Modelling the Influential Factors Embedded in the Proportionality Assessment in Military Operations

The ongoing decade was believed to be a peaceful one. However, contemporary conflicts, and in particular, ongoing wars prove the opposite as they show the increase in context complexity when defining their goals as well as execution strategies for building means and methods for achieving them by gaining advantage against their adversaries through the engagement of well-established targets. At the core of the engagement decision relies the principle of proportionality which brings in a direct relation the expected unintended effects on civilian side with the anticipated intended effects on military side. While the clusters of effects involved in the proportionality assessment are clear, the process itself is subjective, governed by different dimensions of uncertainty, and represents the responsibility of military Commanders. Thus, a complex socio-technical process where different clusters of influential factors (e.g., military, technical, socio-ethical) play a role in the decisions made. Having said that, the objective of this research is to capture and cluster these factors, and further to model their influence in the proportionality decision-making process. This decision support system produces military targeting awareness to the agents involved in the processes of building, executing, and assessing military operations. To accomplish the aim of this research, a Design Science Research methodological approach is taken for capturing and modelling the influential factors as a socio-technical artefact in the form of a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model. The model proposed is further evaluated through demonstration on three different cases in respect to real military operations incidents and scenarios existing in the scientific literature in this research field. Hence, through this demonstration, it is illustrated and interpreted how the factors identified influence proportionality decisions when assessing target engagement as being proportional or disproportional. In these cases, corresponding measures for strengthening proportionality and reducing disproportionality in military operations are considered.Modelling the Influential Factors Embedded in the Proportionality Assessment in Military OperationspublishedVersio

Coming to a Battlefield Near You: Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, & Machine Learning’s Impact on Proportionality

Coming to a Battlefield Near You: Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, & Machine Learning’s Impact on Proportionalit

Combat Losses of Nuclear-Powered Warships: Contamination, Collateral Damage and the Law

There have been non-combat losses of nuclear-powered warships during sea trials and peacetime patrol missions. Nuclear contamination is spreading from some of these sinking sites. It is also conceivable that combat losses of nuclear-powered warships could cause contamination of civilians, civilian objects and the natural environment. If such combat losses occur at sea, both belligerent and neutral States will have to deal with a difficult question: to what extent and by who can harm resulting from such contamination be compensated for payment of damages. This article examines legal issues stemming from prospective combat losses of nuclear-powered warships from the perspectives of the laws of armed conflict and neutrality at sea. More specifically, it attempts to dissect whether nuclear contamination incidentally caused to civilians, civilian objects and the natural environment during international armed conflict can be properly categorized as collateral damage as envisaged by the laws of armed conflict and neutrality at sea, the lawfulness of which is assessed following the principle of proportionality

Applying the Principle of Proportionality to the War on Terror

This paper aims to discuss and apply the principle of proportionality (PoP) to the War on Terror (WoT). For this, vital characteristics and conditions of the PoP will be discussed in great detail. The paper argues that notions of the “just cause,” the “reasonable hope of success,” and the “requirement of the last resort” are incorporated within the PoP. This paper also defines how the harm caused by military actions is weighed against the direct military advantage to arrive at conclusions on the proportionality or disproportionality of an attack. After discussing the theoretical grounds of the PoP, this paper tries to apply the PoP to the WoT, most particularly in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. This paper is an attempt to calculate the damage caused by the direct or reverberating effects of these wars, by considering the costs casualties, and effects of these wars on terrorism, to check their efficacy and achievements against their military objectives. This paper concludes that the destruction caused by these wars greatly outweighs the military advantages they have achieved. For instance, several countries have been destabilized and destroyed. Millions of people have been killed and millions more have been displaced. The infrastructure and the economies of these countries have been devastated. As regime change agendas have been pursued, rebels have been given arms and support to fight their own states. All of these have contributed to the rise of destabilization, violence, and terrorism in these regions, which exceeds the military objectives. These wars have been proven to be inefficient and counterproductive. The military objective of the WoT was to decrease terrorism but terrorism has significantly increased, which was reasonably foreseeable owing to past experiences. Therefore, this paper concludes that these wars can be considered disproportionate to their direct military advantage

Autonomous Cyber Capabilities Below and Above the Use of Force Threshold: Balancing Proportionality and the Need for Speed

