Digital Diplomacy: Navigating the Cyber War in International Affairs

Abstract

Cyberspace is rapidly changing the face of international relations, creating new forms of conflicts, competitions and diplomacy of which states are still only now gaining a full understanding of and control over. In this study, the term digital sovereignty is discussed in the context of the present cyber warfare and is analyzed based on several recent literatures and sources from academia that present it as a new method of state diplomacy to attempt at the solution to ever increasing cyber-warfare threat to the States. The research is qualitative and descriptive and based on secondary sources only, it focuses on some of the main themes in cyber diplomacy, namely the development of cyber diplomacy, salient cyber incidents, international frameworks for cyber governance and attribution and regulation in cyberspace. Security is found to be an integral part of twenty-first century foreign policy and that digital sovereignty combined with strong cyber diplomacy is an adequate measure to counter cyber threats as military deterrence or technical defense have proven themselves to be insufficient measures.