socio-political relations between the state and its military agent that is a novel phenomenon in surrogate warfare. This article demonstrates that in a post-Westphalian era characterized by non-state violence, globalized conflicts, a prioritization of risk management in a mediatized environment, the state has to explore new ways to remain relevant as the primary communal security provider. Thereby, the organization of violence has departed from the employment of the state’s soldier as the primary bearer of the burden of warfare to a mode of war where technological and human surrogates enable the state to manage the risks of post-modern conflict remotely. In this article, we conceptually explore surrogate warfare as a socio-political phenomenon within the context of globalized, privatized, securitized and mediatized war.