Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 27/Aug 11:02

Asymmetric Warfare And Cyberwarfare Could Make Wars In West Asia And Eastern Europe More Complex – Analysis

While Israel continues to wage the war against Hamas blurring the distinction between Palestinian civilians and militant groups, the war simmers further with Israeli missile strikes on Southern Lebanon. Iran and its close associate Hezbollah believe that Israel was behind the assassination of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in a strike in the Iranian capital Tehran. Besides, Israel anticipated reprisal from Hezbollah following its assassination of the group’s senior commander Fouad Shukr in a strike in Beirut on 30 July. Iran and Israel exchanged missiles in April this year as Tehran proclaimed the action was in retaliation to the latter’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. In this light, Israel’s recent exchanges of fire with Hezbollah would make the Iranian involvement in the war more likely.  Anticipating threats from Hezbollah to Israeli citizens, the Israeli military launched what it termed pre-emptive strikes in Lebanon and soon after this Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced a 48-hour nationwide state of emergency from August 25, 2024 evening. Of late, an hour after the US secretary of state Antony Blinken landed in Tel Aviv to push for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal on 18th August night, a bomb explosion in the Israeli city sent shock waves among the officials. Hamas claimed it was behind the explosion which allegedly killed the suspected attacker and injured a civilian. Involvement of Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in the ongoing war complicates Israel’s entry into an uncertain asymmetric war. The recent exchanges of fires and missiles between Israel and Hezbollah do not distinguish between men in uniform and civilians and hence represents a form of asymmetric warfare. Israel’s defence and intelligence preparedness has gone through many technocratic revolutions which palpably failed to predict machineries of the bygone era such as bulldozers being used to breach its border security on October 7, 2023. Israel’s long years of focus on building underground technologies to neutralize Hamas’s reliance on tunnels to raise asymmetric war and development of Iron Dome missile defence systems to undercut the destroying rocket delivery capabilities of Hamas blinded Israel to the usage of simple above the ground operations by Hamas. Despite technological advances in Israeli war efforts, it can be asserted that the country still embraces a big war paradigm. In the era of globalisation, “democratisation of technology”, the “privatisation of war” and the “miniaturization of weaponry” have emboldened the radical groups vis-a-vis state-actors.  A state cannot claim monopoly over advanced technologies such as Artificial intelligence (AI) as non-state actors such as terrorist groups are also mastering these technologies and to the dismay of the state actors and in order to beat them, these groups are using a mix of advanced and traditional technologies and tools as was witnessed by Israel. Israel during the ongoing war encountered such challenges posed by an asymmetric threat. Israel cannot convincingly crush an enemy which uses civilians as human shields and uses civilian infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and mosques as bunkers and depots of weapons and rocket launchers. Winning such an asymmetric war convincingly is always impossible. As the war kept evolving, it became evident that Israel was well-disposed to substantially weaken Hamas and its infrastructure but it could not attain this without a massive blow to its own security. Similarly, Russia’s bombing campaign against Ukraine and Ukraine’s reprisal do not distinguish between civilians and professional and conscripted armies and the war goes incurring massive destruction of civilian infrastructure. Even two decades of counterinsurgency operations of US in Afghanistan could not end insurgency and defeat the Taliban. Wars through Information Technology  To bring in elements of surprise and intangible assets of power, the countries already engaged in prolonged wars would like to resort to the realm of knowledge and information technology to weaken the adversaries. Russia’s extra-regional ambitions finding reverberations in the bolstering of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and now the Russian compulsion of not loosening its regional grip as expressed through its assertive role in Ukraine has led to a spiralling of tensions between the US and other NATO members on the one hand and Russia on the other. China has been lending strategic support to Russia making the war more complex. The recent escalation of conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East involving other regional players such as Iran and its proxy Hezbollah has generated apprehensions of an all-out war between Israel supported by the US and Iran with support from China, Russia and North Korea. The powers that are indirectly involved in these wars and the direct parties to the wars after a certain level of destruction of human lives and mounting global pressures touching a tipping point, however, would like to turn to the domain of knowledge and sabotage the critical infrastructure of the adversaries rather than going to full-blown wars. The destructive nuclear and/or military capabilities that each of the powers possesses vis-à-vis the other and the indecisive nature of asymmetric warfare would prevent these powers from going for all-out wars, much like the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) scenario that prevented the erstwhile superpowers the US and Soviet Union from direct confrontations during the Cold War. The powers are poised to choose the cyber domain as the primary channel to realize their war objectives over direct confrontation for a number of reasons. First, information technology can offer contending powers the abilities to weaken the adversarial power far more effectively by targeting critical infrastructure such as banking, energy and defence sectors without incurring the damages arising out of direct wars. Second, the cyber domain can provide the contending powers the avenues to operate from unknown sources, to do damage and yet avoid military reprisals. Third, the superior technological capabilities of the US may prompt it to sustain its hegemonic ambitions primarily through the cyber domain not only by shaping global norms but to incapacitate the adversarial powers militarily as well. The US military utilized and benefited from the application of high technologies first in the Gulf War, which inspired other powers to harness their technological abilities. Further, former CIA technician Edward Snowden’s revelations as to how American authorities hacked into Chinese mobile-phone companies to access millions of private text messages and reports that the US with Israeli assistance resorted to cyberattacks in a bid to cripple an Iranian uranium-processing facility using a digital worm called Stuxnet point to the fact that the US could be inclined to use its technological superiority to inflict damages on the adversarial powers in these wars. Fourth, Russia, China and Iran would like to resort to cyberwar strategies to undercut American dominance in these regions. These powers have demonstrated their readiness to contain the hegemonic ambitions of the US by subverting and sabotaging its dominance over technology while at the same time insulating their own technological space from the US. For instance, in order to weaken American dominance, Iran allegedly launched cyberattacks on US dams, financial systems and government networks, and Russia was accused of targeting the Ukrainian power grid and meddling in US elections through the cyber domain. Much in a similar vein, China has been accused of stealing US intellectual property in order to buttress its economic power and the Chinese tech giant Huawei has been indicted on charges of theft of trade secrets. However, to insulate their technological space, Russia and China have long championed the idea of “national sovereignty”. They considered this idea being instrumental in preventing the US from encroaching into their sensitive military information as well as influencing their internal politics, institutions and ideas. China undertook censorship initiatives, including blocking of certain websites, in its bid to crack down on anti-government activities allegedly prompted by the US. These contending powers look to digital opportunities that allow them to shape ideas and interests in desired directions. Digital Silk Road has been considered an integral part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, through which Beijing sought to export Internet infrastructure as well as surveillance technology to countries throughout Asia, in the Persian Gulf region, and across Africa.