By Greg Austin
The document needs more nuance on strategic stability in Asia.
In the words of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the new Pentagon cyber strategy document (PDF), released on April 23 2015, is intended as a powerful mobilizing tool to “guide the development of DoD’s cyber forces and strengthen our cyber defense and cyber deterrence posture”. It addresses international strategic issues as essential context, especially the North Korean attack on Sony Pictures and China’s cyber espionage, but the document assigns the diplomacy of national defense a secondary place. It recognizes correctly that these have been addressed elsewhere and says that the new strategy has to be read in conjunction with other policy documents: “the 2011 United States International Strategy for Cyberspace, in the Department of Defense Cyberspace Policy Report to Congress of 2011, and through public statements by the President and the Secretary of Defense”.
As powerful and as well written as it is, allowing for diplomatic goals of alliance building and consultation with potential adversaries in Asia, it lacks nuance and the degree of sophistication that the United States and its allies in Asia badly need to deal with the developing strategic situation. The strategy document is written as if cyber space were a separate domain of warfare, with little reference to its impact on overall strategic calculations of potential adversaries. It lists five strategic goals: the first is about building powerful cyber military capabilities, the last is about strategic stability. The document, like U.S. policy in general, makes no linkage between the U.S. building of powerful cyber forces and possible negative impacts on strategic stability. The idea of the security dilemma, that building one state’s security can create insecurity for another state, has long been recognized in U.S. strategic policy, especially on military nuclear issues, but seems to get no place in public discussion of the U.S. race for the technological frontier in cyberspace.
Read the full story at The Diplomat