The US Information Wars: Towards Defining a National Cyber Strategy

Cyber security issues are becoming critically important due to the growing potential of ICT and the possibility of using it as an effective weapon by states. The United States, as the motherland of the Internet and one of the most technically developed countries, has been transforming its military forces since the mid-1980s by integrating cyber components into all the activities of the Department of Defense and other agencies responsible for national security. As one of the American strategic goals is the domination of cyberspace, the United States is interested in retaining all the possibilities necessary to conduct defensive as well as offensive information operations during the periods of both war and peace.

However, such a policy puts the national security of other countries under risk and threatens international security and stability by motivating other nations to work on crafting offensive cyber strategies and thus provoking an information arms race. The lack of international norms regulating conflicts in cyberspace, as well as of globally accepted rules of conduct, creates a legal vacuum. The author provides an overview of several alternative ways to further the development of an international legal regime for cyberspace, as well as the potential fields for international cooperation on cyber security issues.

The United States and Russia stand for different approaches when it comes to the main driving forces of multilateral negotiations on information security issues. U.S. officials are convinced that existing principles of international law serve as the appropriate framework that should govern the use of cyberspace in connection with hostilities, while Russia promotes the idea of a new complex global convention that would set an international information security regime. Despite differences in their approaches, Russia and the United States are consistently working on practical bilateral agreements that create an important basis for the further development of cyber issues on the multilateral level.

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