[governance] Monroe Doctrin for Cyberspace?

[Bertrand de La Chapelle]

Dear Wolfgang,

Thanks for highlighting this paper. If the reader is patient enough to go
until almost the end of it, he/she will find these two interesting
paragraphs :

*"A Cyber Monroe Doctrine must also accommodate the fundamental architecture
of the Internet. Since the value of the Internet is driven by network
effects, policies that decrease the value of the Internet through (real or
perceived) balkanization will harm all participants. While a Cyber Monroe
Doctrine can identify specific critical cyber infrastructure of interest to
the U.S., parts of the cyber infrastructure are critical to all global
stakeholders. In short, even as the United States may have a cybersphere of
influence, there are nonetheless cybercommons. This is all the more true as
attacks or attackers move through or use the infrastructure of those
cybercommons. Therefore, the US must find mechanisms to be inclusive rather
than exclusive when it comes to stewardship and defense of our cybercommons"
*. (emphasis added)
and
*"Taking a unilateral approach will at times be simply impossible, and may
not offer the quickest path to success. However, working collaboratively
with other governments and stakeholders not only builds our collective
capacity to defend critical infrastructures around the world, but also
ensures that our weakest links do not become havens for cyber criminals or
terrorists"*.

These simple paragraphs are the best deconstruction of the whole argument in
the rest of the paper : a Monroe Doctrine of "what is mine is mine"
(actually a misinterpretation of the actual Monroe doctrine, but never
mind), and drawing "lines in the sand", maybe viable in a territorial,
traditional sovereignty-type of approach, is less adapted to a shared
infrastructure where network effects are major.

Here more than in anything else, joint efforts are indispensable to protect
and ensure the resilience of the infrastructure that is today essential to
the functioning of all societies. This is not about being naive : there are
cyber-threats, the issue is real and deserves a lot of attention. But it is
clear that a "Monroe Doctrine", which is often described as the historic
isolationist and non-interventionist leg of the US foreign policy, is too
close to unilateralism in spirit not to lead to a devastating arms race
through the development of mistrust. In a year when the new US president
dares to set the ambitious goal of a world without nuclear weapons, maybe
some lessons can be drawn from the past.

At the beggining of the XXth century, former French Premier, Georges
Clemenceau, famously said : "War is too important to be left to the
military".  As Mary Ann Davidson concedes herself, cooperation among all
stakeholders will be more essential on the issue of cybersecurity and
cyber-war than in any other domain. This may  therefore  be the litmus test
of the credibility of the multi-stakeholder approach : will serious MS
discussions prove able to address this common challenge in an innovative and
productive manner ? I hope so. How and where they can be organised is still
open.

Best

Bertrand

P.S. : The above comments are made on a personal basis and not in any
official capacity.


2009/7/15 "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" <
wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de>

> Here is a good statement from Mary Ann Davidson, CSO from Oracle, where she
> proposes a "Monroe Doctrin" for Internet Governance. This is an extended
> version from a statement she made in a Congressional Hearing recently.
>
> If somebody expected that we will soon the end of the IG debate, the
> contrary will be the case: The discussion has just started and the risk is,
> that all the new entrants in the discussion will probably not understand,
> what multistakeholderism is and why this has been an achievement for the
> diplomacy of the 1st decade of the 21st century. The 2nd decade could look
> rather different.
>
> Wolfgang
>
> http://blogs.oracle.com/maryanndavidson/
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-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle

Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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