Protecting the cyber domain requires speedy responses. Mustering that speed will be a task reserved for autonomous cyber agents—software that chooses particular actions without prior human approval. Unfortunately, autonomous agents also suffer from marked deficits, including bias, unintelligibility, and a lack of contextual judgment. Those deficits pose serious challenges for compliance with international law principles such as proportionality. In the jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and the law of countermeasures, compliance with proportionality reduces harm and the risk of escalation. Autonomous agent flaws will impair their ability to make the fine-grained decisions that proportionality entails. However, a broad prohibition on deployment of autonomous agents is not an adequate answer to autonomy’s deficits. Unduly burdening victim states’ responses to the use of force, the conduct of armed conflict, and breaches of the non-intervention principle will cede the initiative to first movers that violate international law. Stability requires a balance that acknowledges the need for speed in victim state responses while ensuring that those responses remain within reasonable bounds. The approach taken in this Article seeks to accomplish that goal by requiring victim states to observe feasible precautions in the use of force and countermeasures, as well as the conduct of armed conflict. Those precautions are reconnaissance, coordination, repair, and review. Reconnaissance entails efforts to map an adversary’s network in advance of any incursion by that adversary. Coordination requires the interaction of multiple systems, including one or more that will keep watch on the primary agent. A victim state must also assist through provision of patches and other repairs of third-party states’ networks. Finally, planners must regularly review autonomous agents’ performance and make modifications where appropriate. These precautions will not ensure compliance with the principle of proportionality for all autonomous cyber agents. But they will both promote compliance and provide victim states with a limited safe harbor: a reasonable margin of appreciation for effects that would otherwise violate the duty of proportionality. That balance will preserve stability in the cyber domain and international law

Deterring Malicious Behavior in Cyberspace

Recent incidents reveal cyberattacks are being employed and honed in a systematic, coordinated fashion to achieve the objectives of malicious actors. Deterrence of the wide array of actors in cyberspace is difficult, since deterrence has to work in the mind of the attacker. Each attacker will weigh the effort of the attack against the expected benefit under their own criteria or rationality. This article analyzes whether the contemporary and complementary deterrence strategies of retaliation, denial, and entanglement are sufficient to deter malicious cyber actors or if the alternative of active cyberdefense is necessary and viable

Cyber Analogies

This anthology of cyber analogies will resonate with readers whose duties call for them to set strategies to protect the virtual domain and determine the policies that govern it. Our belief is that learning is most effective when concepts under consideration can be aligned with already-existing understanding or knowledge. Cyber issues are inherently tough to explain in layman's terms. The future is always open and undetermined, and the numbers of actors and the complexity of their relations are too great to give definitive guidance about future developments. In this respect, historical analogies, carefully developed and properly applied, help indicate a direction for action by reducing complexity and making the future at least cognately manageable.US Cyber CommandIntroduction: Emily O. Goldman & John Arquilla; The Cyber Pearl Harbor:James J. Wirtz: Applying the Historical Lessons of Surprise Attack to the Cyber Domain: The Example of the United Kingdom:Dr Michael S. Goodman: The Cyber Pearl Harbor Analogy: An Attacker’s Perspective: Emily O. Goldman, John Surdu, & Michael Warner: “When the Urgency of Time and Circumstances Clearly Does Not Permit...”: Redelegation in Nuclear and Cyber Scenarios: Peter Feaver & Kenneth Geers; Comparing Airpower and Cyberpower: Dr. Gregory Rattray: Active Cyber Defense: Applying Air Defense to the Cyber Domain: Dorothy E. Denning & Bradley J. Strawser: The Strategy of Economic Warfare: A Historical Case Study and Possible Analogy to: Contemporary Cyber Warfare: Nicholas A. Lambert: Silicon Valley: Metaphor for Cybersecurity, Key to Understanding Innovation War: John Kao: The Offense-Defense Balance and Cyber Warfare: Keir Lieber: A Repertory of Cyber Analogies: Robert Axelro

Negative Multiplicity: Forecasting the Future Impact of Emerging Technologies on International Stability and Human Security

We asked 30 experts to forecast the developmental trajectories of twelve emerging technologies in the United States, Russia, and China until 2040 and to score their possible future impact on arms race stability, crisis stability, and humanitarian principles. The results reveal that, on average, their impact is expected to be negative, with some technologies negatively affecting all three dependent variables. We used a machine learning algorithm to cluster the technologies according to their anticipated impact. This process identified technology clusters comprised of diverse high-impact technologies that share key impact characteristics but do not necessarily share technical characteristics. We refer to these combined effects as ‘negative multiplicity’, reflecting the predominantly negative, concurrent, and in some cases similar, first- and second-order effects that emerging technologies are expected to have on international stability and human security. The expected alignment of the technology development trajectories of the United States, Russia, and China by 2040, in combination with the negative environment created by geopolitical competition, points to a nascent technological arms race that threatens to seriously impede international arms control efforts to regulate emerging technologies