Disruptions in the Commons

Scott Jasper and Paul Giarra

Defining the Commons

"Transnational terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, piracy, climate change and energy security, cyber attacks, to name just a few—the threats to our collective security in a globalized world—that do not stop at national borders and cannot be successfully addressed by any nation alone."

General John Craddock, U.S. Army, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) clearly recognizes its essential role in confronting and defeating these and other threats and challenges. For NATO and its partners around the world, national security and prosperity depend on the safekeeping of a global system comprising mutually interdependent networks of commerce, communication, and governance. The essence of globalization, fueled by vertiginous technological innovation, has created new realities of connectivity and continuity on which the supercharged global system depends. These developments confront military planners with profound challenges. The globalized system can tend toward instability and dysfunction, especially when vulnerable social structures are threatened by hostile actors. The military opportunities of globalization—networking, speed, and connectivity—are a two-edged sword: defense planners will have to consider new configurations of infrastructure and operational vulnerability, diminished deterrence, the potential for elemental or systemic disruption, and the implications of preemption and decapitating attacks.

The global commons—outer space, international waters and airspace, and cyberspace—constitute the underlying infrastructure of the global system. In old English law, the term "commons" referred to a tract of ground shared by residents of a village, belonging to no one, and held for the good of all. Extrapolating from this construct, global commons have been characterized as natural, or man-made, "assets outside national jurisdiction." Global commons are similar to but less wide-ranging than the elucidation of the term "military domains." A case in point would be the maritime domain, described as "the world's oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, littorals, and the airspace above them," which encompasses far more than just "international waters." That said, the global commons can extend to domains that may be either within or outside of national jurisdiction, so long as the international community has a lawful right to the asset, such as international straits or innocent passage in a territorial sea. Although some might consider the commons to include ungoverned spaces like Antarctica, for the purpose of analytical consistency regarding defense objectives related to the global commons, the U.S. Secretary of Defense's definition cited above is used throughout the volume.

The maritime and air commons are relatively traditional constructs, albeit with new circumstances and implications. The space and cyberspace commons add new, crucial, and yet somewhat imprecise conceptual and operational dimensions. The U.S. military's definition of cyberspace was revised in May 2008 to be "a global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers." While this interpretation was meant explicitly to describe cyberspace, the absence of previous references to the use of the electromagnetic spectrum initially led to confusion over the role of electronic warfare.

In and through these traditional or emerging global commons, nation-states and non-state actors conduct global enterprise, for good or ill. In essence, the global commons as a set combines in numerous ways into physical and virtual utilities that serve as conduits for the free flow of trade, finance, information, people, and technology in the world's economic system. Likewise, the global commons entail much of the operating space of the international security environment, enabling the physical and virtual movement and operations of allied forces as well as those of transnational, regional, and emergent peer competitors.

As nodal and systemic conduits, most of the commons "are areas that belong to no one state and that provide access to much of the globe." Conversely, the pathways of the commons, like a global vascular system, can also accelerate the vulnerability of critical economic and national infrastructures; the transfer of advanced weapons and military technology; the spread of ideas and ideologies; the movement and communications of criminals and terrorists; and the diversion of dangerous materials. Securing freedom of access to, transit through, and use of the global commons is fundamental to safeguarding the globalized systems.

Integrating the Commons

"We are [also] witnessing new forms of conflict. Cyber attacks against a country's electronic infrastructure have now happened, against Estonia—and they can be crippling. Piracy, long believed to have been eradicated, is back as a major international concern— and in more than just one essential maritime route on which our trade and oil and gas supplies depend."

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO Secretary General

It is misleading to conceptualize or deal with the interests of stakeholders in the global commons independently, that is, to differentiate between the military, civil, or commercial spheres, or to segregate military service roles. This is because the domains of the commons are inherently interwoven—military maritime, space, aerospace, and cyberspace operations overlap with civilian and commercial activities—and because the networks that enable operations or activities in the various overlapping sectors are themselves threaded together. For instance, 80 percent of U.S. Department of Defense satellite communications for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is managed by private-sector companies such as Globalstar, Inmarsat, and Iridium. Military dependence on commercial satellite services will continue until the launch of more secure, higher-capacity connectivity solutions in the 2010 to 2016 timeframe, such as the Wideband Global...