driving civilization forward, then imperiling it. A natural ambivalence

toward war has thus developed, with its acceptance as a necessary

evil tempered by vigorous, sustained efforts to control its frequency

and intensity. Thus, from the dawn of the recorded history of

conflict, attempts have been made to craft an ethical approach to

war. They break down into two categories: a set of guidelines

regarding going to war at all and a set of strictures by which

combatants, should they adhere to them, might fight during a war in

a just manner. These dimensions of the ethical approach to war

have received searching scrutiny. In this early period of the

information age, the time has come to revisit these ethical concepts,

as new forms of conflict are emerging to test existing understanding

of "just wars"—much as advanced information technologies are

already requiring a rethinking of a wide range of commercial and

criminal laws.

Another reason to devote some attention to ethical issues and future

conflict is that, in the mountainous sea of literature on information

warfare, little attention has been given thus far to its ethical

a multifaceted concept—in Martin Libicki’s phrase, "a mosaic of

forms." (Libicki, 1996, p. 6.) Information warfare is a concept that

ranges from the use of cyberspace to attack communication nodes

and infrastructures to the use of information media in the service of

psychological influence techniques. Because it constitutes such a

variety of conflict modes, information warfare poses problems for

those who seek out ethical guidelines for its waging.

This subject is of importance to Americans, from civilian and military

leaders to the mass public. Information warfare, as it evolves, is

demonstrating a growing disruptive capacity, both against classic

military command and control nodes and against many elements of

the national information infrastructure. Quite simply, the United

States, whose society has grown dependent upon advanced information

technologies, has the most to lose from a wide-ranging

information war—and thus has an interest in preventing its outbreak.

A well-informed ethical approach to the burgeoning problem

of information warfare may even demonstrate that it is possible, in

this case, to do good and to do well. Indeed, an ethical approach to

conflict in the information realm may swiftly prove as practically

useful and valuable—even when the opponent is a nonstate criminal

or terrorist organization—as it is morally desirable.

This chapter draws from historical notions of ethics and war and

applies them to the phenomenon of information warfare. First, the

key concepts of just war theory are explained, and a functional definition

of information warfare is developed. Next, the various ethical

formulations are appraised in light of information-age effects on the

conduct of warfare. Last, insights are drawn from this analysis, and

A remarkable consistency characterizes thinking about just wars,

from ancient to modern times. Thus, nearly three millennia ago,

concerns were advanced about the need for an ethical approach to

going to war, as well as to waging war. For example, the ancient

Greek geographer, Strabo, observed that, in the War of the Lelantine

Plain (circa 700 BCE), all parties agreed to ban the use of "projectile

missiles" because they constituted an ethically repugnant form of

war. The Greeks were also concerned about honoring treaties and

conventions and about avoiding undue brutality. (Ober, 1994.)

oped in the Middle Ages, which still dominates thinking about ethics

The key concepts of just war theory fall into the categories of criteria

for going to war (jus ad bellum) and fighting justly during war (jus in

bello):

Tenets of Just War (Jus ad Bellum)

A. Right Purpose. Justifiable reasons for going to war revolve

around the concept of self-defense. Notions of right purpose

generally include such ideas as preemption (i.e., striking in

anticipation of an oncoming attack), but are less open to the

idea that preventive war (i.e., striking at a propitious time) is

annexation.

B. Duly Constituted Authority. It is clear from all the literature

on ethics and war that a necessary condition for having a just

war is that the decision to fight must come from a government

—not from an individual. Wars waged by individuals

have always fallen outside the law, the best example being

provided by 19th-century prohibitions on the practice of private

wars, or "filibusters," as they were then known.

C. Last Resort. Simply put, war cannot be considered just

unless it follows exhaustive pursuit of negotiations and other

means of conflict resolution. A good example of this is given

in Thucydides’ depiction of the extended crisis-bargaining

between Athens and Sparta as both sides sought in vain to

the Gulf War sounded many echoes of these ancient events.

Concepts of Just Warfighting (Jus in Bello)

D. Noncombatant Immunity. Wherever and whenever possible,

according to just war theory, those waging the war must

strive to avoid harming civilians or enemy troops that have

surrendered. Fleeing troops that have no ability to fight (e.g.,

the Iraqi troops retreating along the "highway of death") fall

into a gray area ethically, attacks upon them being

bombing and, later, nuclear war, have posed problems for

the notion of noncombatant immunity that remain

unresolved. One attempt to cope with this was by

considering air and nuclear attacks on strategic targets as

permissible, with civilian losses treated as "collateral."

First, and best known, is the issue of using force in a manner

avoiding excessive application. A second facet, though,

might be that this concept requires ensuring that a sufficient

proportion of one’s forces, relative to the adversary, are

employed, so as to enhance the probability of winning. Thus

there is a built-in tension between the need for "enough,"

but not "too much," force. Finally, the term is often used to

F. More Good Than Harm. This is a concept from the Thomist

paradigm. This notion implies, of warfighting, that ethical

conduct requires calculation of the net good to be achieved

by a particular use of force. An example of such a calculation,

though clouded by violation of notions of noncombatant

immunity, is Truman’s decision to drop the atomic

bomb on Hiroshima to avoid a more costly conventional

invasion of Japan.

