A new way of conducting war: Cyberwar, is that real?

Abstract

There are numerous discussions on both the reality and impact of cyberwar. Most of the critics are based on the Clausewitzian perspective of war in which its political nature must exist, an act of war has to be characteristically violent and has instrumental purposefulness. Therefore cyberwar is generally regarded as a conduct of action that simply doesn't match with these Clausewitzian criteria of war. However during the last two decades, with the advancement of information technology and widening connecters of the world, many incidents such as Estonian and Georgian cases of cyberattacks, Stuxnet worms, and many other politically motivated cyberattacks, show us that we need to think carefully about the terminology that being used by scholars, experts and policy makers. In this chapter, I aim to discuss about the term cyberwar within a broader theory of war in International Relations studies. In doing so, my aim is to bring together related International Relations Theories and the contemporary cyberwar discussion and discuss the issue within a theoretical perspective.