Center of Gravity: a New
Ethical Decision Point for Just War Theory
Captain Maxwell Thibodeaux
Introduction
The principles of war are the
axiomatic assumptions that we make about sound strategy. These principles drive
our strategy decisions. Thus, it’s not difficult to predict the future of
warfare if we stick to the axiomatic principles that have reliably determined
how we fight—Principles of Command Unity, Objective, Mass, Maneuver, Economy of
Force, Surprise, Security etc. We can safely say that all proper strategies
will maximize and harmonize these principles with the goal of winning
honorably. In any war these principles will be operative and will determine the
tactical outcome of all battles over time.
To a certain extent this
foundational portrait that I am painting for you is already frayed around the
edges because the advent of nuclear and missile technologies. These
technologies have made at least some of these immutable principles mutable. For
instance, there is no form of maneuver that will save a country from the
devastation of a nuclear attack, except perhaps political maneuvering.
Thus, morally speaking the
technological innovation of nuclear weapons has thrown a wrench into the
system. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and morality has thrown a wrench
into the efficacy of nuclear weapons use. I tend to think that the second
statement is at least as true as the first one. In the current analysis of this
tension between nuclear weapons and the morality of war prudent nations have
come to the conclusion that there is no way to wage a moral war with nuclear
weapons. The longstanding moral principles of discrimination and
proportionality stand in our way. We’ve been to the precipice, looked over, and
turned back. This is not to ignore the hot issue of missile defense, but it’s
difficult to see the aim of missile defense as anything but a lid on the deadliness
of nuclear technology. Thus missile defense is not an iteration of technology,
but more of a technology recall on the deadliest of our current weapons
systems.
The newest innovation that affects
the traditional view of morality in war is a new paradigm in war fighting
labeled Information Operations. The newness of Information Operations is very
controversial just now. The issue is whether it departs from the traditional
ways of waging war, or just consists of a rehash of axiomatic principles long in
effect, e.g. maintaining your own command and control while disrupting your
enemy’s command and control and intelligence gathering. My view is that the
form of information operations that the US is oriented towards is indeed at
least a new moral development if it’s not a strategic one. Perhaps this would
not be true, except for the confluence of Information Operations with Center of
Gravity Doctrine.
These two 21st century buzzwords
combine to produce a moral minefield if we take the Just War Tradition
seriously. This is so because Information Operations’ primary target is not
field forces, but in order of importance—Leadership, System Essentials,
Infrastructure, Population, and Fielded Forces.[1] This is according to the Cyber Sword, a
publication of the U.S. Army Joint Command and Control Warfare Center. Indeed
the view is that fielded forces are the outer ring in the enemy target. Their
“only function is to protect their own inner rings or to threaten those [rings]
of an enemy.”[2] This publication goes on to suggest that
“Modern technology, such as air-delivered projectiles and information weapons …
makes possible new and politically powerful options that make traditional
fielded forces of little value or concern.”[3] The only conclusion to be drawn here is that
since the advent of the information operations/center of gravity doctrine,
soldiers are no longer restricted to engaging combatants. Instead we are to
conduct a systems analysis that includes all of those systems which are crucial
to the functioning of an enemy power, and we’re to target whichever one is most
vulnerable.
Indeed we expect the same kind of
targeting from our potential enemies. President Clinton’s Decision Directive 63
states that “because of our military strength, future enemies, whether nations,
groups or individuals, may seek to harm us in non-traditional ways including …
non-traditional attacks on our infrastructure and informational systems.”[4] In this same document President Clinton
emphasizes the interdependence of public and private systems. He writes that
the “United States possesses both the world’s strongest military and its
largest national economy. Those two aspects of our power are mutually
reinforcing and dependent. They are also increasingly reliant upon certain critical
infrastructures and upon cyber-based information systems.”[5] Add to this the current trend of privatizing
government, and you have significantly altered the landscape of the public
private split. Instead of two separate entities, one inherently military and
one inherently non-military, we have one system that goes under the moniker the
“Public-Private Partnership.”[6]
The problem here is that this new
outlook clouds the jus in bello concept of moral warfare in two ways. First,
the concept of discrimination which historically limits the use of force to
combatants becomes more difficult to apply in practice. Second the concept of
proportionality and the limiting principle of military necessity that expresses
proportionality is also obscured. However, I do not think that this is quite
the diabolical course of events that it sounds like at first blush, or else the
title of my paper might have been “The Crisis in Just War Tradition”. But, if
we understand the current state of affairs correctly and they continue unabated,
we find ourselves as military professionals at a fundamental decision point. If
we wish to keep the Just War Tradition relevant, we must shift the paradigm to
accommodate this new outlook or abandon this moral tradition altogether. This
paradigm shift is the subject of this brief paper.