As one considers these ethical constructs, it appears that ideas about

the second broad category, just warfighting, might also form part of

the calculations for going to war in the first place. Thus, they should

all be seen as interrelated aspects of just war theory. However, from

an ethical perspective, it seems clear that responding to the ad bellum

factors must be considered a primary duty of those who would

make decisions about war and peace. The in bello factors, while

related to decisions regarding conflict initiation, should be seen, in

ethical terms, as lying within the realm of decisionmakers’ secondary

The six facets described above cover most of the conceptual ground,

and they should allow for analysis of any latent tensions between

duty- and utility-based ethics; the potential for escalation from

information warfare to conventional, or even nuclear, war; and the

now, though, is to consider how this multidimensional definition of

To consider the ethical dimensions of information warfare, it is first

crucial that the phenomenon be classifiable as a true form of war, as

opposed to being just a manifestation of criminal or terrorist activity

—or an extension of covert psychological operations or intelligence-

oriented activities. With this in mind, it is useful to note that,

in the several years since the introduction of information warfare,

the concept has evolved and broadened to include activities that,

while information-driven, are not considered warfare and therefore

do not invoke the ethical concepts of just war theory.

To separate these two classes of activities, a broad view has emerged,

in which the term information operations refers to the entire range of

information-intensive interactions across a spectrum that includes

psychological operations; perception management; information

security; and, of course, information warfare. Use of "information

operations" thus allows us to reserve the term information warfare

for a specific subset of warlike activities, all of which invoke just war

theory.

Of what, then, does information warfare consist? Principally, this

form of war concerns striking at communication nodes and infrastructures.

The weapons used in such attacks are generally thought

to be those employable via cyberspace (e.g., logic bombs, computer

viruses). However, information warfare also includes the use of a

variety of other offensive tools, from conventional explosives to high-

power microwave weapons, that can also be used to strike at information-

rich targets.

Attacks on information-rich targets using conventional weapons,

while undoubtedly an integral part of information warfare, present

few ethical novelties because they have long been a part of warfare.

Therefore, this chapter will focus on the ethical implications of the

new forms of warfare implicit in information warfare, particularly the

weapons employable via cyberspace.

The range of operations that might make use of information warfare

extends broadly, from the battlefield to the enemy home front. Thus,

information warfare may serve as a form of close-support for military

forces during active operations. It may also be employed in strategic

campaigns designed to strike directly at the will and logistical support

of an opponent. The last notion of information warfare, in

which it may be pursued without a prior need to defeat an adversary’s

respects, it resembles notions of the strategic uses of airpower that

emerged in the 1920s and 1930s and merits, therefore, close scrutiny

from an ethical perspective—much as air warfare was the focus of

Although it may bear a strategic resemblance to airpower, information

warfare has a quite different set of effects and properties. While

airpower can generally perform much destruction on fixed points

information attacks, even using conventional weapons, inflict far less

tive, and may occur over wide areas (e.g., knocking out a geographic

power grid), even in the face of defensive redundancies emplaced in

anticipation of information-warfare attacks. Another difference is

that, while strategic aerial bombardment inevitably causes civilian

losses, even with today’s guided weapons, information weapons will

lead to far fewer deaths—despite the widespread disruptive effects.

This lower lethality and destructiveness may make the damage done

by information-warfare attacks somewhat harder to assess accurately

—and may complicate calculations designed to craft a proportional

response.

Thus, strategic information weapons have area effects that, in some

respects, extend quite a bit further than even weapons of mass

destruction—but with "mass disruption" being their hallmark. And

it is just this prospect of having wide effects without causing very

many deaths or dire environmental consequences that makes information

warfare such a potentially attractive form of conflict.

Although the existence of these capabilities is the subject of some

debate, it is assumed for the purposes of this study that such capabilities

either already exist or soon will.

Finally, it is important to note the inherent blurriness with regard to

defining "combatants" and "acts of war." In strategic aerial bombardment,

it is quite clear who is making the attacks. It is also clear

that the enemy combatants are its military forces. This latter notion

is relaxed a bit in guerrilla warfare, in which civilians often engage in

the fighting. But in information warfare, almost anyone can engage

in the fighting. Thus, it is important, from an ethical perspective, to

make a distinction between those with access to advanced information

technology and those using it for purposes of waging information

warfare. Further, the nature of cyberspace-based attacks is such

that there may often be an observational equivalence between

criminal, terrorist, and military actions. The ethical imperative that

attaches to these concerns is the need to determine the identity of

the perpetrators of information-warfare attacks and to make a distinction

between sporadic depredations and actions that form part

of a recognizable campaign in pursuit of discernible aims.

