In “Don’t call it warfare. West grapples with response to Ukraine cyber aggressions” (January 18), Laurens Cerulus reports that cyberattacks should be treated as anything but acts of war. However, some of this thinking misses the point, and by continuing to follow this line, Western governments give our main adversaries — mainly China, Russia and Iran — a significant advantage.
The argument that a cyberattack cannot be considered an act of war because it does not cause human casualties or major destruction is a false and antiquated one. What matters — as with all acts of warfare — is, first and foremost, the political intent by an actor to cause some level of harm to a country or society’s integrity.
Of course, as with any type of attack, a political judgement must be made. But it is surprising that in our hyper-connected world, where so much depends on bites and data, that the default position is that we are still treating these infrastructures as somehow less critical than bridges or buildings.
International lawyers have established that, as with other realms, international humanitarian law applies to cyber warfare when conducted in the context of an armed conflict. As such, responses to specific attacks can fall under the self-defense provision of the United Nations Charter. And similarly, NATO itself has clearly stated that cyberattacks can trigger the Alliance’s collective defense clause, keeping the door open on the range of responses.
What is also true, but not properly explained in the article, is that Western governments and agencies are also complicit in this, along with their adversaries, keeping (most) cyber operations below a certain threshold and within a gray zone. This allows both sides to use the cyber realm as a means of signaling, and possibly degrading, without triggering an all-out escalation.
The problem with this thinking, however, is that our adversaries are better at exploiting gray zones than democracies, as demonstrated by the current debate on how and whether to respond to Russian malign activities against Ukraine. Like some of the experts quoted in the piece, Western governments might have to significantly update their approach if they don’t want to let other powers cyber escalate at will. It is high time to draw a clearer red line.
Fabrice Pothier
Senior consulting fellow, International Institute of Strategic Studies
English (US) ·