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Lawfare's significance is likely to increase

• Future adversaries could be increasingly successful in developing tactics to use U.S. concern for the law of armed conflict to limit the utility of superior U.S. airpower, coerce restraint, and undermine support and legitimacy for U.S. military operations.

Widespread dissemination of warfare imagery could affect military decisions

• Facing increased political risks, U.S. commanders might be deterred from undertaking some strikes in high-population environments, or they could decide to lengthen the review process for those strikes. Adversaries might respond by shifting their tactics and operating to a greater extent within population centers.
• The potential for U.S. attacks to be documented in real time by civilians in information sources likely monitored by adversaries could increase the risk to U.S. forces undertaking the attacks or limit the effectiveness of those attacks.

False accusations of wrongdoing could become more effective

• Concerns over the effectiveness of such information operations in Western countries have spiked since the unearthing of Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
• False accusations of misconduct or atrocities could affect U.S. domestic support for ongoing or future military operations. These risks are likely to be greater for operations that are conducted in higher-population areas (where such accusations would be more credible), and for operations that are conducted against relatively weak adversaries.

Trends in civilian casualty aversion, particularly in liberal democracies, could push for increasing restraint in warfare

• If coalition partners become increasingly averse to the risk of civilian casualties, their utility to the United States in joint operations could decline, especially if they lack precision strike and sophisticated targeting capabilities.
• Increasing civilian casualty sensitivity within the United States could lead Washington to be increasingly deterred from undertaking actions in certain contexts and environments.

Military objectives often can be pursued using a number of different approaches: airpower versus ground forces, larger munitions versus smaller ones, more- or less-restrictive rules of engagement. Military effectiveness often favors the immediate application of overwhelming force, but militaries and their civilian overseers often opt for more-restrained approaches. Understanding how and why policymakers have chosen to impose these restraints in the past and how and why they are likely to do so in the future is critical to understanding how states will conduct future wars. This report identifies four key trends likely to shape the future exercise of restraint in warfare: the spread of lawfare (or use of law as a weapon of war), the widespread distribution of imagery of U.S. military operations, the increasing effectiveness of false accusations, and the increasing public concern for civilian casualties. These trends are assessed for how likely they are to affect both conflict between states and between states and nonstate actors, in addition to how the effects of these trends might differ for different types of states. Overall, these trends appear likely to further increase the incentives of decisionmakers in liberal democratic states to avoid civilian casualties in conflicts against weaker adversaries and to support investments in capabilities to make this possible. Other states that are more autocratic are not likely to be similarly constrained, and policymakers in democratic states will need to adapt to this asymmetry. Between highly capable state actors, conflict is less likely to occur but could involve very different incentives if operational considerations prompt a sharp reduction in the degree of restraint exercised beyond each state's legal obligations and the public shows a greater tolerance of heightened levels of military casualties and collateral damage to civilians. This report also provides specific recommendations for U.S. policymakers to begin to adapt to these anticipated trends.

• Chapter One

  Global Restraint Trends

• Chapter Two

  Trend 1: The Spread of Lawfare

• Chapter Three

  Trend 2: Widespread Distribution of Imagery of U.S. Military Operations

• Chapter Four

  Trend 3: Increasing Effectiveness of False Accusations

• Chapter Five

  Trend 4: Increasing Public Concern for Civilian Casualties

• Chapter Six

  Conclusion