1 00:00:00,420 --> 00:00:09,809 Professor Mike GROSS is the Chair Director of Politicised and Social Issues Our Collective Life in Haifa in Israel. 2 00:00:09,810 --> 00:00:15,629 And I think many of you perhaps have come across back in 2006 his work on bioethics and our 3 00:00:15,630 --> 00:00:18,990 conference being a sort of purpose that makes people sit up and take notice of things. 4 00:00:19,950 --> 00:00:26,400 And then subsequently, I know others here because he would have mentioned the moral dilemmas of modern war, 5 00:00:27,030 --> 00:00:34,650 which are not just the time to issue of torture, of assassination, what you might call high value targets there. 6 00:00:35,400 --> 00:00:37,960 And that's what's been incredibly influential. 7 00:00:37,980 --> 00:00:47,370 Study is also written on the ethics of activism and more passive, if you like, less violent fold of of insurgent activity, you might say. 8 00:00:48,390 --> 00:01:00,030 But his most recent conflict, I think his most recent is the ethics insurgency, which we obviously a bit more about you if you don't know on his work. 9 00:01:01,020 --> 00:01:05,339 I think it's really been really helpful for us to have a framework, 10 00:01:05,340 --> 00:01:11,430 an ethical framework for understanding the differential or indeed the similarity between the ethics of global conflict, 11 00:01:11,430 --> 00:01:16,660 which are normally framed around a state and instead looking at non-state actors. 12 00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:20,710 If you work, if you're not familiar with the sort of nice place to go, this is what's going on here. 13 00:01:21,020 --> 00:01:28,259 Lost time. Thank you so much for coming all this way and come and speak to us for saying how we can say okay, thank you. 14 00:01:28,260 --> 00:01:32,300 It's a great pleasure to be here. I'm going to talk today a little bit. 15 00:01:32,310 --> 00:01:35,990 Let me let me let's not sorry. Let me get the. Yep. 16 00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:44,740 Okay. I'm going to hear you go. Yeah. Well, we've got a coming events as well. 17 00:01:45,010 --> 00:01:53,830 Yeah, you got it. Okay. I'm going to look at the next project we've been working on in the book, Ethics and the Ethics of Insurgency. 18 00:01:54,370 --> 00:02:02,559 What I wound up learning one of the things I learned from that book was it was a wide array of tactics that unarmed groups, 19 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:09,730 that armed groups, that guerrilla groups, insurgent groups employ that range from what originally I called kinetic tactics were hard tactics, 20 00:02:10,210 --> 00:02:15,460 assassination, IEDs, prisoners, prisoner taking and so forth. 21 00:02:16,300 --> 00:02:20,530 But in addition to those who were a number of what later became what we call soft tactics, 22 00:02:20,530 --> 00:02:25,860 and these were things like cyber cyber warfare, public diplomacy, economic warfare. 23 00:02:25,870 --> 00:02:33,219 So it was a the book when I originally wrote it, split halfway between hard tactics of war and soft tactics of war. 24 00:02:33,220 --> 00:02:40,600 And when Robb contacted me, he asked me to speak a little bit more about some of the issues that we learned about the soft tactics of war, 25 00:02:40,960 --> 00:02:43,150 some of the moral, legal and logistical challenges. 26 00:02:43,420 --> 00:02:52,870 And what you see here below this is kind of become our mantra taken from one of the US Army counterinsurgency workbooks. 27 00:02:53,530 --> 00:02:59,530 Some of the best weapons for insurgents do not shoot in. Some of the best weapons for counter insurgents do not shoot. 28 00:02:59,980 --> 00:03:03,760 So there's a whole array of things out there that are non-kinetic. 29 00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:07,600 Are we use the term unarmed conflict, which was appropriate? 30 00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:11,139 I think because they're not covered by the law of armed conflict. 31 00:03:11,140 --> 00:03:16,990 And there is no law, we know, no singular body of law for the law of an armed conflict. 32 00:03:17,260 --> 00:03:20,860 These are in a way outside of an armed conflict. Outside of armed conflict. 33 00:03:21,340 --> 00:03:27,159 And I want to talk about two specific aspects of soft war or on armed conflict, 34 00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:32,649 and that is the effects it has on the principle of proportionality and the effects that it has on the principal distinction. 35 00:03:32,650 --> 00:03:35,710 Because what we find is that proportionality changes. 36 00:03:36,130 --> 00:03:41,170 We're going to see how it moves from a kind of an in below concept of proportionality, 37 00:03:41,170 --> 00:03:50,530 which goes very offers very wide latitude to belligerents, to a much narrower concept of proportionality that leaves less leeway. 38 00:03:50,920 --> 00:03:55,660 And also how discrimination is changed because in soft war, as I'll show you in a moment, 39 00:03:56,170 --> 00:03:59,710 some of the major targets are, in fact, civilians and non-combatants. 40 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:08,980 So when I presented here, I've done another another kind of distinction here between the primary targets of soft war, 41 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:12,910 and I divided them between software tactics, 42 00:04:13,450 --> 00:04:18,849 where the enemy is the target and soft war tactics, where compatriots, in other words, 43 00:04:18,850 --> 00:04:23,110 those who are fighting, put themselves at risk or put themselves in the firing line. 44 00:04:23,620 --> 00:04:28,000 So what you see in red are the two specific subjects I'm going to talk about. 45 00:04:28,450 --> 00:04:35,109 But if we think about cyber warfare, economic warfare, which are sanctions, boycotts, 46 00:04:35,110 --> 00:04:40,450 blockade, sieges, etc., we think about public diplomacy, propaganda or media warfare. 47 00:04:40,930 --> 00:04:44,409 Those are generally directed towards the enemy. 48 00:04:44,410 --> 00:04:48,580 The enemy may be enemy belligerents, they may be an enemy civilians. 49 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:51,640 Whereas if we think about non-violent resistance, 50 00:04:51,700 --> 00:04:58,030 which is a very potent form and I'll talk about that a little bit later, very potent form of non-kinetic warfare. 51 00:04:58,330 --> 00:05:03,910 We talk about the use of human shields and we talk about hunger striking, for example. 52 00:05:04,300 --> 00:05:16,810 These are very powerful, very effective tactics that non-state actors often use that are directed or used themselves. 