Armed with the six tenets of just war theory and the pared-down

definition of information warfare described above, one may now

relate them to each other to determine the extent to which information

warfare can be said to be just or can be waged justly. This form

of analysis allows for a survey of the ethical issues—and elicits some

In the realm of going to war ethically, the concept of "right purpose"

does not appear to be put under much stress. Self-defense and preemption,

both allowed under classical just war theory, may have new

dimensions because of information warfare, as they may be applied

more promptly with disruptive information weapons. The one area

that may change is that of the use of force in preventive ways. Under

existing just war theory, prevention (i.e., striking to prevent the rise

of a threat, like the Israelis at Osirak in 1981) lies on tenuous ground.

But information warfare might prove especially useful in derailing

the rise of a threatening power—particularly the forms of information

attack that might be useful in slowing down a potential adversary’s

process of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

With regard to the second concept, "duly constituted authority," the

very nature of information weaponry may introduce new stresses for

this long-established ethical concept. For the types of capabilities

needed to field an information-warfare campaign—particularly one

that is waged principally in cyberspace—there is little need for the

levels of forces required in other forms of war. Therefore, the state

monopoly on war reflected in the concept of duly constituted

authority will likely be shaken, as nonstate actors rise in their ability

to wage information warfare. This may be part of an overall phenomenon

in which the information revolution is causing a diffusion

of power away from states and toward nonstate actors—both

peaceful, civil society elements and the new "uncivil society" of

information warfare may also encourage states to employ them.

Indeed, nonstate actors will likely prove useful cutouts that help to

maintain deniability, or ambiguity, about the ultimate identity of an

adversary. This suggests the possibility that quite weak states may

thus be allowed to strike at the strong, given the lessened likelihood

that they will be discovered and subjected to retaliation. However,

this problem might be mitigated by improvements in cyberspacebased

detection, surveillance, and tracking technologies.

This ease of entry into the realm of information warfare not only

erodes the strictures against acting without duly constituted authority.

It also suggests that the convention regarding going to war only

as a last resort will come under strain. For information warfare,

though it may disrupt much, at great cost to the target, does little

actual destruction—and will likely prove a form of warfare that

results in only incidental loss of life. In this respect, information

warfare can be viewed as somewhat akin to economic sanctions as a

tool of coercion (though probably less blunt an instrument than an

embargo). This similarity should also contribute to the erosion of the

last-resort principle. However, as with economic sanctions, certain

nonlethal parts of information warfare may not be considered acts of

war and thus may be exempt from just war considerations—a status

that would increase the likelihood of their use but would preserve

the integrity of the last-resort principle for actions deemed acts of

war.

Finally, in the case that all information-warfare actions are considered

acts of war, if information warfare’s low destructiveness is coupled

with a situation that features self-defensive "right

purpose"—say, in a crisis where skillful preemption might head off a

general war—the normative inhibition against early uses of force will

With regard to the issue of waging information warfare justly, there

are also many ways in which the classical concepts will come under

pressure. First, one approach to information warfare concentrates

on striking an adversary’s transportation, power, communication,

and financial infrastructures. This must be seen as a kind of war that

suffer from such attacks inevitably and seriously. The purpose of this

type of information warfare is to undermine the enemy’s will to

resist, or to persist, in a particular fight; in this respect, strategic

information warfare is very similar to early notions of strategic aerial

In the realm of information warfare, it should be noted that, even as

planners may be driven to wage a form of war whose effects will be

most felt by noncombatants, there is another aspect to strategic

attack—one strictly aimed at disrupting the movements and operations

of military forces. Information warfare is a sufficiently discriminate

tool that making this distinction is possible—and just war theory

implies eschewing the targeting of noncombatants and focusing

instead upon purely military targets and effects. Thus, an apparently

quite attractive coercive tool of force (strategic information warfare)

runs hard up against the enduring ethical constraints against attacking

noncombatants. This dimension of just war theory may, therefore,

pose the most nettlesome policy dilemma—and may require

the most creative solution.

Another thorny issue is posed by the just warfighting concept of

proportionality, whose major concern is with avoiding the use of

excessive force during a conflict. In one respect, the discriminate use

of information warfare should make it possible to wage war quite

proportionately. That is, it should be possible to respond to

information-warfare strikes by some adversary in a very precise, titfor-

tat fashion, neatly calculated and calibrated. However, two

problems might emerge that put notions of proportionality under

some stress. First, information-warfare attackers might strike at an

opponent’s critical infrastructures, but have few of their own that

could be retaliated against by means of information warfare. This

prompts the question of when more traditional military

measures—including some amount of lethal force—might be used in

response to information-warfare attacks without violating notions of

proportionality.