I limit the breadth of the paper to
three goals, and I’m going to sacrifice some depth in the interest of your
interest. First I want to lay out the context and causes for this new moral
decision point. This is where I’ll spend the most time. Secondly I’ll make the
combined implications of the COG concept and the concept of information
operations as concrete as possible. Finally I’ll try to provoke some thought
about the moral alternatives for the future or warfare.
Context and Causes
The current Army doctrine enjoins us
to “be capable of full-dimensional operations. This means employing all means
available to accomplish any given mission decisively and at the least
cost—across the full range of possible operations in war and in operations
other than war (emphasis added).”[7] The least cost language is ambiguous here,
but it connotes at least two things. It corresponds to the Center of Gravity
Doctrine and the Information Operations targeting priority. Colonel Warden, who
was the “architect for the successful Gulf War air Campaign” expresses this
concept of economy best when he remarks, “To change the system by smashing at
its outer ramparts is likely to be expensive and time consuming. On the other
hand, when we understand that a system consists of subsystems, or centers of
gravity, we begin to see that changing the system may be much easier than it
first appeared.”[8] In other words, the Center of Gravity
Doctrine is a rearticulation of the economy of force principle. There has been
a great deal of wrangling over what exactly a COG is, and branches have only
recently begun to reach a common vision. Most simply put, COG Doctrine dictates
that force is directed at critical vulnerabilities which represent pillars of strength
for the enemy. They are those targets that represent the best possible and the
most economic defeat of the enemy.
An appropriate analogy for
explaining what this means in ordinary terms is the metaphor of the boxer. The
boxer sizes up his opponent and strikes at the glass chin, or the weak
stomach—whatever seems to be the accessible vulnerability that will lead to his
opponent’s defeat. He dances around the ring when his opponents brawn is
concentrated in his arms and chest. He does this so that he can deny the
opponent’s most deadly abilities. This is precisely what any military body
seeks to accomplish in time of war. To the extent that attacking a center of
gravity saves us time, physical toil, or manpower and loss of life, its use is
mandated—required—inescapable. To the extent that technology can minimize these
burdens, its use is necessary not just for the money it saves, but for the life
that is at stake.
This does not indicate a break with
the law of land warfare for instance, because to a great extent, the law of
land warfare accepts militarily necessary attacks on the infrastructure if the
infrastructure is directly related to combat power, e.g., munitions factories.
The U.S. has already begun to walk the fine line of attacking infrastructure
that may or may not be directly related to combat power. In fact, we’ve widened
our definition of directly contributes to combat power to include those
mechanisms that affect the will of the civilian population as well as the
military population, e.g., PSYOPS, misinformation, disinformation, breaking
national communication networks, roads, financial systems, and power sources.
Already the Army is deeply committed to the concept of information warfare.
There is even a new functional area for field grade Army officers called the
information operations career field. The advent of information operations is a
primary cause leading us to the current decision point.
There are two other influential
factors. One is the technology and the other is the media. The fact that
technology and computer systems are now an integral part in both the military
and civilian infrastructure, that they are largely one in the same as in the
case of roads and telecommunications, means that breaking military technology
will almost surely mean breaking non-combatant technology. This is because the
U.S. is one of the leading proponents of globilization, i.e., modern
transportation and communications infrastructures facilitate a global economy
where the means of production need not be located inside a country’s borders.
