[ISN] There is no cyber war the same way there is no nuclear war

http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardstiennon/2011/11/03/there-is-no-cyber-war-the-same-way-there-is-no-nuclear-war/

By Richard Stiennon
Forbes.com
11/03/2011

One of the staff at my school (King’s College, London) recently 
published a paper that used Clausewitzian definitions of war to declaim 
that there has been no cyberwar, cyberwar is not happening now, and 
cyberwar is unlikely to occur in the future.  Of course it is easy to 
prove a point if you control the definitions and I will stipulate that 
the idea of two nations engaging in purely network and computer based 
attacks would result in nothing but fodder for cyber pundits and tech 
journalists.

But warfare has seen many more permutations throughout history than even 
Clausewitz may have been exposed to.  How would Clausewitz have treated 
India’s successful pacifist revolt? Would he have said you can’t wage a 
war by fasting? What about asymmetric warfare – a topic that most 
academic institutions, including King’s College, are focused on.  Or 
psychological warfare? Clausewitz pre-dated the telegraph (invented six 
years after his death)  let alone radio, television, and the Internet. 
Could Clausewitz have defined the 50 year protracted Cold War which 
entailed the largest arms build up ever? Arms that were never used.

One could as easily argue that there has never been a nuclear war. While 
Japan was the victim of nuclear holocaust it did not have nuclear 
weapons and was not in a position to retaliate. Japan had been so 
decimated by August of 1945 that Truman’s war department had difficulty 
selecting targets worth flattening. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 
effective political moves that helped Hirohito depose his military elite 
and surrender unconditionally.  By Clausewitz’s definition it was not 
nuclear war.

In the ensuing 66 years there have been over 2,000 tests of nuclear 
weapons (2,053 up to 1998) and an expenditure on the part of the US, 
USSR/Russia, UK, France, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Israel, and Iran 
that is measured in trillions of dollars.  These countries certainly 
believe that nuclear attacks are possible and that the only way to 
prevent them is to have a nuclear capability.  Thus a demonstrable 
stability has been achieved.  A conventional war between two nuclear 
armed countries is unlikely because of the fear of escalation; resulting 
in a holocaust that neither country would survive.

[...]


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