21st century warfare: a whole of society approach to resilience

Digital warfare needs new rules of engagement

An updated Geneva Convention is needed to redefine conflict and to protect people as war moves to the cybersphere, the audience at a Friends of Europe event heard 1 June 2022. The online event, entitled ‘21st century warfare: a whole of society approach to resilience’, saw experts debating the opportunities and challenges of an increasingly digitalised world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has more than ever revealed the need to educate all of society about new online realities and to address the spread of disinformation.

“A sort of Geneva Convention for cyberspace is needed,” said Hanna Linderstål, CEO and Founder of the Earhart Business Protection Agency. An updated treaty would help society manage a new era of digital warfare that was unimaginable when the original Conventions were drafted between 1929 and 1949. “What is a combatant? What is an unacceptable target? What can we accept in a cyberwar? That all has to be discussed and perhaps even decided on,” Linderstål explained.

Other participants agreed that it was time to take a hard look at an update of the Geneva Conventions. This could mean, for instance, rethinking the definition of roles and responsibilities in conflict. The same person working as an engineer behind a keyboard in Antwerp could be an international computer hacker or a combatant in a war on the other side of the world.

Understanding these shifting roles and situations shows the importance of educating everyone in society, from school children and office workers, to troops and policymakers, the event audience heard.

“We need to do a better job of understanding the sheer complexity of what we’re seeing,” said moderator Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence at Friends of Europe and former Deputy Assistant Secretary General for emerging security challenges at NATO. “We have to learn as things are happening. Warfare is changing. Who is a warrior? What are the rules of engagement?”

Cautious Optimism

Chris Kremidas Courtney, Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence at Friends of Europe, encouraged participants to be optimistic but not to delay the development of new norms. “Right now, we’re in a pretty good place in terms of understanding and critical thinking,” he said. “In the coming years, we will have some pretty difficult decisions to make.”

Switching everyday activities online can help citizens save money and make life easier. But it also creates new opportunities for attacks on key infrastructure, such as hospitals and smart power grids. Most of these digital systems were built at a time when conflict and war were far from people’s minds.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now pushed these concerns to the fore, event participants heard. In particular, there is a need to counter the easy spread of disinformation online. Putin used a false narrative, spread and fuelled by a strictly controlled Russian state media, as well as the Kremlin’s interference in other countries’ elections, to justify the invasion.

But the invasion also revealed a new resilience in society that would not have been so easily seen in the analogue world. Instead of facing an isolated Ukraine, Russia now finds itself faced with a united West and an army of hyper-enabled private citizens, civil society groups, NGOs and companies challenging it in the information sphere and cyberspace, and by providing key capabilities to Ukrainian forces.

Winston Churchill was cited as an expert on understanding how everything interacts and quickly crafting a successful response to new, dynamic situations.

Another participant, however, quoted a more unusual expert when warning Europe not to overreach itself when regulating a whole-of-society response to recent events. “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers,” as Princess Leia said in Star Wars.