Название: Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First CenturyАвтор: Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli
Издательство: Georgetown University Press
Год: 2019
Страниц: 244
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, epub
Размер: 10.2 MB
Surrogate Warfare explores the emerging phenomenon of "surrogate warfare" in twenty-first century conflict. The popular notion of war is that it is fought en masse by the people of one side versus the other. But the reality today is that both state and non-state actors are increasingly looking to shift the burdens of war to surrogates. Surrogate warfare describes a patron's outsourcing of the strategic, operational, or tactical burdens of warfare, in whole or in part, to human and/or technological substitutes in order to minimize the costs of war. This phenomenon ranges from arming rebel groups, to the use of armed drones, to cyber propaganda. Krieg and Rickli bring old, related practices such as war by mercenary or proxy under this new overarching concept. Apart from analyzing the underlying sociopolitical drivers that trigger patrons to substitute or supplement military action, this book looks at the intrinsic trade-offs between substitutions and control that shapes the relationship between patron and surrogate. Will be essential reading for anyone studying contemporary conflict.
In the post–Cold War era, new forms of surrogacy appeared amid the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). RMA proponents believe that the new technologies deriving from the computerization of the battlefield in the late twentieth century brought with it an irreversible and fundamental transformation in the conduct of warfare. In addition, the renewed reliance on contractors employed through PMSCs made the battlefields of the 1990s and 2000s look profoundly different from those of the Cold War. The leading powers of the international system have accumulated unprecedented levels of wealth that they could invest in maintaining highly advanced technological armies supported by specialist contract soldiers who assist the trinitarian citizen soldier to achieve operational effectiveness and precision in executing military core functions. High technology, from the latest-generation airpower to robotics to advanced information systems, has put the soldier into a highly complex grid of network-centric operations. The uniformed soldier of the twenty-first century is able to externalize tactical and operational burdens of warfare to technological platforms, transforming him from a “shooter” into a mere “spotter”—the arguably most existential change of identity for the infantryman in the history of warfare. Though in its infancy, the emerging fusion between soldiers and technology will slowly give rise to a new class of soldiers, cyborgs that might in the future act as stand-alone weapon systems.
The use of offensive cyber operations against civilian and military targets is the current evolutionary step in the use of technology to substitute for the patron’s boots on ground. It ultimately removes the kinetic military force from the equation of warfare. Regardless of the benignity of the means employed, the effects of offensive cyber operations on the target are just as disruptive as the kinetic effects that have been generated by the traditional use of force for millennia. Despite the absence or because of the absence of uniformed citizen soldiers from the equation, the cyber domain has become the “nonviolent” and nonkinetic force multiplier as it deceptively exerts nonphysical force though some of its effects can very much have physical consequences.
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