« April 2007 | Main | June 2007 »
May 21, 2007
Cyberattacks on Estonia - a move to netwar?
Some interesting arguments around cyberattacks on Estonia:
The computer attacks, apparently originating in Russia, first hit the Web site of Estonia's prime minister on April 27, the day the country was mired in protest and violence. The president's site went down, too, and soon so did those of other ministries in a wired country that touts its paperless government and likes to call itself E-stonia.Then the attacks, coming in waves, began to strike newspapers and television stations, then schools and finally banks, raising fears that an initial nuisance could have economic consequences.
The attacks have peaked and tapered off since then, but they have not ended, prompting officials there to declare Estonia the first country to fall victim to a virtual war.
"If you have a missile attack against, let's say, an airport, it is an act of war," Madis Mikko, a spokesman for the Estonian Defense Ministry, said in a telephone interview Friday. "If the same result is caused by computers, then how else do you describe that kind of attack?"
Officials in Estonia have accused Russia of orchestrating the attacks, officially or unofficially. They also raised them at a meeting of NATO on Monday, with the defense minister saying that the alliance, which Estonia joined in 2004, needed to urgently debate the question - once seemingly a distant threat - of whether mass computer attacks posed a threat to national security.
"Events of this nature make a lot of people sit up," a NATO spokesman, Robert Pszczel, said in a telephone interview. "Today Estonia, tomorrow it could be somebody else."
It's first worth noting that this is an example of the vulnerabilities which can be created by the move to networked societies - Estonia was especially hard-hit because it has pioneered e-government. Another issue here is the way that certain types of conflict - what Arquilla and Ronfeldt have described as netwar - can blur the distinction between war/non-war (or attacks and non-attacks). Clearly, nasty things were done to Estonia - but is NATO (which views an attack on one member as an attack on all) going to view this as an 'attack' in any strong sense of the word? This seems unlikely.
Assuming NATO doesn't respond, a significant issue which remains open is if or how Estonia will retaliate for these (non)attacks. It's far from clear who could be targeted - the Russian government denies responsibility - or what a 'proportionate' response might be.
Perhaps a final point to bear in mind is that (while it is possible that cyberattacks could cause serious casualties - e.g. shutting down essential infrastructure) the cyberattacks on Estonia were pretty bloodless. Given that I spend most of my time analysing the mass killing in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes a nice change to be discussing conflict centred around hacking instead of more conventional munitions. Sadly, I doubt this will last.
Posted by jon_mendel at 02:14 PM | TrackBack
May 14, 2007
Blair, Brown and ongoing foreign policy failures
If you haven't been living under a stone lately, you probably know that Tony Blair has announced that he will soon be going as UK Prime Minister; Gordon Brown is as near as possible to a sure thing for the replacement. This therefore seems like a good time to look back over some of what Blair and Brown have been responsible for - in particular, looking at Iraq and international politics.
Blair is definitely an optimist - hoping to build up a Foundation working to improve interfaith understanding (especially between Christians, Jews and Muslims). Robert Marshall-Andrews (a Labour MP) has argued on Have I Got News for You that - of all the billions of people in the world - only one person is less qualified for that job than Blair (I'm not sure if he meant to refer to Bush or Bin Laden). Marshall-Andrews may have been a bit harsh - but I really don't like Blair's chances.
Speaking on Iraq, Brown's language is very interesting: he stated that "I accept that mistakes have been made". Given the significant failures in Iraq, this does not seem terribly apologetic - the issue for Brown is not that 'mistakes have been made' in Iraq, but that (as Chancellor) he has played a key part in making these mistakes, signing the cheques which have funded, and continue to fund, Britain's contribution to the violence there.
Brown once argued that, "[i]nstead of spending billions on weapons of death like Trident, we'll use our resources to help those most in need". Now he not only supports the funding of a replacement for our Trident nuclear weapons system - he has also played a key role in funding the weapons of death which have been contributing, and still are contributing, to the violence in Iraq.
Perhaps Brown's next policy will be to up spending on the missiles, bombs and bullets of life and vitality.
Posted by jon_mendel at 01:26 PM | TrackBack
May 05, 2007
Grief, anxiety, and the politics of remembering the 7/7 attacks
With new information emerging about the 7/7 London bombings, there have been new calls for an independent inquiry. I'm particularly interested in what Blair had to say about this in the UK Parliament: "We have to be clear about the reason why people want another inquiry. I totally understand both the grief of the victims of 7/7 and their anxiety to have another inquiry, but the reason why people want another inquiry is for it to reach a different conclusion." Blair appears to be using the understandable grief of victims and their families as a reason why their calls for an independent inquiry should not be taken entirely 'seriously'.
I'd be very concerned by such tactics: a politics of remembering/commeration needs to take account of emotional responses to what went wrong in the past. One might note, for example, the way that the anti-war Vietnam veterans were able to use their experiences of and responses to conflict - and in some cases the trauma resulting from this...what came to be called PTSD - as part of their political action.
Grief and anxiety resulting from the events of 7/7, and from the wider conflict of the 'war on terror', should play a part in our political responses to it. When politicians try to exclude these emotions - perhaps in order to construct a 'rational' position - this should be treated with considerable caution.
