The Cold War is history. Now it's the Cool War | Observer editorial

new technology makes the different types of low-intensity conflict too easy

conflicts are defined largely by how they fought and technologies. The First World War that we associate with the gas tanks and the first use of air power, the World War II strategic bombing and the first use of nuclear weapons. These technologies help us define as human beings shape our experience and the political mold our current fears. So what how our conflicts taking place today?

Last week, David Rothkopf, general editor

Foreign

and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has approved the construction of new and surprising. In an article inspired by the revelation that the unity of the Chinese People's Army had hacked many secrets public institutions in Washington, suggested that we are experiencing a "cool war".

It defines the state of conflict in two ways. Firstly, it is "almost constant offensive action that, while in the real war, regularly seek to harm or weaken his opponents or gain an advantage violations of the sovereignty and defense penetration." His second feature that defines, among other things concerning the revelations of Chinese cyber warfare efforts is the deployment of advanced technologies "" changing the way many conflicts and tensions that play.

"The end of the Cold War," he says, "was to get an advantage, followed hot war or perhaps to avoid. The objective of the Cold War is still being able to hit without causing a hot war hot wars in less desirable (as well as nuclear technology did during the days of the Cold War) or even necessary. "

Rothkopf is not the first to suggest the onset of a war Cool. The term was coined in the 1970s by science fiction writer Frederik Pohl, whose book of the same title dystopian vision of a free for all national teams suddenly releasing computer viruses markets stock crash and replaced fight sabotage.

end of last year, the

European Journal of International Law

had his own knife in his definition, suggesting that, as in the war cold, which is an important factor in the growing intransigence in international forums again.

"We find this or that superpower face to face with the arsenal at hand, and the conversation is very different. However, a point of tension and threat to another world, Africa, Middle East (Syria, Iran), Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan and China, the Security Council [and ] regional organizations seem to be regularly frustrated by the veto, veto to speak, or some other lack of consensus. "

is a kind of commonplace technologies are changing the nature of the conflict. What is important, however, about the progress of the war in the current era is a combination of technology and ideas about using deadly and destructive at a lower level "hot war" challenges the conventions in diplomacy and international law, in particular with regard to sovereignty.

• The reality of this situation is clear. A state of "cool" cyberwar is already a number of state actors and agents to launch daily attacks, causing a cyber arms race that has seen Western countries engaged in an arms race is not so virtual. It is not only China, which was loaded. The United States and Israel are behind the Stuxnet virus, which was able to take control and use of computer systems for damage control Iranian nuclear centrifuges, a strong indication of the possibility of physical damage to industrial systems that these attacks are capable of inflicting beyond national borders.

If cyber war has entered a new era of sabotage and espionage, the increased use of drones piloted by operators away from the battlefield raises similar concerns. What is not disputed is that the drones are inherently more or less moral than any other lethal weapon system. What is crucial in the context of the laws of war is the intention - if the goal is justified and whether the risk of discrimination civilians warranty provided

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