Synopses & Reviews
Former secretary of defense Leon Panetta once described cyber warfare as andldquo;the most serious threat in the twenty-first century,andrdquo; capable of destroying our entire infrastructure and crippling the nation.
Already, major cyber attacks have affected countries around the world: Estonia in 2007, Georgia in 2008, Iran in 2010, and most recently the United States. As with other methods of war, cyber technology can be used not only against military forces and facilities but also against civilian targets. Information technology has enabled a new method of warfare that is proving extremely difficult to combat, let alone defeat.
And yet cyber warfare is still in its infancy, with innumerable possibilities and contingencies for how such conflicts may play out in the coming decades. Brian M. Mazanec examines the worldwide development of constraining norms for cyber war and predicts how those norms will unfold in the future. Employing case studies of other emerging-technology weaponsandmdash;chemical and biological, strategic bombing, and nuclear weaponryandmdash;Mazanec expands previous understandings of norm-evolution theory, offering recommendations for U.S. policymakers and citizens alike as they grapple with the reality of cyber terrorism in our own backyard.
Review
andldquo;Will norms evolve for cyber warfare analogous to those . . . that have helped keep the world free from the use of nuclear weapons since 1945? This thoughtful and careful work parses this hugely important question with care and creativity. Bravo.andrdquo;andmdash;R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Review
andldquo;Dr. Mazanecandrsquo;s pioneering work on cyber norms fills a void in the nascent canon of cyber-conflict knowledge and sets a path forward for further research. Informative and instructive for todayandrsquo;s policymakers.andrdquo;andmdash;Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the first director of intelligence at the Joint Task Force on Computer Network Defense
Review
andldquo;The Evolution of Cyber Warand#160;is a significant contribution to the required canon for anyone interested in understanding this new prospective weapon of mass destruction.andrdquo;andmdash;Keith Payne, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Forces Policy and current president of the National Institute for Public Policy
Review
andldquo;Brian Mazanec has produced a stellar work by creating a set of norms and then applying them across different evolutions of weapons platforms.andrdquo;andmdash;Jeffrey Carr, CEO of cyber security firm Taia Global, Inc., and author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld
Synopsis
The United States, Barry R. Posen argues in Restraint, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that he calls "liberal hegemony," one that Posen sees as unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. Written for policymakers and observers alike, Restraint explains precisely why this grand strategy works poorly and then provides a carefully designed alternative grand strategy and an associated military strategy and force structure. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America's consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength.
After setting out the political implications of restraint as a guiding principle, Posen sketches the appropriate military forces and posture that would support such a strategy. He works with a deliberately constrained notion of grand strategy and, even more important, of national security (which he defines as including sovereignty, territorial integrity, power position, and safety). His alternative for military strategy, which Posen calls "command of the commons," focuses on protecting U.S. global access through naval, air, and space power, while freeing the United States from most of the relationships that require the permanent stationing of U.S. forces overseas.
About the Author
Brian M. Mazanec is an assistant director for defense capabilities and management with the U.S. government and an adjunct professor in the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University. He is the coauthor of Deterring Cyber Warfare: Bolstering Strategic Stability in Cyberspace, and his work has appeared in Strategic Studies Quarterly, the National Cybersecurity Institute Journal, Comparative Strategy, Politics and the Life Sciences, and the Journal of International Security Affairs.