Another problem might arise if the defender, or target, were struck

by information-warfare attack and had little or no means of

responding with information weaponry. Russian strategic thinkers

have considered this last issue, with some of their analysts ending up

recommending forceful responses—even to the extent of threatening

a renewed form of "massive retaliation" with weapons of mass

destruction against information-warfare attackers. In this respect,

Schelling’s suggestion that varied responses can solve one dilemma

of proportionality may engender a new dilemma: the asymmetrical

retaliatory response may tend toward escalation. A prime example

of the sort of problem that can arise is Russian declaratory policy

toward information-warfare attacks. As one Russian defense analyst

From a military point of view, the use of information warfare means

against Russia or its armed forces will categorically not be considered

a non-military phase of conflict, whether there were casualties

or not. . . . considering the possible catastrophic consequences of

the use of strategic information warfare means by an enemy,

whether on economic or state command and control systems, or on

the combat potential of the armed forces. Russia retains the right to

use nuclear weapons first against the means and forces of information

warfare, and then against the aggressor state itself. (Tsymbal, 1995.)17

Thus, Thomas Schelling should be seen as providing some guidance

in these issue areas, but his solution poses difficulties and risks. He

has noted that proportionality is a reasonable principle, one that

need not be considered to require the use of identical weaponry

when one is engaging in retaliation. He also implicitly argues that

the risk escalatory threats pose is not necessarily credible. See, for

example, his assessment of the 1950s U.S. policy of massive nuclear

retaliation as a concept that "was in decline almost from its enunciation."

(Schelling, 1966, p. 190.) Yet the massive retaliatory threat

may be the only credible deterrent that a potential victim of information

warfare may be able to pose. Aside from deliberately disproportionate

responses, there is also the problem that gauging the

comparability of damage done by radically differing weapon systems

(e.g., exploding smart bombs versus computer logic bombs) is going

to prove quite difficult. Finally, the problem of perpetrator ambiguity

further weakens proportionate response, because one may simply

not have enough data to determine just who is responsible for a particular

attack.

The last of the just warfighting issues that must be considered is even

more nebulous than notions of proportionality. It consists of the

However, even if difficult to measure or define, this requirement for

ethical calculation of costs versus benefits may be eased by the idea

that information warfare requires, and effects, but little destruction

and will likely lead to scant loss of life. Unlike the terrible dilemma

that faced President Truman—a choice between massive immediate

casualties inflicted upon the enemy in the near term, versus perhaps

greater long-term losses for Japanese and Americans—information

warfare may afford the prospect of a use of force that causes little

destruction but that might, used properly, help to head off a potentially

Based on the foregoing description and analysis of the ways in which

notions of information warfare interact with just war concepts, it is

now possible to think about establishing a general set of guidelines

that will help decisionmakers and information warriors behave as

ethically as circumstances allow—or at least to recognize and strive

to resolve the apparent tension that arises here between utility- and

duty-based ethical guidelines. Rectitude aside, it must also be

recognized that war is about winning. Therefore, guidance for policy

or doctrine must cope with the dilemmas that may emerge as a result

of striving to act properly and taking the pragmatic actions that are

likely to lead to victory.

A good example of this sort of problem is provided by the ancient

Israelites in their (2nd century, BCE) efforts to break free from domination

by the Seleucids, the inheritors of one part of Alexander’s

empire. The Hebrew scripture forbade fighting on the Sabbath—so

the Greeks soon learned to attack on this day. The slaughters of the

rebellious, but observant, Jews that ensued are poignantly lamented:

"Let us all die in our innocence. Leaves and earth testify for us that

you are killing us unjustly." As the uprising faltered, one of the wise

Jewish leaders, Mattathias, perceived the problem and provided an

ethical adjustment, in the nick of time, that allowed them at least to

defend themselves without violating God’s law: "They will quickly

destroy us from the earth. Therefore, let us fight against every man

who comes to attack us on the Sabbath day." Thus, just warfighting

The first issue engaged, regarding "right purpose," basically boils

down to the question of whether the improved capacity for preventive

strikes granted by information warfare can overcome the ethical

problems posed by offensive war initiation. The ethical problem

deepens when it is recognized that preventive war—striking forcefully

before an adversary has serious, threatening capabilities—will

generally mean going to war before diplomatic options have been

basically disruptive rather than destructive nature of information

warfare suggests the possibility of a "just warfighting" approach to

prevention that eases the ethical dilemma.

Simply put, prevention by means of information warfare might be

allowable if (1) strikes were aimed strictly at military targets (e.g.,

command and control nodes), to avoid or generally limit damage to

noncombatants; (2) the amount of suasion employed was enough to

deter or substantially slow an attacker, without being so excessive as

to have dire economic or social effects; and (3) the good done by pre-

venting an adversary from being able to start a particular conflict, or

type of conflict, could be said to outweigh the wrong of using force

bello considerations may be seen as mitigating a serious jus ad bellum

constraint on information warfare.

