Can international law regulate warfare? Experiences of US bombing suggests it does not solve the twenty-first-century belligerent's legitimacy dilemma.

Armed conflict is about using force to achieve goals. As international humanitarian law regulates the means and methods that a belligerent may adopt to achieve its goals, there will inevitably be disagreements over the interpretation of that law. As for the rules that regulate targeting, the main difficulties arise over what is a lawful target and what is proportional collateral damage. This book provides a detailed analysis of those issues. Also, a chapter is dedicated to considering how United Nations Security Council sanctioning of participation in an armed conflict might affect the range of lawful targets available to a belligerent. Finally, a process is described by which legal responsibility for targeting decisions can be assessed in a complex decision-making environment.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 fundamentally changed our security environment. The system of strategic deterrence in place since the beginning of the Cold War visibly collapsed. Now we are trying to fashion a new strategic deterrence that relies not so much on retaliation as on prevention, either stopping the terrorists outright, deterring the sponsors, or convincing them that terror cannot succeed. To help us deal with the pressing problems of the post-September 11th world, we have three ongoing technological revolutions in sensors, information technology, and weapons. These technologies can enable us to think differently about how we organize and fight. Indeed, this is what network-centric operations are about. Their true impact derives from how they are applied. Narrowly applied, they would produce more efficient attrition, yet they clearly can do much more. The concept of effects-based operations is the key to this broader role. It enables us to apply the power of the network-centric operations to the human dimension of war and to military operations across the spectrum of conflict from peace, to crisis, to war, which a new strategic deterrence demands. The broad utility of effects-based operations grows from the fact that they are focused on actions and their links to behavior, on stimulus and response, rather than on targets and damage infliction. They are applicable not only to traditional warfare, but also to military operations short of combat. Effects-based operations are coordinated sets of actions directed at shaping the behavior of friends, foes, and neutrals in peace, crisis, and war. In brief, network-centric operations are indeed a means to an end, and effects-based operations are that end.

Effects-based operations (EBO) are defined for thismonograph as operations conceived and planned in a systems framework thatconsiders the full range of direct, indirect, and cascading effects

A top cybersecurity journalist tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare—one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. “Immensely enjoyable . . . Zetter turns a complicated and technical cyber story into an engrossing whodunit.”—The Washington Post The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility. In these pages, journalist Kim Zetter tells the whole story behind the world’s first cyberweapon, covering its genesis in the corridors of the White House and its effects in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a top secret sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day also ranges beyond Stuxnet itself, exploring the history of cyberwarfare and its future, showing us what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by a Stuxnet-style attack, and ultimately, providing a portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.