53 00:05:16,810 --> 00:05:23,590 They put themselves at risk, so put themselves in the firing line in order to achieve some tactical or strategic benefit. 54 00:05:24,220 --> 00:05:30,040 Now, one of the things I want to clarify before I go on is when I was asked to speak about the subject, 55 00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:34,780 I was I was told that your the group is also studying soft power. 56 00:05:35,350 --> 00:05:43,330 We're interested in some of the soft power issues. So I want to just take a quick look here and show you how soft war is distinct from soft power. 57 00:05:43,900 --> 00:05:50,710 And soft war is also distinct from what Michael Walzer and others call use of them, the use of force short of war. 58 00:05:52,300 --> 00:05:59,740 Most of these tactics you have all of these tactics as well for our non-kinetic and as non-kinetic tactics, 59 00:06:00,100 --> 00:06:06,820 they're going to be distinct from use them. You saw them are kinetic and non-kinetic tactics short of war. 60 00:06:07,090 --> 00:06:10,150 But you saw them also includes includes no fly zones. 61 00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:13,960 It includes targeted killings which don't fall under this rubric here. 62 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:24,430 And soft power, as it is traditionally used, refers to persuasive acts rather than coercive acts. 63 00:06:24,910 --> 00:06:29,110 And the emphasis is usually on public diplomacy and public works. 64 00:06:29,110 --> 00:06:35,950 These are acts today. Usually a state actor takes in order to induce a local population, enemy population, say, 65 00:06:35,950 --> 00:06:41,770 in Iraq or in Afghanistan, to come over to the other side or to increase support for local. 66 00:06:41,870 --> 00:06:45,500 Government at the expense of, say, the Taliban or other insurgents. 67 00:06:45,740 --> 00:06:51,860 So it's a persuasive kind of operation, whereas most of these tactics are coercive. 68 00:06:52,790 --> 00:06:57,230 They're able to force an enemy to do something, to comply, to withdraw, 69 00:06:57,800 --> 00:07:07,730 to enact certain policy and whatever the other aims of armed conflict are in a very coercive sense by threatening or by actually causing harm. 70 00:07:08,300 --> 00:07:13,070 And they often, often function as an adjunct to armed force. 71 00:07:14,180 --> 00:07:22,460 So you can have a war which includes what we call hard tactics, hard kinetic tactics, and also an array of various software tactics. 72 00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:26,000 So what I want to do is look at these two oh and look at cyber warfare, 73 00:07:26,840 --> 00:07:34,640 not in technical detail, but in some of the more legal and legal aspects of implementation. 74 00:07:34,940 --> 00:07:40,430 But speak to the question of the theoretical question of proportionality and distinction, 75 00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:45,589 and also look at non-violent resistance and also raise some of these same issues and show how 76 00:07:45,590 --> 00:07:51,530 these are also a very important component of software in a very effective component of software. 77 00:07:52,820 --> 00:07:59,150 Let me jump to cyber warfare in general, what we know about cyber warfare today, 78 00:07:59,390 --> 00:08:03,050 and we don't know everything about cyber warfare because much of it is kept secret. 79 00:08:03,530 --> 00:08:07,790 But from what we do know, no one has been harmed in or has been killed harmed by being physically harmed. 80 00:08:08,420 --> 00:08:15,200 There had been stolen. Systems have been corrupted, personal data has been compromised. 81 00:08:15,680 --> 00:08:22,520 But it's not the kind of tactics that has caused death or physical injury or even extreme psychological injury. 82 00:08:22,550 --> 00:08:29,810 We really haven't seen it. It may. And of course, there's a great deal of worry on the part of cyber warfare researchers and practitioners 83 00:08:30,140 --> 00:08:38,270 and defence officials that it may lead to to physical harm and loss of life. 84 00:08:38,270 --> 00:08:45,410 But so far it hasn't. So the question then is, is how do states respond to cyber attacks? 85 00:08:45,770 --> 00:08:52,070 How should states respond to counter cyber attacks? And the paradigm that is developing is something called countermeasures. 86 00:08:52,670 --> 00:08:58,880 I'm going to give you two examples that speak to countermeasures and then try to provide a little bit more detail. 87 00:08:59,390 --> 00:09:02,030 This is taken from Tallinn Manual 1.0. 88 00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:09,080 And in the middle of the column manual, there's a section on cyber war and countermeasures within this example of State V, 89 00:09:09,470 --> 00:09:15,150 who launches a cyber attack against the electrical generating facility at a dam in state aid 90 00:09:15,440 --> 00:09:20,000 to coerce state aid into increasing the flow of water into a river running between states. 91 00:09:21,050 --> 00:09:26,480 So here is a coercive use of cyber warfare to force one state to do something else for the benefit of another state. 92 00:09:27,500 --> 00:09:38,989 So the launches of How Can They Do This in response to the framers of the Tallinn Manual evoke invoke countermeasures, 93 00:09:38,990 --> 00:09:47,000 they may lawfully respond with proportionate countermeasures, such as cyber operations against State B's irrigation control system. 94 00:09:47,900 --> 00:09:53,480 Now, what's odd about this statement or intriguing about the statement is, first of all, the use of the word proportionate. 95 00:09:54,110 --> 00:10:00,590 It's not proportionality as we traditionally on proportionate understand proportionality in armed conflict. 96 00:10:00,980 --> 00:10:10,760 It's not the kind of proportionality where you weigh civilian casualties against some anticipated military advantage that we all know, 97 00:10:10,760 --> 00:10:18,940 or at least it's my opinion, is very difficult to do. You're weighing incommensurable items, civilian lives against military advantage here. 98 00:10:18,960 --> 00:10:22,870 The use of countermeasure and I'll explain this a little bit more clearly is what we call equivalency. 99 00:10:22,880 --> 00:10:27,950 It's [INAUDIBLE] for tat state aid state, because a certain amount of harm to state, 100 00:10:27,950 --> 00:10:37,330 a state has the right to cause the same amount of harm, usually measured in money, usually measured in dollars and cents against state. 101 00:10:37,550 --> 00:10:47,560 B The other interesting aspect of this is that, look, we state A is targeting was targeting State B's irrigation control system. 102 00:10:47,630 --> 00:10:50,750 What does that have to do with the dam other than the fact that they both use water? 