The second policy concern, that of remaining within the bounds of

notions of duly constituted authority, poses little difficulty from the

U.S. perspective, or for any state, for that matter—so long as a state

actor refrains from employing a nonstate cutout to wage information

warfare on its behalf. The problem goes deeper, though, as the very

nature of information warfare implies that the ability to engage in

this form of conflict rests now in the hands of small groups and individuals

—no longer being the monopoly of state actors. This offers

up the prospect of potentially quite large numbers of information

warfare–capable combatants emerging, often pursuing their own, as

opposed to some state’s, policies.

Finally, the just war admonition to engage in conflict only as a last

resort must also be examined. Here, the previous discussion of prevention

is useful, in that early uses of information warfare may,

overall, have some beneficial effects and may not do serious damage

to noncombatants. Weighed against this, though, are long-standing

normative inhibitions against "going first" in war. For policymakers,

the answer is most likely that, as in the nettlesome case of duly constituted

authority, so with last resort, there is no easily accepted

answer. The rise of nonstate actors implies a serious, perhaps fatal,

weakening of this just war constraint; likewise, the ease with which

use of information warfare may be contemplated suggests that a sea

change will occur with regard to notions of "justice" requiring that

war always be undertaken as a last resort. Finally, it may prove possible

to relax the ethical strictures about last resort if informationwarmakers

engaging in early use emphasize disruptive acts—avoiding

actions that engender significant destruction.

In summary, it appears that policy perspectives on the just initiation

of an information war have left a good part of just war theory in tatters.

Information warfare now makes preventive war far more thinkable

(and practical), straining the limits of the concept of "right purpose."

And the manner in which the information revolution empowers

small groups and individuals to wage information warfare suggests

that the notion of duly constituted authority may also have lost

meaning. Finally, the ease in undertaking information-warfare

operations, and the fact that they are disruptive, but not very

destructive, weakens the notion that justice requires that war be

Given the ease with which entry may be made into the ranks of

information warfare–capable states and nonstate actors and the

attractiveness of targets that primarily serve civilian commercial,

transportation, financial, resource, and power infrastructures, the

greatest jus in bello concern for information warfare may be the

problem of maintaining "noncombatant immunity." The number of

actors will be (perhaps already is) large and is hardly subject to centralized

control. The civilian-oriented target set is huge and is likely

to be more vulnerable than the related set of military infrastructures

—except to the extent that the infrastructures simultaneously

serve both the military and civilian sectors. Thus, the urge to strike

at targets that will damage civilians (mostly in the economic and

environmental senses, but including some incidental losses of life)

may prove irresistible. In many ways, information warfare affords

the opportunity to achieve the coercive goals that Douhet and De

Seversky associated with strategic air bombardment—minus the

bloodshed. Indeed, strategic information warfare appears to lie

somewhere between airpower and economic sanctions on the spectrum

of tools of suasion. It can be far more disruptive and costly to

an adversary than an economic embargo but is less destructive than

bombing—characteristics that may make it a very attractive policy

option.

But the ease of engaging in and the attractiveness of information

warfare must be weighed, for the purpose of policy analysis, against

both the ethical and practical concerns. The ethical problem is clear:

ian-oriented targets; also, despite its negligible lethality, it nonetheless

violates the principle of noncombatant immunity, given that

civilian economic or other assets are deliberately targeted. In addition

to the ethical dilemma posed by information warfare, there is

the practical problem that whoever might begin the business of striking

at civilian-oriented targets would be inviting retaliation in

kind—both from nation-states and from individuals or small groups

that are armed with advanced information technology.

The problem is akin to that of the issue of the aerial bombing of

cities, as conceived of in the 1920s and 1930s. The air powers of the

day were in general agreement—once it grew clear that many would

have this capability—that they would avoid striking at each others’

cities. Indeed, with only a few exceptions, the warring states at the

outset of World War II strove to refrain from deliberately bombing

leading to the London Blitz and the Royal Air Force’s retaliatory fire

shift was made, all combatants went about the business of civilian

targeting with a will, culminating in the nuclear attacks on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The trend of targeting civilians deepened,

if anything, in the Korean War, at the end of which only one undamaged

refining the accuracy of air bombardment, making it possible to craft

campaigns that do far less damage to civilians or civilian-oriented

targets.

No such technological solution appears imminent in the realm of

information warfare. There is rather the problem of a diffusion of

attack capabilities to many actors who may have the capability to

mount precise attacks, but perhaps have little incentive to limit their

aggression. This implies a practical need to find ways to discourage

attacks on civilian-oriented targets. From a policy perspective, there

is an initiative that a leading information power, such as the United

States, might take: adopting a declaratory doctrine of "no first use"

of information warfare against largely civilian targets. It is a simple,

straightforward step, but one that nevertheless still allows for information-

warfare strikes against military-oriented targets (e.g., operations

it allows retaliation in the event that one’s own civilian targets

have been hit (presuming that the attacker’s identity can be ascertained).

