Cyberspace is a new and evolving realm of human interaction with specific security and defence concerns. Threats to commercial and government interests are being identified and many nations have accepted cyberspace as a domain of military of operations. While governments are investing in the development of military cyber capabilities, there are few examples of military cyber operations from which military doctrine can be developed.In order to bridge the gap between speculation and experience, the principles related to land, sea, and air forces can be used to provide a helpful reference for the cyber domain. The adoption of cyberspace as a domain has more to do with marketing than doctrinal consistency with physical domains. Until some future military cyber operations are categorized as armed attacks, there is insufficient cause to categorize cyberspace as a distinct domain.
Edward Rhodes has proposed that ideas are more important to the formulation of policy than interests are. This article challenges that proposal by examining the role of ideas and interests in the navy's strategic planning of the 1980s. It first examines the role of service unions in naval policy, finding that they were much more influential than Rhodes suggests and goes on to examine the validity of the notion of the superiority of ideas over interests in terms of realist and bureaucratic politics theory. Showing that ideas and interests are not strictly separable, it then examines these findings against the experience of the navy's Maritime Strategy, which further supports the mutual dependency of ideas and interests. This allows analysts to assess the "validity" of strategic concepts using criteria laid down by Roger Hilsman and Bernard Brodie. Successful strategy is that which pays attention to both service interests and national interests. Strategies that neglect either component will ultimately fail, either on the battlefield or bureaucratically.
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