Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

TOPIC SPONSOR: HAF A5SM

Lawfare, or the use of legal tools as a means of achieving military objectives, is a relatively new concept in warfare. How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?

• Baumeister, Maj. D. Harry, "Failure to Launch: Gray Zone Conflict in Space," AFGC thesis, 2026. 
  • Demonstrating how adversaries exploit ambiguities in international law to conduct coercive "gray zone" operations without triggering a conventional military response. The paper highlights that because the legal definition of an "armed attack" in space is poorly defined, adversaries can engage in aggressive, non-kinetic actions—such as jamming, spoofing, or deploying dual-use commercial satellites—while remaining legally protected below the threshold of traditional conflict. This reshapes the paradigm of warfare by allowing state actors to use the inadequacies of the current legal regime as a shield, leveraging asymmetric actions to achieve strategic goals while avoiding the legal repercussions of outright war.
• Bishop, Dalene, "China's Claim to the South China Sea: Legal Legitimacy, Historical Justifications and Geopolitical Implications," AFGC thesis, 2025, 41 pgs. 
  • Bishop’s research highlights how the South China Sea (SCS) has become a primary battleground for legal strategies. Regional nations like the Philippines have successfully used international legal mechanisms, such as the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) tribunal under UNCLOS, to invalidate China's maritime claims. Conversely, China uses legal ambiguity, selective interpretations of international law, and assertions of pre-modern "historic rights" to justify the militarization of artificial islands. Bishop notes that China's outright rejection of the binding PCA ruling—a stark contrast to how other nations have historically handled maritime disputes—is reshaping global paradigms by testing whether a great power can successfully ignore international law and normalize territorial expansion through coercion rather than legal compliance.
• Conatser, Lt. Commander Brian P., "Digital Eyes in the Water: Using Unmanned Technology to Gain an Asymmetric Advantage in the South China Sea," AFGC thesis, 2023, 37 pgs. 
  • Answers the question by illustrating how China uses "lawfare" and gray zone tactics to dominate the South China Sea without triggering conventional war. The paper explains that Beijing purposefully couches its aggressive maritime actions in legalistic language to muddy the waters, obfuscate international law, and undermine global confidence in established norms. By doing so—and by employing maritime militias to maintain plausible deniability—China reshapes the traditional warfare paradigm, effectively paralyzing traditional military responses and forcing the United States to grapple with non-kinetic, legalistic maneuvers that deliberately remain below the threshold of armed hostilities.
• Faust, LCDR Joseph D., "Just Star Wars: Just War Theory and Its Impact on the Great Power Competition in Space," AFGC 2024, 56 pgs. 
  • Faust examines how traditional legal paradigms, specifically jus ad bellum and Just War Theory, are being exploited in modern Great Power Competition, particularly in the space domain. The paper argues that adversaries like China reshape warfare by taking advantage of ambiguities in international law—such as the undefined nature of what constitutes a "space-weapon" or an "attack"—to conduct irregular warfare. By leveraging these legal gray areas and using Western notions of Just War Theory against the U.S., adversaries can aggressively pursue their objectives while maintaining a veneer of legality, fundamentally challenging the traditional frameworks used to regulate and define armed conflict.
• Fritz, Maj. Matthew H., "China's Irregular Mace: An Undetected War with the US," AFGC thesis, 2024, 38 pgs.  
  • Fritz discusses the reshaping of warfare through the lens of the PRC's "Unrestricted Warfare" doctrine, which explicitly calls for nations to conduct non-military operations—including "law warfare"—to support political objectives. The paper argues that advanced technology has blurred the lines of traditional conflict, leading adversaries to rely on law warfare, diplomatic warfare, and economic warfare to achieve effects as destructive as conventional battles. By transcending the military sphere and weaponizing the law, this strategy demonstrates that solely possessing traditional military strength is no longer sufficient to guarantee a nation's security against adversaries utilizing unrestricted, non-kinetic warfare.
• Glowacki, Steve, "Self-Defense Policy and Strategy: The United States, Israel and Article 51 from 1945 to 1986," SAASS thesis, 2025, 115 pgs.
  • Glowacki addresses this question by demonstrating how the United States and Israel historically wielded international law—specifically interpretations of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter—as a strategic tool to legitimize the use of military force. He examines how the Kennedy administration engaged in lawfare during the Cuban Missile Crisis by deliberately avoiding Article 51 to justify its naval quarantine, relying instead on the regional authority of the Rio Treaty and the Organization of American States (OAS) to secure international legitimacy without setting a precedent for unilateral Soviet actions. Glowacki also highlights how Israel utilized legal paradigms by attempting to justify its preemptive airstrike on the Osirak nuclear facility as an act of anticipatory self-defense. Ultimately, he argues that idealistic efforts to enforce strict, "restrictionist" legal interpretations of warfare paradoxically created new loopholes that states leveraged to broaden their justifications for military interventions.
• Gonzalez, Maj. Jorge, "Adapting to the Challenges of Modern Technology in Warfare: Defining the Outer Limits of AL/ML in Joint Operations," AFGC thesis, 2024, 43 pgs. 
  • Gonzalez addresses lawfare by highlighting how adversarial nations utilize it as an asymmetric strategy to balance power against high-tech militaries like the United States. Citing Dunlap, the paper notes that adversaries view the U.S. political culture's deep respect for the law as a "center of gravity" that can be exploited. Instead of engaging in direct military confrontation, adversaries can manufacture information, manipulate international organizations, or exploit the legal system to influence public perception and reduce American support for conflicts. This shifts the paradigm of war from strictly kinetic engagements to exploiting legal boundaries and leveraging the international legal system to drive foreign policy.
• Holloway, Maj. E. Minnenne & Maj. Bridget K.Pantaleon, "Warfare in the Age of AI: Upholding International Humanitarian Law Amid Technological Advancements," AF Fellows Portfolio (Carnegie Mellon & MIT), 2024, 62 pgs. 
  • Exploring how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons systems complicate the traditional legal paradigms of armed conflict. The paper highlights that as AI-augmented decision-making removes humans from the "kill chain," it creates unprecedented legal complexities regarding how the International Court of Justice can attribute blame and hold nation-states accountable for International Humanitarian Law (IHL) violations. Rather than viewing the law simply as a post-conflict restriction, the author suggests that legal strategies must now proactively shape technological development, arguing that advanced weapons must be engineered with built-in transparency and interpretability to ensure they comply with traditional laws designed to protect innocent life.
• Kraft, Maj. Michael W., "Red Line and Headlines: How the People's Republic of China Employs the Three Warfares for Deterrence," ACSC 2025, 45 pgs. 
  • Kraft explores how legal strategies are reshaping warfare by detailing the PRC's "Three Warfares" concept, which intentionally blends psychological, legal, and public opinion warfare to establish political dominance. The author defines legal warfare as the flexible application of laws and regulations to find creative solutions that block or undermine other nations. This approach reshapes traditional warfare paradigms because the PRC treats international and domestic laws as malleable tools—pushing the boundaries of what is legal and feigning ignorance to gain a political advantage, presenting itself as an aggrieved party with the moral high ground to counter adversaries without firing a weapon.
• Lowrie, Lt. Col. Jacob, "Defending the Gate: Exploring the U.S. Military's Role in Homeland Defense," SAASS thesis, 2024, 94 pgs. 
  • ​​​​​​​Although Lowrie does not explicitly use the term "lawfare," his paper answers the question by demonstrating how adversaries reshape traditional warfare paradigms by weaponizing U.S. domestic laws and exploiting the U.S. military's strict legal constraints. Specifically, Lowrie highlights the "weaponization of asylum," detailing how legal asylum safeguards and immigration loopholes have been intentionally exploited to overwhelm border security and ensure entry into the United States. Furthermore, adversaries understand that the U.S. Department of Defense is legally bound by a complex framework of authorities—such as Title 10, Title 14, and Title 32—that severely limits its legal authority to act directly against non-state actors like drug cartels domestically. By deliberately operating within these legal gaps and seams, cartels and adversarial nations like China can wage "unrestricted warfare," such as drug warfare, directly against the U.S. homeland without triggering a conventional military retaliation. This fundamentally reshapes warfare, as adversaries use mass migration as a "coercive weapon" and leverage America's strict adherence to legal boundaries as an asymmetric advantage. Ultimately, Lowrie argues that this dynamic neutralizes traditional U.S. military might, as the military is effectively sidelined by its own lack of legal authority to engage the threats causing the most harm to the domestic population.
• Martin, Jeremy A., "Dispute Resolution with Chinese Characteristics: People's Liberation Army Legal Warfare and Chinese Legal Culture," SAASS Thesis, 2023, 129 pgs. 
  • Martin provides a comprehensive analysis of "lawfare"—a concept first introduced by Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr. as the use of law as a substitute for traditional military means—by examining the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) integration of "legal warfare" into its "Three Warfares" doctrine. The paper explains that rather than seeking to establish international norms or win legal victories in courts, the PLA uses legal warfare as an eristic tool for discursive dominance—attacking an opponent's legal position to disrupt and deny them freedom of action. By deploying legal arguments to place adversaries in a defensive posture, this strategy reshapes traditional warfare by acting as an enabler that allows the PRC to achieve political and strategic ends through other instruments of power without crossing the threshold of armed conflict.
• Martin, Maj. Jeremy A., "The Missing Variable: The Role of Legal Culture in Counterinsurgency Operations," GCPME thesis, 2019, 54 pgs. 
  • ​​​​​​​Answers the question by arguing that understanding a host nation's "legal culture"—the values, attitudes, and dispute resolution paradigms of its society—is the most critical factor for achieving legitimacy and success in counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns. Martin asserts that traditional warfare paradigms often mistakenly identify the root causes of insurgencies as ethnic, religious, or linguistic divisions, when the true catalyst is usually a breakdown in the host nation's legal system and its ability to resolve disputes equitably. Using case studies like the Huk rebellion in the Philippines and the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka, the paper demonstrates that military force and financial aid alone cannot defeat an insurgency if the underlying legal inequalities are ignored. Furthermore, he uses a modern example in Burkina Faso to show how a lack of understanding of local legal culture (where local lawyers refused to represent terrorists out of fear of public reprisal) led to a massive backlog of prisoners without trial, completely undermining U.S. and French military training efforts. By integrating legal culture into strategic planning, Martin argues that militaries must reshape traditional COIN paradigms, shifting the focus away from purely kinetic operations and superficial cultural traits toward targeted legal and systemic reforms that restore the host government's legitimacy in the eyes of the population.
• Peacock, Col. Robert, "China's Three Warfares: Breaking Ideological Boundaries," AWC SSP, 2019, 30 pgs. 
  • Answers the question by detailing how China employs "legal warfare" (or "lawfare") as a core component of its national strategy to achieve military and political objectives without firing a shot. The paper explains that lawfare involves manipulating international legal bodies and courts to destabilize adversary legal positions, create doubt, and win international support. By weaponizing the "legal rich" environment and exploiting Western democracies' reliance on legal legitimacy and public support, adversaries use legal challenges to achieve policy aims that would traditionally require conventional armed conflict. This reshapes the traditional paradigm of warfare by shifting the battlefield into courtrooms and international institutions, allowing competitors to operate aggressively below the threshold of kinetic war.
• O'Connor, Maj. Robin E., "Changing U.S. Foreign Policy Climate for a Warmer Arctic: Examining the Utility of UNCLOS in Pursuit of Arctic Objectives," AFGC thesis, 2025, 56 pgs. 
  • O'Connor’s research illustrates how Arctic coastal states are using the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a strategic legal tool—or lawfare—to expand their territorial sovereignty and control over resources. For example, Russia, Canada, and Denmark have utilized Article 76 and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to scientifically substantiate claims over the Lomonosov Ridge, seeking exclusive rights to seabed minerals. Furthermore, Canada and Russia have utilized UNCLOS Article 234 ("Ice Covered Areas") to unilaterally enforce transit restrictions and shipping controls (like Canada's NORDREG and Russia's Northern Sea Route regulations) under the guise of environmental protection. By leveraging this specific legal provision, these states sidestep standard international oversight mechanisms and limit the freedom of navigation for foreign vessels through strategic waterways, effectively reshaping the legal paradigms of international straits.
• Rees, Maj. Michael "Tonic" J., "Interstellar Jurisprudence: Legal Challenges in Applying Traditional Frameworks to Space and Cyber Warfare," GCPME paper, 2024, 46 pgs. 
  • ​​​​​​​Answers the question by examining how the introduction of space and cyber capabilities has fundamentally outpaced and reshaped the traditional legal paradigms of warfare. The author argues that existing international legal frameworks, such as the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and the Geneva Conventions, were designed primarily for conventional land, sea, and air combat, making them insufficient to govern modern non-kinetic warfare. Because operations in space and cyberspace intentionally blur the lines of proportionality, distinction between civilian and military targets, and attack attribution, modern warfare requires a reimagined legal framework to ensure transparency, predictability, and accountability in domains where traditional laws of war no longer cleanly apply.
• Skaggs, Lt. Col. Ryan D., "Chinese Communist Party Information Warfare: Ideology, Influence and Coercion in the Indo-Pacific," SAASS thesis, 2023, 219 pgs. 
  • Answers the question by detailing how "legal warfare" is integrated into the Chinese Communist Party's broader military doctrine. The paper explains that legal warfare exploits different aspects of national and international legal systems to actively achieve political and economic goals. As a core component of China's "Three Warfares" strategy (alongside psychological and media warfare), legal warfare is used as an unconventional, asymmetric means to shape the strategic environment and subvert an opponent short of armed conflict, fundamentally altering how traditional military objectives are pursued.
• Tirado, Maj. Jessica M., "International Laws of War and Gray Zone Space Warfare: How International Humanitarian Law and the Law of Armed Conflict will Challenge the United States' Ability to Compete against Gray Zone Warfare in the Space Domain," ACSC Schriever, 2022, 21 pgs.  
  • Addresses the question by shifting the focus of lawfare to the space domain, where adversaries increasingly leverage "legal operation tactics" and gray zone warfare to achieve strategic goals. The paper highlights that the current construct of international laws of war is ill-equipped to handle space conflict; consequently, adversaries exploit these legal loopholes and the dual-use nature of space assets to stay just under the threshold of an armed attack. This legal reshaping of the battlefield severely hinders the United States' freedom of action and its ability to lawfully act in self-defense, demonstrating how legal strategies can neutralize an opponent's traditional military superiority. 
• Veenhof, Maj. Nick, "An Analysis of the East China Sea ADIZ and its Consequences," ACSC elective paper, 2020, 19 pgs. 
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Answers the question by illustrating how China uses the unilateral declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea to incrementally reshape international legal norms and traditional paradigms of airspace sovereignty. The paper explains that because there is no single overarching international legal framework for ADIZs, China exploits this ambiguity to execute a "salami slicing" strategy—gradually attempting to extend territorial sovereignty over its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by demanding that foreign military aircraft identify themselves and comply with Chinese regulations even while operating in international airspace. By using these legal maneuvers to challenge the traditional "sovereign immune" status of military aircraft and undermine established UNCLOS freedoms of navigation and overflight, China leverages the law to subtly transition the Asia-Pacific region from an open maritime system into a Chinese-dominated continental system without ever crossing the threshold into open war.
• Walsh, Capt. Jeffrey D., "Chinese Irregular Warfare," SOS AUAR, 2021, 7 pgs.  
  • ​​​​​​​Explores how legal strategies reshape traditional paradigms by examining China's specific approach to irregular warfare. The paper defines legal warfare as the deliberate effort to "confuse legal precedent" and leverage legal processes to constrain an adversary's behavior, contest disadvantageous situations, and maximize strategic advantages. By employing legal warfare in conjunction with psychological and public opinion warfare—most notably in the ongoing conflicts within the South China Sea—the paper demonstrates how modern adversaries achieve their objectives through irregular, non-kinetic legal frameworks rather than traditional military force.