The problem of ambiguity regarding information-warfare perpetrators

is indeed difficult but is not insurmountable. In the context of

war, there is always some purpose to such attacks, and one may add

logical inference to the pool of other detection resources in parsing

out just who is behind the attacks in question. This may mitigate the

problem of ambiguity, which existed in earlier eras—and has been

coped with effectively. A good example of dealing with ambiguity is

the "phantom" submarine attacks on merchant ships bringing aid to

the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Britain

quickly inferred that the Italians, supporters of the Fascists, were

likely suspects behind these attacks; a retaliatory threat was soon

made, despite Italian denials of culpability. The British remained

firm, asserting that the Italians would be struck unless the attacks

were halted. The "phantom pirate" attacks stopped immediately and

The other potential problem with a no-first-use pledge is that it takes

away an attractive coercive tool—the use of information-warfare

strikes against a potential aggressor’s many infrastructures as a

means of signaling or deterring attack in some politico-military crisis.

Against this benefit, however, one must weigh the cost of participating

in a behavioral regime in which such attacks are

tolerated—and that would likely do enormous disruptive harm to the

richest set of information targets in the world, which are to be found

in the United States. Even with a pledge of no first use against

civilian-oriented targets, the option of using information warfare

against enemy militaries remains—and, properly employed, might

prove to be a good deterrent.

Compared to the problems with crafting policy approaches that will

cope with the new dilemmas for noncombatant immunity, which are

difficult but not unduly so, the policy alternatives in the realms of

"proportionality" and acting in a way that does "more good than

harm" seem much less daunting. With regard to proportionality, a

number of very straightforward options seem available.

First, a good declaratory position on proportionality might extend to

a policy by which information-warfare attacks would engender identical

retaliatory response—subject, of course, to proper identification

of the perpetrator. However, when the attacker does not have a set

of information targets large enough for a proportionate response, or

has no information-oriented targets, the retaliation might have to

take the form of the use of more-traditional military force against

strategic targets of the perpetrator. In this case, proportionality may

prove complex in the operational phase.

With regard to doing more good than harm, this aspect of just war

theory seems still both useful and feasible. The discriminate nature

of information warfare should allow a very careful calibration of

effects. The only likely difficulty could ensue in situations in which

information-warfare attacks do not have the coercive results envisioned.

Indeed, it may prove very difficult to predict the psychological

effects of such attacks on either elite decisionmakers or mass

publics. In this case, if information warfare were used preventively

or preemptively and failed in its purpose, it might even be said that

an escalation to general war was the fault of taking the informationwarfare

action in the first place. Therefore, the risks of escalation

versus the likelihood that information warfare will head off a conflict

must be very carefully assessed before relaxing any notions of "right

The key points to be drawn from this chapter begin with the insight

that information warfare may seriously attenuate the ethics of going

to war (jus ad bellum). Secondarily, though, just warfighting (jus in

bello) issues seem to retain their currency and value.

Policy toward and doctrinal development of information warfare

thus need to focus on the latter area, taking special care to avoid

encouraging strikes against civilian-oriented targets but giving less

consideration—relatively—to proportionality and doing more good

than harm. The last two issues are simply less nettlesome than the

burgeoning problem of civilian vulnerability to strategic information

warfare.

Information warfare makes war more thinkable. This seems

inescapable—and quite troubling. Yet it does not require that waging

information warfare be either destructive or unjust. To the contrary,

ethical notions of just warfighting will likely continue to provide

a useful guide to behavior well into the information age. This

poses the possibility of giving an affirmative answer to James Turner

Johnson’s question (Johnson, 1984) about whether modern war,

Aldrich, Richard W., The International Legal Implications of Information

Warfare, Colorado Springs: Institute for National Security

Studies, 1996.

Alejandro, Roberto, The Limits of Rawlsian Justice, Chicago: University

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1952.

Ball, Desmond, and Jeffrey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting,

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Bekker, Cajus, The Luftwaffe War Diaries, New York: Doubleday, 1968.

Bundy, McGeorge, George F. Kennan, Robert S. McNamara, and

Gerard Smith, "Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,"

Foreign Affairs, Spring 1982, pp. 753–768.

Ciano, Count Galeazzo, Diaries, London: Methuen and Company, 1952.

De Seversky, Alexander, Victory Through Air Power, New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1942.

Douhet, Giulio, The Command of the Air, Ferrari trans., New York:

Coward-McCann, 1942.

Gersonides, Levi, The Wars of the Lord, as excerpted in Adam

Steinsaltz, ed., The Essential Talmud, New York: Basic Books, 1976.

Garrett, Stephen, Ethics and Airpower in World War II, New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1993.

Hastings, Max, The Korean War, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Hoffman, Bruce, "Responding to Terrorism Across the Technological

Spectrum," in John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., In Athena’s

Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, Santa

Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1997, pp. 339–367

Johnson, James Turner, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War,

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Johnson, James Turner, Can Modern War Be Just? New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1984.

Kagan, Donald, On the Origins of War, New York: Doubleday

Kaiser, Karl, Georg Leber, Alois Mertes, and Franz-Josef Schulze,

"Nuclear Weapons and the Preservation of Peace," Europa-Archiv,

Vol. 7, Summer 1982, pp. 157–171.

