Now, until the Internet-era Governments have been acting more or less like Cave-men. The biggest brute who can bash your brain rules the land, and there's nothing the weaker can do about it.
I prognose that this is about to change because of the power of the Internet and the media. Governments won't be able to control the contents of the media as well, and this will higlight the importance of information warfare.
Uncivilized behaviour is less tolerated, e.g. Yugoslavia.
NATO has butalized and devastated the country with bombing, but has had to justify it's actions. e.g. We're beating them because they beat those weaker guys.
The change is that governments can no-longer as openly conduct brutalities because if they do, they get perceived as such, and suffer consequences.
If the weaker partners realize that as long as the citizens in the country behaving like a cave-man PERCEIVE their government acting like one, the actions won't be approved of. Milosevic has controlled citizens and their perceptions very well in this regard, and has support of his citizens.
E.g. Marketing/PR/Information warfare among the citizens of the nations in conflict is about to become very important, if not the ultimate weapon in future conflicts.
If you want the US to stop shitting on Iraq or Yugoslavia, it's not the International community that needs convincing, but the US public that needs to perceive the brutality and unjustness of their government's actions.
E.g. Publish the pictures and stories of the brutalized people, and show them to the aggressors and their families. Make sure the consequences of their actions stare them in their faces.
The justification for this kind of madness is more and more needed, as people perceive the effects that this kind of environmental atrocities have on this planet for thousands of years to come, and because of the internet governments can no-longer conceal these kinds of consequences of their deeds.
This will lead to governments of the world to more and more to try and conceal their actions, and to publicly and openly shape the perceptions of their own citizens to better fit their needs.
Enemy nations on the other hand, will need to spy on the other nations to detect these atrocities and use the information with the propaganda machine. E.g. Welcome the echelon systems.
Clearly, US citizens do not mind causing economic turmoil abroad, as long as they benefit in the form of economic espionage. And so will every other nation approve of this kind of spying. EU, Russia, China, etc need only enforce their actions to correspond to the US level of spying in absolutely everything. All information received from a country can be used to serve a purpose.
And every time you get information to black-paint your opponent countries and their actions in the eyes of their citizens, you do it with information warfare i.e. PR, preferably in their country.
E.g. Get their citizens to WANT their government to do what YOU want with advertising/PR/information warfare.
The US has used this method to get EU decision makers to adopt the ENFOPOL system to be used by US spies by making it sound as if it was only meant for preventing terrorism and pedophiles - groups which are perceived and disapproved of by everyone. E.g. They used the ultimate justification: No-one would dare oppose the costly suggestion, lest he be labeled a terrorist & pedophiliac himself. After all, why would anyone oppose such a plan, unless he was involved in something suspicious. Superbly done work by the US PR people i.e. information terrorists i.e. marketing people, etc.
The Era of Memetic Information Warfare is here.
Finding out the source / financer of the reports/memes is going to be ever more important.