This allows many countries to substitute technology for the means of
production. For example, it’s no longer very profitable to manufacture steel in
the U.S. We simply requisition and import what we need. Modern information
systems (cyber-systems) allow us to coordinate the markets and commodities in
such a way that we need not physically own or control the means of production.
This sounds fine until we recognize
that this also means that disrupting the global coordination that it takes to
get X essential commodity to market or into a production cycle is as simple as
interrupting the communications. So one doesn’t have to blow up bridges or sink
ships to affect the center of gravity that is manufacturing or food production
or steel raw material. An increasing reliance on technology instead of physical
systems means greater vulnerability. Hence, the economy of communications
disruption takes the place of physical force. This kind of attack is fairly
conventional and raises no moral questions when aimed at an inherently military
target, I have already indicated how this is problematic. For instance, the
U.S. currency is traded in the open markets, and it is not backed up by
anything physical. I’ll get to this in more detail later. It’s sufficient at
this time to suggest that the increasing reliance on technology for life
sustainment and system sustainment is an issue.
Technology has another influence on
the current moral decision point in that it is becoming easier to implement non-lethal
weapons. This affects the efficacy of discriminating between combatants and
non-combatants. This is so because it may sometimes be economic and morally
attractive to use non-lethal force against non-combatants if the alternative is
lethal force against military forces. The problem here is that the Just War
principle of discrimination does not allow this. The open question is whether
it does not allow it because it is immoral or because this kind of technology
would not have been effective in winning a war. It’s also possible that the
whole moral equation ought to consider only the disutility across the system
instead of the bifurcation of combatants and non-combatants.
The media is a third influential
factor although it requires less explanation. The pervasiveness of the media
and its power to shape its audience’s view of a political situation are vast.
I’ve suggested here that the confluence of doctrines—center of
gravity/information operations (full spectrum dominance) the media and new
technology are the context for the ethical decision point. They change the
nature of target legitimacy by shifting the means of war into the realm of less
discriminate warfare. The new targets are considered centers of gravity
regardless of their historical status because less lethal generally opens the
way for more aggressive action, especially in the case of a mixed
public/private infrastructure.
Implications
of COG and Info Ops
What’s at stake is a
reinterpretation of the traditional morality of war. We can say with confidence
that the traditional rule of discrimination is that a soldier violates the
morality of war when he uses lethal force directly on the non-combatant. But
what is less certain is the extent of non-combatant immunity. After all, the
political measures of blockade and economic sanctions preceed the resort to war. There is also precedent
for the military siege. However, the destruction of public utilities can be
considered tantamount to indirect biological warfare. When sanitation plants
cannot treat sewage, and hospitals cannot treat the sick because of intentional
sabotage of power plants, the center of gravity may be thrown out of kilter,
but this kind of attack is akin to weapons of mass destruction. Now that the
emphasis is on centers of gravity that are only tangentially the defeat of
military forces, the danger is that attacking non-combatant centers of gravity
will become a legitimate option—even a doctrinal requirement for military
commanders. The laws of war stipulate that foodstuffs may only be destroyed if
they are solely intended for soldiers. Perhaps the way to insure that the
devastation that information operations can generate is kept in check is to
hold the line on all other quasi-military information networks and
infrastructure. Of course this is not be a realistic goal if it makes waging of
war impossible. Two areas that are specifically exempted from attack and yet
are part of a center of gravity operations plan would be assassination of a
head of state and the destruction or incapacitation of inherently non-military
targets. Because these targets are off-limits by virtue of the law of land
warfare there would seem to be no cause for concern; however, the problem is
that there may not be any inherently non-military heads of state and no
non-military targets in the new economy.
Still, it’s difficult initially to
sort out the pie in the sky implications of information warfare from the
reality of the situation. I’d like to suggest a realistic thought experiment to
make the situation more concrete. The purpose of the thought experiment will be
both to suggest an information attack that anyone can understand, and to show
how such an attack might be problematic for the Just War Tradition to sort out.
Suppose sovereign leader X contacts the national command authority of the U.S.
to announce that her country has declared cyberwar on the U.S. Her announcement
is:
