The Devil Was in the Details: The Failure of UN efforts in Cyberspace

By James Lewis

James Lewis is a Senior Vice President and Program Director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).  Before joining CSIS, he worked at the Departments of State and Commerce.  He was the advisor for the 2010, 2013 and 2015 United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Information Security and has led a long-running Track II dialogue on cybersecurity with the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

Unsurprisingly, the fifth UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) ran into difficulties that proved fatal. Previous GGEs operated in a more favorable international climate. The substance of the GGE’s work peaked with its 2013 Report and by the end of the 2015 session, it was clear that the GGE format for negotiating faced difficult and perhaps insurmountable issues. Chief among these issues is the application of international law to cyber operations.

While the Chair held the 2017 GGE open at the conclusion of the fourth round of talks and circulated a revised text in July, agreement was not possible. Disputes over three subjects blocked consensus: the application of international law, agreement on Article 51 of the UN Charter (the inherent right to self-defense), and “countermeasures.” The connecting strand among the three is that Russia and China fear that endorsing self-defense, countermeasures, and international law would be used by the U.S. to justify retaliation for malicious actions in cyberspace. Privately, Chinese officials also say that since they are not yet on a par with the U.S. in cyber capabilities, they are reluctant to commit to how law should be applied.

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