West must work with the rest to secure Internet

Sovereign equality also means that global governance and management of cyberspace should not be monopolized by one country or a small group of countries. Furthermore, this function cannot be delegated to a non-governmental organization because it would lack legitimacy. So either the UN or a specialized inter-governmental body created for this purpose should be responsible for cyberspace governance.

Third, a responsible state should have a responsible concept or perception of cyber security. The interdependency of states and the common challenges they face in cyberspace make cyber security a global issue. So all states should hold sincere, constructive dialogue, and deepen their understanding and trust based on mutual respect to develop a peaceful, safe, open and cooperative cyberspace, and to achieve win-win results.

The UN's collective security system should apply to cyberspace too. In this respect, states should abandon detrimental and counteractive concepts that are not in harmony with the trend of our times.

One such concept is power politics and zero-sum thinking, some of whose examples are: one country's security is solely based on absolute and overwhelming military advantages over others, a Cold War enemy is forever an enemy or adversary and should always be contained, deterrence is always an important tool in foreign relations, and the emerging cyberspace is just another domain for confrontation and hostilities. The dangerous militarization of cyberspace is more or less based on such thinking.

Neo-colonialist thinking is another counteractive concept. Some Western countries' efforts to expand the Council of Europe-promoted Convention on Cybercrime worldwide remind us of how the West promoted the European Law of Nations across the rest of the world and turned it into international law, which indeed was part of the colonization process.

The West has always considered its policies and laws to be the best and forced the rest of the world to do the same. Do people keen on expanding the Convention on Cybercrime worldwide have the same colonial mindset that their ancestors centuries ago had?

The author is a Beijing-based observer of international affairs.

(China Daily 06/29/2013 page5)