Cyber politics in International Relations

Cyberspace is a fact of daily life. Because of its ubiquitous nature and vast scale and scope, cyberspace including the Internet and the hundreds of millions of computers the Internet connects, the institutions that enable it, and the experiences it enables

 It has become a fundamental feature of the world we live in and has created a new reality for almost everyone in the developed world and for rapidly growing numbers of people in the developing world. Cyberspace was considered largely a matter of low politics a term used to denote background conditions and routine decisions and processes. By contrast, the matters of interest in high politics have to do with national security, core institutions, and decision systems critical to the state, its interests, and its underlying values, Nationalism, political participation, political contentions, conflict, violence, and war are among the common concerns of high politics.

 But low politics do not always remain below the surface. If the cumulative effects of normal activities shift the established dynamics of interaction, then the seemingly routine can move to the forefront of political attention. When this happens, it can propel the submerged features into the political limelight. In recent years, issues connected to cyberspace and its uses have vaulted into the highest realm of high politics. We now appreciate that cyberspace capabilities are also a source of vulnerability, posing a potential threat to national security and a disturbance of the familiar international order.

 The global, often nontransparent interconnections afforded by cyberspace have challenged the traditional understanding of leverage and influence, international relations and power politics, national security, borders, and boundaries as well as a host of other concepts and their corresponding realities. Many features of cyberspace are reshaping contemporary international relations theory, policy, and practice. Individually, each feature is at variance with our common understanding of social reality and with contemporary understandings of international relations. Jointly, they signal a powerful disconnect. Cyber politics, a recently coined term, refers to the conjunction of two processes or realities  those pertaining to human interactions ( politics ) surrounding the determination of who gets what, when, and how , and those enabled by the uses of a virtual space ( cyber) as a new arena of contention with its own modalities and realities. Despite differences in perspectives worldwide, there is a general scholarly understanding of the meaning of “politics.

It is the complexity attending the prefix cyber that distinguishes this newly constructed semantic. This book asks several questions. How can we take explicit account of cyberspace in the analysis of international relations and world politics? What are the notable patterns of cyber access and participation worldwide? What new types of international conflicts and contentions arise from activities in cyberspace? What are the new modes of international collaboration? What are alternative cyber futures? In sum, how do we address the new imperatives for international relations theory that emerge from the construction of cyberspace? Historically, the social sciences were formed into disciplines by first separating humans from nature and then separating various aspects of human activities for knowledge development. This strategy allowed detailed and focused inquiry into one sphere of human activity while ignoring others, a practice that contributed to the rapid advance of knowledge. Empirical evidence subsequently compelled us to expand beyond discrete areas to appreciate society-nature connections

Conclusively that same adjustment or transition has not yet occurred with respect to the cyber domain, however. International relations theory has yet to recognize the implications of cyberspace for the conduct of international relations, notably in relation to the pursuit of “power and wealth” (Gilpin 1987)

BY JOSHUA HELENA M

BAPRM   42571