103 00:10:52,160 --> 00:10:57,080 In other words, the target here is not necessarily the target that was liable for the initial harm. 104 00:10:57,830 --> 00:11:07,100 It's some other agent in state B might be the the farmers who use this irrigation control system. 105 00:11:07,100 --> 00:11:11,149 It might be farmers located far from the dam of Congress, located near the dam. 106 00:11:11,150 --> 00:11:12,500 There's no necessary connection. 107 00:11:13,160 --> 00:11:20,569 And this is based on the understanding of countermeasures as it's used today in international trade law, mostly where if one country, 108 00:11:20,570 --> 00:11:29,120 for example, imposes unlawful tariffs against the coffee in another country, then that country can respond by throwing a tariff on sugar. 109 00:11:30,170 --> 00:11:33,559 And the only connection between sugar and coffee is that, you know, people use sugar in their coffee, 110 00:11:33,560 --> 00:11:40,010 but the people who are suffering and the people who are benefiting are two entirely different populations. 111 00:11:40,160 --> 00:11:46,200 And neither of them is enough. Necessarily involved, but at least those who are harmed are liable for the initial offence. 112 00:11:47,070 --> 00:11:50,040 And again, the proportionality here is one of equivalency. 113 00:11:50,040 --> 00:12:03,760 So proportionality that allows one wronged state to exact an equivalent dollar amount against the state that caused the initial harm against this. 114 00:12:04,410 --> 00:12:08,580 For reasons that I fear about, this example disappears from Tallinn 1.0. 115 00:12:08,940 --> 00:12:18,149 But in Thailand, 2.0, which is the more recent telling me ago from February, we have a different kind of example where organs of a responsible state, 116 00:12:18,150 --> 00:12:25,770 they are conducting cyber operations without resulting in loss of functionality of a private cyber infrastructure in the state beat. 117 00:12:26,430 --> 00:12:37,079 I guess they were thinking of Sony or some like or or some like business that is suffering at the hands of Chinese Koreans. 118 00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:42,710 Russians fill in the blank and then say, be, here's an option of responding in kind against state aid. 119 00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:44,430 Well, what does that mean to respond in kind? 120 00:12:45,900 --> 00:12:54,480 It means to respond in a cyberattack against presumably a private a private cyber infrastructure in the offending state, 121 00:12:55,020 --> 00:12:59,850 then absolutely nothing to do with the initial offence. So this is the way the countermeasures work. 122 00:13:00,510 --> 00:13:02,880 And it introduces, as I mentioned earlier, 123 00:13:03,300 --> 00:13:15,210 two kinds of or two important changes in the way we understand both proportionality and discrimination in armed conflict. 124 00:13:16,380 --> 00:13:20,310 So I wanted to focus on those for just a moment. 125 00:13:20,640 --> 00:13:25,830 Question is which proportionality principle now do we use in hybrid warfare? 126 00:13:26,250 --> 00:13:29,670 Because there's many different ways to understand the term hybrid warfare. 127 00:13:29,670 --> 00:13:38,129 But in my opinion, hybrid warfare is hybrid because it combines elements of kinetic hardware and non-kinetic software. 128 00:13:38,130 --> 00:13:41,400 So you've got all these elements jumbled together, very often running at the same time. 129 00:13:41,910 --> 00:13:48,300 And we're going to ask which principle of proportionality is relevant here, and what do we do about the principle? 130 00:13:48,340 --> 00:13:51,430 Distinction, because we just saw that in cyber operations. 131 00:13:51,900 --> 00:13:55,799 It's not uncommon as it is in other forms of countermeasures to target those 132 00:13:55,800 --> 00:14:00,690 who are who are by international law of armed conflict and by just war theory. 133 00:14:01,500 --> 00:14:06,270 Innocent, but not liable to any sort of defensive harming. 134 00:14:09,940 --> 00:14:19,239 So here you see what I what I mentioned earlier, you have two different definitions of I framed it here as disproportionality, right? 135 00:14:19,240 --> 00:14:21,730 You have the in below definition of proportionality, 136 00:14:22,240 --> 00:14:30,910 which relates injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects that would be excessive in relationship to the concrete, 137 00:14:30,910 --> 00:14:40,690 indirect military advantage anticipated. This is a huge can of worms that has defied any sort of logical in my opinion, 138 00:14:41,260 --> 00:14:45,130 logical exegesis, because it's very difficult to apply this in practice. 139 00:14:45,580 --> 00:14:50,709 Some people have responded by saying, well, what we might weigh are injuries to civilian oh, 140 00:14:50,710 --> 00:14:56,530 there's our civilians against anticipated injuries to enemy civilians kind of way death 141 00:14:56,530 --> 00:14:59,950 and injury to civilians against death and injury to our civilians and their civilians. 142 00:15:00,220 --> 00:15:02,050 That's not usually what what's done. 143 00:15:02,500 --> 00:15:12,309 What's usually done is to try to measure or articulate what might be the military advantage that a operation or army is after, 144 00:15:12,310 --> 00:15:16,270 and then weigh that against the number of people who are going to be injured or killed. 145 00:15:16,750 --> 00:15:19,120 And as I say, it's an extremely elastic concept. 146 00:15:19,540 --> 00:15:29,500 On the other hand, the definition of countermeasure proportionality is framed clearly in terms of equivalent economic harm. 147 00:15:30,580 --> 00:15:35,889 [INAUDIBLE] for tat, you cost $1 billion and this is the way the World Trade Organisation often frames it. 148 00:15:35,890 --> 00:15:42,940 In their arbitration cases, Country X caused $1 billion or $100 Billion against Country Y. 149 00:15:43,060 --> 00:15:45,520 Why now has the right to exact it now? 150 00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:55,840 It's important also to understand that these countermeasures function differently than do the invalid definition, 151 00:15:55,840 --> 00:15:59,560 because countermeasures are a self-help measure in the international community. 152 00:15:59,920 --> 00:16:06,549 They're designed to allow states to respond by using measures short of force in 153 00:16:06,550 --> 00:16:11,680 order to restore the balance of law abiding behaviour between in this case, 154 00:16:11,680 --> 00:16:18,520 between nations. So that it's one way to look at countermeasures are a kind of unarmed reprisal. 