Keegan, John, The Second World War, New York: Viking, 1989.

Legro, Jeffrey W., Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint

During World War II, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Libicki, Martin, What is Information Warfare? Washington, D.C.:

National Defense University Press, 1996.

Molander, Roger, Peter Wilson, and Andrew Riddile, Strategic Information

Warfare: A New Face of War, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1996.

Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica, London: Cambridge University Press,

[1903] 1993.

Ober, Josiah, "Classical Greek Times," in Michael Howard, Geo.

Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman, eds., The Laws of War: Constraints

on Warfare in the Western World, New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1994, pp. 12–26.

Pape, Robert A., Bombing to Win: Airpower and Coercion in War,

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Quester, George, Deterrence Before Hiroshima, New York: John Wiley

& Sons, 1966.

Ramsey, Paul, War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern

War Be Conducted Justly? Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1961.

Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971.

Rosenberg, David Alan, "Nuclear War Planning," in Michael Howard,

Geo. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman, eds., The Laws of War:

Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, New Haven, Conn.:

Yale University Press, 1994, pp. 160–190.

Russell, Frederick H., The Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge,

England: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Schelling, Thomas C., Arms and Influence, New Haven, Conn.: Yale

Schwartau, Winn, "Ethical Conundra of Information Warfare," in

Alan D. Campen, Douglas H. Dearth, and R. Thomas Goodden,

eds., Cyberwar: Security, Strategy and Conflict in the Information

Age, Fairfax, Va.: AFCEA International Press, 1996, pp. 243–249.

Steinsaltz, Adam, The Essential Talmud, New York: Basic Books, 1976.

Thomas, Hugh, The Spanish Civil War, New York: Harper &

Brothers, 1961.

Thomas, Tim, "The Threat of Information Operations: A Russian

Perspective," in Robert Pfaltzgraff and Richard Shultz, eds., War in

the Information Age: New Challenges for U.S. Security, London:

Brassey’s, 1997.

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, New York:

Everyman’s Library, 1938.

Tsymbal, V. I., "Concepts of Information Warfare," a speech presented

at the conference on Evolving Post–Cold War National

Security Issues, held in Moscow, September 12–14, 1995.

Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars, New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Warden, John, The Air Campaign, London: Brassey’s, 1989.

Williams, Phil, "Transnational Criminal Organisations and International

be found in Aldrich (1996). Also, see Schwartau (1996).

2 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, especially Book II, Part II. Ramsey (1961)

remains a classic exposition of the Thomist view of just war. On just war theory during

this period, see also Russell (1975).

3 It should be noted that ideas about "right purpose" in the nuclear era have retained

self-defense as an ethical construct, while preemption is viewed as

unacceptable—though not without some dissent. Preventive nuclear war, though

seriously contemplated in the late 1940s and early 1950s to preserve the U.S.

monopoly on atomic weapons, is very nearly unanimously considered ethically

unacceptable. On these issues, see Rosenberg (1994).

4 Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, Chs. 1–4. See also Kagan

(1994).

5 On this point, Walzer (1977), p. 129, notes that the rule of thumb is to limit "excessive

harm." Yet, he observes that many have argued that this restriction can be relaxed if

such action contributes clearly and materially to victory.

6 Also, it should be noted that strategic aerial bombardment has just as often been

used deliberately to terrorize civilians, being considered a key element of deterrence

stability and coercive diplomacy. See Quester (1966) and Pape (1995). The willingness

of nuclear strategists to accept the likelihood of some "collateral" civilian losses grows,

in part, out of the perceived need to strike an adversary in time to disrupt his own

oncoming attack (preemption), or to strike early enough that the enemy will not be

able even to develop a threatening capability of his own (prevention)—as in the case

of the 1981 Israeli raid on the Iraqi nuclear weapon program at Osiraq.

7 Johnson (1981), pp. xxii–xxiii, observes that the concept of proportionality falls under

both jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In the former case, the author argues that

proportionality refers to "doing more harm than good." In the latter, he suggests limits

on the kinds of weapons that may be used. For purposes of this study, proportionality

is considered as described in E, above, because this captures much of both of

Johnson’s notions. Further, the idea of doing more harm than good has been considered

part of the notion of jus in bello, as this is a calculation more possible to make

during, rather than prior, to a war—save perhaps with the exception of nuclear war,

whose catastrophic consequences for all were never doubted.

8 For a modern perspective on the concept of proportionality, see Schelling (1966),

who makes the important point that a proportional retaliation for an attack need not

use means that are identical to those employed by an aggressor.

9 The author is grateful to Tora Bikson for pointing out that just war theory, as subdivided

above, may be categorized in terms of the classical ethical notions of primary

and secondary duty. This notion is apparent in the essays on ethics of Bentham, Kant,

and others and is examined in detail in Moore (1993). The notion of duty is also an

element in Rawls (1971). However, the conflicts inherent in striving to reconcile

sometimes conflicting duties to "fairness" can be considerable, as argued in Alejandro

(1997).

