Economic warfare and preventive self-defence

One of the normative limits to the concept of the new economic warfare is the absence of declaration of war, within the meaning of international law. Then, for the provisional favour of a metaphorical exploitation, let’s agree that it is more about a nonconventional war, generally immaterial, more aggressive than preemptive, very often asymmetrical, the weak one trying to surprise the strong in a particular sector, by the trick.

A part of knowledge learnt at the School of economic warfare, for instance, rests on techniques of guerrilla, closed to CH. Harbulot or those of the Unrestricted war as conceptualized by the two colonels of the Chinese air force, Liang Qiao and Xiangui Wang. The effect of surprise is thus the success key of any infowar operation. The first to strike carries it. And even if the vapor is reversed with time, the damage caused to a physical or a moral person during informational attacks is often heavy. Sometimes, irremediable for the victims. The exponential growth of the cybercriminality today reveals the chronic States incapacity to guarantee the protection of companies’ informational inheritance as well as the integrity of the virtual space of the citizens.

In front of this reality, let us be appropriate this time that waiting to be struck to react, means to sign its own death warrant. But in the absence of economic warfare Law, a jus cogens specific to this growing form of aggression, dealing with impossibility of distinguishing at the real time a combatant from a non-combatant, the permanent monitoring of companies’ environment and the economic intelligence becomes a pressing need. It is on this safety requirement that I base my idea to import preventive self-defence on the ground of the economic warfare.

In his remarkable work, The preventive war and the international law, published in January 2007 with the editions Dianoïa, my former professor of international law, Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, fustigates the use of preventive self-defence by the Bush government to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He recalls to it that “International law is in its quintessence and its finality, a preventive law against war“. But in 1967 (Six-day war), 1975 (against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon) and 1981 (to destroy a nuclear reactor likely to harm the Hebrew State), Israel had already convened the argument of self-defence to justify its preventive strike, being based on the famous Briand Kellog pact of august 26, 1928.

Since that date indeed, the quasi totality of international legal instruments recognizes that there is not distorsion with the jus cogens “if the blows carried are ordered by the need for defending oneself or to protect others“: a transferable asset to the field of economic warfare. Under certain conditions:

- Firstly, that thanks to early warnings, the unfavourable attack is considered to be imminent.

- Secondly, that striking is proportional to the gravity of the imminent attack.

- Thirdly, that justice is seized a posteriori. With load for X, to repair the damage caused to Y, in case of error or abuses duly noted by the qualified legal authority.

While waiting, force is to note that on this ground, democratic States will remain the most vulnerable adversaries for a long time. Guy Gweth

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