155 00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:24,040 So if we go back to the, the, the depictions of belligerent reprisal, 156 00:16:24,340 --> 00:16:29,380 where one country would harm one country, another country, civilians or prisoners of war, 157 00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:34,389 and in response, the other country would harm a similar number of prisoners of war or civilians 158 00:16:34,390 --> 00:16:39,520 in order to prevent or to deter the offending country from doing it again. 159 00:16:40,180 --> 00:16:45,400 These are like reprisals in the sense they're [INAUDIBLE] for tat, in the sense of a response to unlawful behaviour, 160 00:16:46,270 --> 00:16:53,679 in the sense that they're hoping to deter and prevent future behaviour and in the sense that a countermeasure 161 00:16:53,680 --> 00:17:00,790 is designed to prevent an offending nation or offending group from benefiting from their unlawful behaviour. 162 00:17:01,150 --> 00:17:05,290 And this is much different than in bell proportionality, 163 00:17:05,290 --> 00:17:13,240 where the military advantage here is generally framed in terms of incapacitating an enemy to one degree or another. 164 00:17:14,590 --> 00:17:23,260 And so it's much more expansive, much broader. So what you would do to achieve a military advantage if you defined that military advantages, 165 00:17:23,260 --> 00:17:30,130 victory or incapacitating significant numbers of of enemy military capabilities 166 00:17:30,460 --> 00:17:35,860 and your much wider latitude to inflict harm among civilians than you do here. 167 00:17:36,490 --> 00:17:41,590 In here, civilians will suffer insofar as the harm is proportionate here. 168 00:17:41,590 --> 00:17:44,950 They're the direct targets of the harm. They're not collateral harm. 169 00:17:45,430 --> 00:17:50,680 In this case, civilians are collateral. They're not the intended victim or target. 170 00:17:51,070 --> 00:17:55,299 Here they are the intended victim or target. So how do we think about that and how do we justify it? 171 00:17:55,300 --> 00:18:03,520 And I'll come back to that in a minute. But it's a feature of war now that that software is going to introduce. 172 00:18:06,830 --> 00:18:15,170 Second thing I want to look at here is the question of liability and who is liable to defensive harming. 173 00:18:17,150 --> 00:18:27,230 And in conventional war, what you see here on the left, this is a graph, a graphic that was taken from my book on moral dilemmas of modern war. 174 00:18:27,650 --> 00:18:36,980 You see, the conventional war is fairly dichotomous in the sense that we've got fairly straightforward categories of combatants and non-combatants. 175 00:18:38,060 --> 00:18:43,040 There is a grey area there, I admit, and everybody who studies this knows it, but it's a very small grey area. 176 00:18:44,030 --> 00:18:48,770 It might be civilians who work in arms factories and that sort of that sort of thing. 177 00:18:49,250 --> 00:18:57,710 So campaigns are liable to harm non-combatants are not liable to the principle of non-combat nearly covers non-combatants, 178 00:18:58,550 --> 00:19:02,880 while compounds, of course, are liable to defensive harm in asymmetric war. 179 00:19:02,900 --> 00:19:13,910 We see something that is more like a sliding scale in the sense that we see different levels of involvement in the hostilities going from none, 180 00:19:14,360 --> 00:19:17,569 which are traditional non-combatants to direct involvement, 181 00:19:17,570 --> 00:19:21,709 which are traditional commands to a whole array of people who are sitting around in the 182 00:19:21,710 --> 00:19:29,240 middle who are indirect participants or indirect contributors to war in asymmetric war. 183 00:19:29,390 --> 00:19:35,150 If we're talking about a guerrilla organisation, most often this involves all the people who are working for the political wing, 184 00:19:36,440 --> 00:19:41,000 people who are in their cyber units, diplomatic units, financial media, communications and so forth. 185 00:19:41,510 --> 00:19:48,500 What do we do with those people? By the law of armed conflict, these people are protected civilians. 186 00:19:49,910 --> 00:19:55,970 But what plays out in practice, if we look at a number of asymmetric wars, particularly in the Middle East, 187 00:19:56,450 --> 00:20:08,630 is that it's very difficult to defeat a non-state armed group only by removing their direct participants. 188 00:20:09,890 --> 00:20:16,700 One reason is because the numbers are generally relatively small. There aren't huge guerrilla armies neither. 189 00:20:16,700 --> 00:20:20,239 They're not. If you look at Hamas and Hezbollah, we look at the Taliban. 190 00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:25,520 These were generally armies that had numbered between ten and 25 or 30,000 people. 191 00:20:25,700 --> 00:20:28,340 Well, their support group was significantly larger. 192 00:20:28,910 --> 00:20:38,270 So if you look at Israel's actions in the 2006 Lebanon war that lasted some 35 or 36 days, the big the direct targets was exhausted very early on. 193 00:20:39,710 --> 00:20:45,680 Then what do you do? The war is not over. So the idea began and these armies began to implement. 194 00:20:45,680 --> 00:20:53,660 It would be to go after in some way the political wing of a guerrilla organisation or the those who provided economic support. 195 00:20:53,870 --> 00:20:58,340 The United States would go after cyber operators. 196 00:20:58,350 --> 00:21:01,640 The United States would go after those who provided economic and diplomatic support 197 00:21:02,120 --> 00:21:09,950 so that the question then became to what level of force are these people liable? 198 00:21:09,980 --> 00:21:17,390 And the idea of participatory liability, in contrast to the way the United States and Israel acted in their respective asymmetric wars, 199 00:21:17,720 --> 00:21:25,459 is to also introduce a sliding scale relative to harm so that those people who here who are in the middle and providing 200 00:21:25,460 --> 00:21:32,150 indirect harm are those people who need to be subdued in some way but are not necessarily liable to lethal harm. 201 00:21:32,570 --> 00:21:37,330 In other words, they are targetable. We're changing here in a very significant way. 202 00:21:37,340 --> 00:21:41,900 I think the principal distinction. These are no longer a protected population. 203 00:21:42,710 --> 00:21:47,000 They're no longer protected because they contribute to the threat in a very 204 00:21:47,870 --> 00:21:56,599 significant and measurable way by providing or by taking part in software tactics, 205 00:21:56,600 --> 00:22:05,270 whether it's cyber war, whether it's whether it's economic, economic measures, fundraising, communications, propaganda, public diplomacy and so forth. 206 00:22:06,110 --> 00:22:11,719 So one response then that needs to that requires a great deal of thought. 