Lawfare or the War Behind the Curtains

Abstract

This study provides a general framework of the processes of lawfare from a critical and propositional perspective. The concept deployed here derives from previous international studies that relate it to the war between East and West as manifested in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, taking into account its etymology and academic scope within Anglo-Saxon and European contexts. Lawfare processes, in addition to being a weapon to wear down an opponent, also involve the manipulation of public opinion by relying on the mass media, social networks, and supranational organizations to serve specific interests. The analysis presented here shows that this polysemic term can take numerous and sometimes ambiguous forms that inadvertently become interwoven. Clearly, since wider society is not privy to lawfare processes, they often go undetected, and there is a lack of preparedness, such as effective tools, to deal with them and provide redress.