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Defensive Cyberspace Initiatives Essay

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The international political arena of the twenty-first century has largely been demarcated by the national security strategies of the United States. The keystone of these strategies has been the United States’ Global War on Terror and it has beguiled not only the U.S., but a majority of the Westernized governments into an over decade long conflict, extending across the globe. This more than decade long commitment to anti and counterterrorism operations has not only revolutionized contemporary warfare, but has spurred rapid international growth and integration of information technologies. Globally, information technology has permeated military weapon capabilities, military and domestic infrastructure and has increased global economic…show more content…
would win swiftly and decisively. This thought process was superficially confirmed when the U.S. intervened militarily after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and subsequently achieved the expected swift and decisive victory over the Iraqi army due the overwhelming military capabilities the U.S. possessed. Arguably, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in December 2001 and Iraq in 2003, it expected similarly decisive results as U.S. military supremacy was still unmatched. However, as history has demonstrated, over the past decade the U.S. has had to redefine its military strategies to counter the growing asymmetric tactics utilized against U.S. forces by terror organizations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Strategists define asymmetric warfare as conflict deviating from the norm, or an indirect approach to affect a counter-balancing of force (Grange, 2000). The USSR was the first to coin the term during its unsuccessful attempt to defend its invasion of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahedeen (Rowley & Rathbone, 2002), but the tactical advantages provided by asymmetric warfare have encouraged its use since the earliest of conflicts. Asymmetric warfare at its core is a tactic or methodology, demarcated by a weaker opponent’s use of limited force to capitalize on a specific weakness of an unsurmountable military opponent (Snow, 2014). Asymmetric warfare best describes a condition of a battlefield, in which two opposing entities differ in purpose,
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