207 00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:18,830 I won't get into it today or what a response, what or state responses to those who are placed here in the middle. 208 00:22:20,270 --> 00:22:25,430 And one answer is, as you saw from the cyber example, is they may be legitimate targets of cyber attacks. 209 00:22:26,630 --> 00:22:33,320 Another example that I won't discuss this afternoon that I've written about are various forms of non-lethal warfare and arrest and incarceration. 210 00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:43,280 So idea of developing a sliding scale, both of liability and harm, I think is very important in the context of asymmetric hybrid war, 211 00:22:43,610 --> 00:22:48,290 especially when the soft tactics that these groups employ are so significant. 212 00:22:49,010 --> 00:22:52,490 Cyber War. We're just beginning to understand where cyberwar is going. 213 00:22:53,210 --> 00:22:56,300 Economic measures, public diplomacy, propaganda. 214 00:22:57,200 --> 00:23:05,900 When non-state groups manipulate the media and we see how effective that can be in terms of international public relations. 215 00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:11,900 In terms of international public opinion, states then have to ask themselves, what do they do with these kinds of situations? 216 00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:19,219 As a matter of fact, it was an interesting this was an interesting headline in New York Times about six months, 217 00:23:19,220 --> 00:23:24,920 about eight months ago, one by one ICES Social media experts are killed as a result of FBI probe. 218 00:23:24,950 --> 00:23:30,650 Well, why would social media experts be anything even closely resembling, you know, a combatant? 219 00:23:31,730 --> 00:23:35,990 Well, you get into issues here of propaganda. You get issues in issues of incitement. 220 00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:44,180 And these are questions that we have not really considered deeply enough in in terms of how the law of armed conflict should work, 221 00:23:44,180 --> 00:23:52,130 because clearly these media experts are some kind of contributing factor in the success that ISIS had at the time. 222 00:23:52,820 --> 00:24:00,500 On the other hand, are they liable to defensive killing? The answer is probably no, unless they're out there inciting genocide, 223 00:24:00,500 --> 00:24:03,830 which some of them might be doing, but others might just be recruiting members on social media. 224 00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:11,870 And no different than army recruiters or civilian recruiters or civilian organisations that promote and encourage people to enlist in the Army. 225 00:24:12,410 --> 00:24:17,660 So these are questions that we are just beginning to wrestle with. 226 00:24:18,350 --> 00:24:24,320 And there's two brief issues I'd like to discuss before moving on to the second example. 227 00:24:25,100 --> 00:24:32,600 I discussed already how indirect libel participants might be open to defensive harming. 228 00:24:33,290 --> 00:24:41,090 Those are the people who work for the political wing of a of a non-state or even state organisation. 229 00:24:41,420 --> 00:24:48,470 And there we see how they may be liable to certain levels of force, although not lethal force. 230 00:24:48,860 --> 00:24:50,570 But then the question is, what about everybody else? 231 00:24:51,410 --> 00:24:56,870 When we see that cyber in the cyber examples, the people targeted are not liable participants, they're just doing their work. 232 00:24:57,980 --> 00:25:02,570 People subject to propaganda are not necessarily people who are taking part in the hostilities. 233 00:25:03,110 --> 00:25:05,360 And here the question becomes a little bit more involved. 234 00:25:05,360 --> 00:25:14,600 And I was surprised to see that the Talon Manual actually tried to address this by saying that there might be a necessity argument here. 235 00:25:15,230 --> 00:25:26,240 In other words, it might be feasible to think about targeting civilians with non-lethal harm by using a lesser evil kind of argumentation that yes, 236 00:25:26,330 --> 00:25:35,209 it is wrong to target civilians. But the outcome or the alternative outcome of using lethal force even against liable targets, 237 00:25:35,210 --> 00:25:40,720 might be more destructive than using non-lethal force against civilians. 238 00:25:40,730 --> 00:25:46,940 Of course, as you see, it opens up a whole can of worms here because once we put civilians on the firing line 239 00:25:46,940 --> 00:25:52,969 and these theoretical constraints that we're thinking about now may not be played out, 240 00:25:52,970 --> 00:26:01,760 they may not be something that people are going to necessarily follow, but we can certainly enumerate certain certain principles, 241 00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:07,790 one being a lesser evil argument, another being the effectiveness of harming civilians. 242 00:26:08,420 --> 00:26:18,229 Another one would be a kind of and this battalion manual mentions in a little bit more detail a kind of proof of human rights. 243 00:26:18,230 --> 00:26:24,860 In other words, there's a certain human rights protection to civilians are entitled to something maybe similar to Common Article three, 244 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:30,860 where harming civilians cannot exceed a certain level of harm that violates their human rights. 245 00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:39,410 It can't it sort of can't exceed a certain level of even non-lethal harm where the long term effects might be irreversible. 246 00:26:41,540 --> 00:26:47,750 One of the interesting things about this is that a colleague of mine, Valerie Malkovich's, who is at Colgate, 247 00:26:47,780 --> 00:26:55,070 who writes about traditional and just war theory, wrote me that this isn't such a strange idea among the classical just war theorists. 248 00:26:55,760 --> 00:27:03,740 And for them she writes that inflicting non-lethal, harming non-combatants is acceptable when necessary and proportionate. 249 00:27:04,190 --> 00:27:11,030 And the reasoning is, is that property destruction is so less severe than loss of life or severe injury, 250 00:27:11,870 --> 00:27:18,140 that in that it forms an entirely different category of harm, reliability becomes irrelevant. 251 00:27:20,030 --> 00:27:23,479 That's going to cause us to think because we never want to think that liability is irrelevant. 252 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:35,209 But if there indeed is a category of harm that is sufficiently removed from physical harm and extensive property harm that we can consider, 253 00:27:35,210 --> 00:27:38,150 it is something reliability is not entirely irrelevant. 