10 Operational arms control consists of constraints on behavior (e.g., on the movement

or exercise of troops at certain times and places or the agreement not to use certain

types of weapons, such as chemicals, land mines, or dumdum bullets). Structural

arms control refers to limiting, reducing, or eliminating the actual quantities of

weapons and, for the present, seems to lie beyond the ability to control in this fashion

—given the ease of production and diffusion of information weapons. Yet, technological

advances do hold out the prospect for improving surveillance to a point where

structural arms control of weapons of information warfare may become feasible.

11 For an exposition of this view, see Molander, Wilson, and Riddile (1996).

12 Garrett (1993) provides an excellent summary of the debate about the ethics of airpower.

For a good discussion of strategic aerial bombardment as an autonomous tool

of war, including skeptical French and cautious British views, see Quester (1966), pp. 50–70.

13 The discussion here is limited to the effects of airpower using conventional explosives,

as opposed to weapons of mass destruction.

14 "Destruction" should be considered a multidimensional concept. First, there is the

physical "burnout" of computers, power lines, system controls, etc. Then there is the

erasure or corruption of data. Finally, there is loss of life (e.g., crash of an airliner due

to a disrupted air traffic control system) and environmental damage (e.g., an oil

pipeline spill resulting from disruption of automated system controls) to round out

the concept of destruction.

15 On these issues, see Hoffman (1997) and Williams (1994).

16 See Douhet (1942) and De Seversky (1942). Warden (1989) is a clear throwback to

Douhet and De Seversky. On the other hand, nuclear strategists did strive hard to

limit noncombatant losses, by developing the concept of counterforce targeting. But

this palliative was seen as still allowing massive, civilization-endangering casualties.

On this point, see Ball and Richelson (1986).

17 Thomas (1997), pp. 76–77, reinforces the point that the Russians see the information-

warfare threat as "real, and intensifying" and that one perspective is indeed that

"Moscow’s only retaliatory capability at this time is the nuclear response."

18 Again, it should be noted that some see this as a jus ad bellum issue. See Johnson

(1981), p. xxii.

19 Quotes from 1 Maccabees 2:37–41. This issue was also considered by later

Talmudic scholars, notably Gersonides, in his The Wars of the Lord (as excerpted in

Steinsaltz, 1976). See also the discussion in Steinsaltz (1976), p. 20.

20 Indeed, the most serious ethical problem with prevention is that the adversary may

not even be contemplating going to war, yet he is struck. This dilemma was but one of

the considerations—albeit an important one—that led policymakers to decide against

striking preventively against either Russia’s or, later, China’s nascent nuclear capabilities.

21In this regard, the oft-stated rationales of war initiators, that they were simply

starting the war to "defend" their countries against threats that would soon appear,

must be viewed with some skepticism. This is the sort of argument Napoleon

advanced, feeling he had to conquer all of Europe to defend France, as did German

leaders in the first half of this century.

22 The German Luftwaffe’s bombings of Warsaw and Rotterdam, the early exceptions,

were nevertheless circumstances in which both cities formed part of active enemy

resistance to advancing German forces, and held substantial military assets within

their boundaries. On these bombings, see Bekker (1968), pp. 55–57, 100–114. On the

accidental end of the "no-capital-cities" bombing convention in World War II, see

Legro (1995), pp. 134–141.

23 This had do with a German pilot inadvertently jettisoning his bombs over London

when he thought he was elsewhere. Although this "accident" spurred the Germans to

begin bombing British cities, senior Luftwaffe leaders had been arguing for this

expansion of the campaign as a means of forcing the British Royal Air Force to come

out and grapple with German fighters. On this, see Keegan (1989), p. 96.

24 Hastings (1987), p. 268, notes: "Installations in Pyongyang were hit again by

massed bomber raids in July and August [1952]. . . . Pyongyang had been flattened,

hundreds of thousands of North Korean civilians killed."

25 It is the same, in many respects, as the notion of no first use in the nuclear context.

However, in the nuclear setting, this type of restraint was thought to increase the risk

of the outbreak of conventional war. Because U.S. power today is preponderant, it is

hard to conceive of a no-first-use pledge for information warfare as having the effect

of undermining the deterrence of conventional war. The nuclear no-first-use debate

is neatly exposited in two short essays. For the view in favor of no first use, see Bundy

et al. (1982). The rebuttal soon followed, from Kaiser et al.(1982).

26 See Thomas (1961), pp. 475–476, who notes that the British retaliatory threat went

beyond attacking phantom submarines in Spanish waters, to include all international

waters, even Italian territorial waters. The Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo

Ciano, in his Diaries (1952), pp. 7–8, observed that this threat, along with skillful

British diplomatic maneuvering at the Nyon Conference, put an end to the secret

Italian campaign.