The Estonian-Russian conflict is one that neither territorializes nor seems to have origins, if one were to believe official reactions. Russia denies official responsibility for the DDoS attacks on various Estonian institutions and Estonians merely moved a statue, right? Yet the Russians speak in language that is either a thinly veiled threat or a thinly veiled stereotypical Russian attitude: “The Estonia side has to be extremely careful when making accusations.” Meanwhile, the Estonians chose a fine plot in the graveyard for their bronze Russian.

This seems to be the first high-profile situation in which "cyberwarfare" (I will call it that as it seems to be the mot du jour) has functioned as a state-on-state action. Previous examples include spying – which, while state-on-state is not meant to have the immediate, disruptive social and economic effects of warfare as this does – or non-state actors carrying out attacks.

Yet despite the heavy coverage of the means by which this conflict has played out, I find it most interesting that it has taken place after the displacement of the beloved “Bronze Soldier.” Both the removal of the statue and the DDoS attacks are forms of non violent aggression: one symbolic, the other economic. I will not write “technological” nor “informational” in place of “economic,” for those merely describe the means, while obscuring their ends. The attacks on Estonia are economic through informational/technological methods. Just as the distributed attacks have the air of a more central state-driven source, the Estonians mean not peace when they move a prized Russian monument to a cemetery – all too literally revealing a view of the history with their neighbors.

Symbolic and economic battles may be a type of warfare that contrasts with what we associate with the term, but the concept of a symbolic and economic war is not an unfamiliar one. These are the grounds on which the Cold War was fought, except then we employed iron curtains and arms races.