254 00:27:38,150 --> 00:27:45,650 I wouldn't say it's entirely irrelevant, but it is something that can be pursued under certain conditions, 255 00:27:45,650 --> 00:27:53,690 the kind of conditions that I mentioned earlier. Then there might be room to think about how software software tactics allow those 256 00:27:53,690 --> 00:28:00,530 who use software tactics to be liable to some measure of defensive harming, 257 00:28:00,740 --> 00:28:05,000 even though on the face of it, it violates the principle of non-combatant immunity. 258 00:28:05,700 --> 00:28:12,359 So the two points I tried to make here with regard to cyber warfare is that it introduces a, on one hand, 259 00:28:12,360 --> 00:28:18,360 a more constrained principle of proportionality, but a more relaxed principle of distinction. 260 00:28:19,050 --> 00:28:28,170 The second topic I wanted to talk about is self-inflicted risk and violence. 261 00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:35,820 And this is another aspect of software that's extremely effective, possibly even more effective than cyber warfare. 262 00:28:35,940 --> 00:28:39,510 Although cyber warfare, of course, we don't know where the boundaries lie yet. 263 00:28:40,890 --> 00:28:43,530 Non-Violent resistance, of course, has been around for a long time. 264 00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:49,650 And the idea behind non-violent resistance is, well, there's two goals that I want to mention. 265 00:28:50,100 --> 00:28:54,840 One is the tactical goal and one is the strategic goal. The tactical goal. 266 00:28:55,190 --> 00:29:02,519 One of the tactical goals of non-violent resistance is what is called backfire backfires, provocation, backfires, 267 00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:19,709 provocation in the sense that the activists hope to and maybe even intend to draw a disproportionate response that as sharp rates increases, 268 00:29:19,710 --> 00:29:26,400 the resistance sows problems in the opponent's own camp and mobilises third parties in favour of non-violent resistance. 269 00:29:26,820 --> 00:29:29,220 Very often this backfire has lethal consequences. 270 00:29:30,180 --> 00:29:37,170 People are killed with the people who are killed are the demonstrators, are the activists are those are those civilians, again, 271 00:29:37,650 --> 00:29:45,629 who are pursuing maybe in conjunction with maybe independently of a non-state actor who might be 272 00:29:45,630 --> 00:29:50,850 vying for national self-determination or waging a civil war or a war of national liberation. 273 00:29:51,690 --> 00:29:59,790 I'll bring a couple of examples in a minute. But if the tactical goal is backfire, the strategic goal is some element of transformation. 274 00:30:00,690 --> 00:30:04,860 And transformation in the best sense is total victory. 275 00:30:05,430 --> 00:30:09,499 In other words, the disintegration of the opposite side there rarely happens. 276 00:30:09,500 --> 00:30:18,390 So there are several stages along the way in terms of transition, in terms of transformation that can be understood in terms of accommodation. 277 00:30:19,710 --> 00:30:29,730 It can be understood in terms of capitulation depending on the measures or the reaction of the state that's targeted by non-violent resistance, 278 00:30:29,970 --> 00:30:35,580 depending on how and to what extent they meet the demands of the activists and of the demonstrators. 279 00:30:35,580 --> 00:30:38,840 So it can be it can range from symbolic victories, right. 280 00:30:38,850 --> 00:30:44,040 They just want to show up in and make a point and want to thumb their nose at the head 281 00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:47,430 of state government all the way to attempts to really bring down the government. 282 00:30:47,700 --> 00:30:58,170 And if it becomes a a operation that forces compliance forces of a large degree of accommodation, 283 00:30:58,500 --> 00:31:04,260 then it becomes what's known as a transformative event. And I want to show you a clip here that probably many have seen. 284 00:31:05,130 --> 00:31:11,880 We're going to go back to 1931 to Gandhi's March on the Time somersault, where this is taken from the movie Gandhi. 285 00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:15,630 Although there are some interesting clips in YouTube back from the thirties, 286 00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:20,870 Hollywood is much more effective for my purposes and I'll play part of it, 287 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:25,000 the beginning part of it at the end, and I want you to pay attention at the end. 288 00:31:25,020 --> 00:31:28,349 The reporter, I think his name was Vance Walker, 289 00:31:28,350 --> 00:31:36,420 the depicted actor here concludes by saying that whatever moral ascendancy the West had was lost here today. 290 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:41,460 So historically, what you're going to see here became a transformative event. 291 00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:46,860 And what's important to see is that it relies significantly on backfire. 292 00:31:47,370 --> 00:31:51,809 It disappeared in The New York Times back in the early thirties and was, in fact, 293 00:31:51,810 --> 00:32:00,720 was considered by students the history of the Indian Revolutionary Independence Movement to be a transformative event. 294 00:32:01,110 --> 00:32:10,530 And what makes it a transformative event. Again, if we go back to Sharp, Sharp was a prominent or is a prominent non-violent resistance theorist, 295 00:32:11,010 --> 00:32:17,820 is that it both mobilises support within and mobilises support in public opinion without. 296 00:32:18,420 --> 00:32:26,430 Now there's a lot of interesting ethical issues surrounding non-violent resistance, because in this case, the violence is self-inflicted. 297 00:32:26,430 --> 00:32:33,660 To the extent that you have to ask yourself, what right do the activists have to enlist their own people and put them at risk in this way? 298 00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:41,520 And there's there's several ways of looking at that. It introduces another dimension of this aspect of soft war, 299 00:32:41,790 --> 00:32:48,460 because we ask what moral principles should bind or should guide those who are who 300 00:32:48,510 --> 00:32:54,600 are organising something that seems as morally clear cut as non-violent resistance. 301 00:32:56,010 --> 00:33:02,700 But if we look at the Indian example, one of the things we would look for is some element of just cause, right? 302 00:33:03,150 --> 00:33:11,760 And we can get into what just course means in any. National Liberation movement, an element of necessity that there are no other ways available. 303 00:33:11,790 --> 00:33:15,179 Normally, this is considered not the last resort. 304 00:33:15,180 --> 00:33:18,479 It's considered the kind of penultimate resort that we demand from non states 305 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:22,650 to undertake before they resort to non before they resort to armed conflict. 306 00:33:23,970 --> 00:33:32,340 I think there also has to be some questions about mitigating the harm, in other words, both mitigating the harm and gaining consent. 307 00:33:32,340 --> 00:33:37,110 And this is something that I've just begun to look at with varying degrees of success, 308 00:33:37,110 --> 00:33:42,180 because it's sometimes difficult to get into the minds of organisers and how people think and how they should think. 309 00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:48,839 But people should know what they're getting into. Now, in the case of Gandhi, we know that these people were trained ahead of time at least, 310 00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:54,270 to take this as well as they might have been trained to anticipate this kind of violence and not fight back. 311 00:33:55,020 --> 00:33:57,030 Now, it's important to note that in the Gandhi example, 312 00:33:57,030 --> 00:34:02,540 in contrast to some of the others I'm just going to mention, is there are two kinds of non-violent resistance. 313 00:34:02,550 --> 00:34:09,360 One is principled, non-violent resistance where the resisters will not fight back, and the other is strategic, 314 00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:13,589 non-violent resistance where resisters may fight back if it serves their 315 00:34:13,590 --> 00:34:18,240 purposes and certainly have done nothing to give up the right of self-defence. 316 00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,290 So sometimes there are situations where a peaceful march turns violent. 317 00:34:23,130 --> 00:34:27,810 Sometimes it's because the resisters of the marches are trying to defend themselves. 318 00:34:28,740 --> 00:34:34,139 And there's really nothing in non-violent resistance theory that demands someone forfeit their own right to 319 00:34:34,140 --> 00:34:39,720 self-defence unless they choose to give it up themselves for either ideological reasons or strategic reasons. 320 00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,350 So there is this element of consent that I think has to be obtained. 321 00:34:43,650 --> 00:34:52,950 There is an element of effectiveness that has to be pursued with activists need to understand and define what their goal is. 322 00:34:52,980 --> 00:34:59,160 Is the goal symbolic? Is the goal a search for accommodation? 323 00:34:59,310 --> 00:35:07,290 In this case? Ostensibly, the goal was to open up the factory and reduce the tax that the Indians were paid paying on salt. 324 00:35:07,620 --> 00:35:12,890 Although in retrospect we know the goal was much larger. But certainly the British could have come halfway and said, okay, 325 00:35:12,900 --> 00:35:17,520 we're going to make that concession and give up the tax on salt and let you take over your own production of salt, 326 00:35:17,700 --> 00:35:19,590 which they didn't do for all kinds of reasons, 327 00:35:19,980 --> 00:35:26,220 and which then made or escalated the both the effectiveness and the effect on the effectiveness and the, 328 00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:36,230 I think the anticipated goals of the activists to something much greater, ultimately capitulation and ultimately disintegration, 329 00:35:36,240 --> 00:35:43,470 which is ultimately where the situation went in India as the Indians gained their independence and the British left. 330 00:35:43,980 --> 00:35:52,410 So non-violent resistance is an aspect of soft war that raises other kinds of issues, 331 00:35:53,070 --> 00:36:03,030 both about proportionality and about and about the rights and the protections that are do civilians. 332 00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:09,570 I conclude in a moment and try to answer those questions about what kind of proportionality and where their rights lie. 333 00:36:09,810 --> 00:36:12,030 I just want to briefly mentioned a couple of other examples. 334 00:36:12,630 --> 00:36:21,670 Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor 1991 was a demonstration that began a peaceful demonstration that began against the Indonesian forces. 335 00:36:21,690 --> 00:36:24,330 It escalated out of control for all kinds of reasons. 336 00:36:24,660 --> 00:36:31,920 There was a Western photojournalist there who managed to take a videotape back in the days when there were big video cassettes, 337 00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:35,400 managed to hide it, managed to retrieve it, managed to get it out. 338 00:36:35,910 --> 00:36:42,600 And just in 1991, we were beginning to see the beginnings of the Internet. 339 00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:46,860 And East Timor is sometimes regarded as one of the first countries born of the Internet age. 340 00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:52,350 Internet, in the primitive, relatively primitive sense we have today, will be primitive 20 years from now. 341 00:36:53,010 --> 00:36:59,549 But this video was publicised and it slowly turned world opinion against the Indonesians, 342 00:36:59,550 --> 00:37:11,460 led the United Nations to approve a referendum for independence in East Timor and eventually led to intervention forces under the auspices of the U.N. 343 00:37:11,670 --> 00:37:19,409 In that sense, it became a transformative event because it turned out turned out in the sense of repudiating Indonesian rule, 344 00:37:19,410 --> 00:37:22,590 turned them out of eventually turned them out of East Timor. 345 00:37:24,130 --> 00:37:31,320 So those of you who might be familiar with the mama, the Mother Marmara, was a ship launched by Palestinians in 2010 out of Turkey. 346 00:37:31,860 --> 00:37:38,010 This was a very large ship. There was a whole flotilla. The ship was commandeered by Israeli commandos in the ensuing fight. 347 00:37:38,820 --> 00:37:43,950 Nine later, ten Turkish civilians died. This was a huge strategic victory for Hamas. 348 00:37:45,030 --> 00:37:55,470 It was transformative in every sense of the word. Israel was compelled to relax its land, brought its land blockade. 349 00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:05,490 The Egyptians opened up guns in the south, Israel opened up Gaza. In the north was international condemnation from wall to wall for for international. 350 00:38:05,630 --> 00:38:12,260 Committees of inquiry. Relations, diplomatic relations with Turkey were ruptured again. 351 00:38:12,350 --> 00:38:23,690 It began as a non-violent protest turned violent for all kinds of reasons, provoked a disproportionate reaction from the military. 352 00:38:24,500 --> 00:38:30,890 The result was backfire in the classic sense. This is not a national struggle. 353 00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:35,750 But this is Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, where children were put on the front line. 354 00:38:35,990 --> 00:38:41,330 This became a really interesting philosophical issue for the civil rights movement. 355 00:38:41,870 --> 00:38:46,250 This is taken from an article that Cheney Ryan, who is here at Oxford, wrote for a book we did on Soft War. 356 00:38:46,580 --> 00:38:53,180 And he's researched what became known as the Children's Crusade. What are the ethics of putting children on the front line? 357 00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:58,930 We started from the 16th Street Church. I was in jail seven days. 358 00:38:58,940 --> 00:39:04,160 We called ourselves Freedom Fighters. When I told my mother that I wanted to go, she said, okay. 359 00:39:04,550 --> 00:39:05,570 I was in the third grade. 360 00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:16,160 What they faced in the national press was this national international media carried images of police clubbing black children and firemen, 361 00:39:16,670 --> 00:39:21,470 causing them jets, the water powerful enough to strip the bark off a tree at 100 feet. 362 00:39:21,980 --> 00:39:26,870 Birmingham was a transformative event in the American civil rights movement. 363 00:39:27,500 --> 00:39:30,719 Later, of course, the church in Birmingham was bombed, poor children were killed. 364 00:39:30,720 --> 00:39:39,950 That gave further impetus again. Loss of life or harm that comes to the demonstrators or the participants themselves is an extremely powerful weapon. 365 00:39:39,950 --> 00:39:44,540 But it raises all kinds of moral issues. Anybody recognise this? 366 00:39:45,260 --> 00:39:48,909 Where are we? Anybody under 40. 367 00:39:48,910 --> 00:39:56,500 Let's start with that. Under 50. Anybody want to guess my Vietnam? 368 00:39:57,310 --> 00:40:03,730 Well, the the demonstrations were against Chicago. 369 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,300 We said Chicago. Chicago. Chicago, 1968. 370 00:40:08,050 --> 00:40:15,790 The what began as a peaceful demonstration against the war in Vietnam during the national convention of the Democratic Party. 371 00:40:16,870 --> 00:40:24,820 This became, again, a seminal, transformative Avenger's, people who see the problems in the Democratic Party today. 372 00:40:26,470 --> 00:40:34,490 They trace them back to Chicago in 1968 because of the way that this Liberal Party became associated with suppression of speech. 373 00:40:34,510 --> 00:40:42,730 Street violence, provocation, backfire. So these issues are issues that continue to resonate. 374 00:40:43,300 --> 00:40:49,150 They provide a very, very powerful tool for non-state actors. 375 00:40:49,900 --> 00:40:56,500 Proportionality here is something even narrower, I think, than the proportionality that I mentioned in the framework of cyber warfare. 376 00:40:56,860 --> 00:41:02,260 What we're seeing here is a very, very low bar for disproportionality. 377 00:41:02,270 --> 00:41:09,210 In other words, it takes very little for a state to be accused of disproportionality when they enter the fray and harm, 378 00:41:10,210 --> 00:41:17,920 harm peaceful demonstrators in terms of self inflicted violence as a whole. 379 00:41:17,950 --> 00:41:26,919 I think moral domain there, that requires a lot of investigation about what ethical rules apply to groups 380 00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:31,960 and individuals who want to inflict or prepare to inflict harm upon themselves. 381 00:41:32,350 --> 00:41:36,040 At the beginning, I talk about human shields. Human shields. When they work, that's fine. 382 00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:43,480 But when they don't work, people die. Hunger striking to the death. This is self inflicted violence that can be very, very effective. 383 00:41:43,990 --> 00:41:48,220 We've seen hunger strikes in you, United States, in Israel and Turkey. 384 00:41:48,610 --> 00:41:54,040 And when the goals are modest, the tactical victories are are relatively easy to come by. 385 00:41:55,690 --> 00:42:00,610 We see how human shielding works when the regime, a group is fighting against this law compliant. 386 00:42:00,610 --> 00:42:03,489 But all these put locals at risk. So here too, 387 00:42:03,490 --> 00:42:12,490 we see how proportionality and the immunity of combatants changes in how the immunity of combatants is either changed 388 00:42:12,490 --> 00:42:20,860 because of the ready or not lethality of the weapon or because of the exigencies that motivate and drive non-state groups. 389 00:42:21,970 --> 00:42:31,030 I conclude with just one other slide, because this issue, of course, he hasn't left the news that I discussed. 390 00:42:32,780 --> 00:42:38,420 And this is Catalonia. The question is, when you look at all these pictures, what's the state supposed to do? 391 00:42:39,650 --> 00:42:43,879 The answer is nothing. In most cases, nothing. In other words, 392 00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:48,530 aren't any of these cases that would have come including the case with Gandhi that would have 393 00:42:48,530 --> 00:42:53,990 had the implications they had had states backed off and taken relatively innocuous steps. 394 00:42:54,830 --> 00:43:05,000 Why they can't do that, why they feel compelled to to take action that will result and they may even know results and backfire. 395 00:43:05,010 --> 00:43:07,459 I mean, the Spanish government had to know what was going to happen here, 396 00:43:07,460 --> 00:43:11,740 that it was only going to inflame and make things we don't make and find things through. 397 00:43:11,930 --> 00:43:15,829 Whether this is going to be a transformative avenger now, we don't know. 398 00:43:15,830 --> 00:43:20,270 But this was on the BBC just a couple of days ago from Madrid. 399 00:43:20,270 --> 00:43:28,170 This is about upholding the rule of law, protecting the constitution and disciplining what it sees as an unruly, disobedient, devolved government. 400 00:43:28,190 --> 00:43:33,130 Right. However, the central government wants to minimise the risk of large scale demonstrations. 401 00:43:33,950 --> 00:43:40,400 Civil servants and government lawyers have thought long and hard about what measures to adopt and when and how they should be implemented. 402 00:43:40,940 --> 00:43:42,960 Well, we'll see. Thank you.