Exploring Root-causes of Internet Impact On International Politics

By Yu Li

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Exploring Root-causes of Internet Impact On International Politics

By Yu Li

Department of Political Science, Zhengzhou University

Introduction

Internet since birth has exerted an extensive impact on international politics and a more profound impact on national interests, power and security -- the operational core of international politics. Therefore, this paper intends to study the root-causes of Internet impact on international politics.

Firstly, the study of the root-causes is an entry point to explore the future potential of Internet. As Internet uses become more popular and deep-going, the Internet impact is its outward manifestation of its inherent operating logic. What potential can be tapped becomes concerns for people to look forward to the future. In this regard, we should not only understand the Internet itself, but also the internal mechanism of its impact so as to make analysis and judgments.

Secondly, a study of mechanisms of the Internet influence on international politics helps to improve era adaptability of international political theory and the level of awareness and practice of various countries in relation to political significance of Internet. Globalization is one of the main topics of contemporary international politics, and Internet is one important manifestation of globalization, and an important element for the theme of non-traditional security, clash of civilizations and actors pluralism. Therefore, the study of the era impact on international politics cannot disregard Internet, the important contemporary phenomenon. Then make some observations on what impact Internet has on international politics and how the response should be, and how international politics could get the times features through Internet.

II. The Internet Impact on the Core of International Politics: National Interests, Power and Security

Through the above study, it can be said that a role of Internet is reflected more significantly at the national level, because the virtual nature of Internet at this level is most vulnerable, its real nature is most intense and this level is also a link between the individual level and the global level. Certain influence of Internet on individuals and the global system cannot be directly reflected at the two levels but at the national level. So, it is necessary to focus on changes of the core hub connecting with other levels at the national level, i.e. national interests, national power and national security.

(1) From the national interests perspective

Internet is a new space for concentrated national interests. As a product of technological revolution, the Internet technology tools identity makes it the same as any other technological invention, i.e. a neutral tool characteristic. Whoever uses it would have the same effects. However, Internet once is used by state actors, It is not just a technical tool, but has become an international political tool, i.e. a tool to pursue state power and national interests with a non-neutral effects. Thus, this non-neutral status, in turn, affects the behavior of state actors.8Therefore, as a communications tool, the state will make good use of it and bring its useful role to play, hopefully to expand the national interests space, and enhance the national interests; meanwhile, undermining other countries’ Internet, making it difficult to take advantage of this useful tool or spread negative information on other countries on Internet to cause damages to their national interests, thus, ensuring relative growth of the national interests. Therefore, the relationship between the Internet and national interests has negative correlation characteristics. It can be said that any country formulating the Internet strategic objectives takes into comprehensive consideration its national security, economic expansion and political ideology and other aspects. Safeguarding Internet security has become an important part of national security interests.

Through Internet, the integration of national interests, national strength and national identity can be explained in the following example. Bin Laden's death triggered an Internet Storm, indicating that the Internet is nothing other than a new position of national interests cohesion, a major power politics-led Internet contest.1According to Keynote Systems, the Bin Laden's death triggered CNN mobile site downtime.2Google Reported the Bin Laden's search volume increased by 100 times in the United States in the evening of 1 May 2011.3While Twitter said the news consumption rates were up 4000 times per second after Bin Laden’s news.4Only one country, Uzbekistan had no report.5According to Sina report, search for live photos of U.S. President Obama with officials in the White House watching the operation grew the fastest on Flicker account. Flicker traced the search for the photos viewers: The photos released after 5.5 hours attracted 390,000 viewers, after 7 hours 600,000 reviews, and after 25 hours 1.4 million visits. The White House Flicker Viewers are about 100,000 a day, but on May 3 increased to 2.5 million.

(2) From the national power perspective

Power and interests complement each other, to safeguard national interests is more often reflected on the pursuit of state power and standing elevation, so the Internet has become a new growth point and competition field for national power.

The power demonstrated by Internet is unprecedented"6, information is power, and the Internet Servers are this power infrastructure. The United States controls l0 of l3 global root servers, including main root servers. For consolidating possession of more information power, the United States has already become a global leader in formulating and implementing relevant strategies. Since 2003, the U.S. Government unveiled a series of cyberspace policies documents, such as78910The U.S. Cyber Command is also in full operation since October 2011, the U.S. Networking strategy is in place.11

The power of Internet is combination of soft power and hard power. This makes analysis of Internet state power more complex as its power has a concealed cover, is easy to master and has a lethal capability, but rests on national strength. It is closely related with national security issues since it involves international disputes. For example, a global corporation is hacked, hackers are from country A, the attacked reason is that a company of country A is in country B, because country A and country B are locked in a conflict or even a war. While country B suffers such hacking from country A, in fact to certain extent, country A has also been adversely affected or suffered losses because the hacked company has branches all over the world as well as many customers in country A. This case illustrates the Internet provocative behavior is more restrained by global interdependence.

(3) From national security perspective

Cyber security threat is a most serious threat to national security and public safety as well as economic challenges faced by all nations.12In order to ensure national security, economic prosperity as well as to provide vital services to the Americans, the United States will use all state power tools to protect its cyberspace.13Thus, development of Internet makes sovereign state being in a virtual information world without fixed boundary, in which countries not only should maintain the traditional boundary security, but also to safeguard the Internet sovereign boundary security. This marks military-centered national security paradigm shifts to information-centered national security paradigm.

However, in the virtual cyberspace, the Internet sovereign boundary is difficult to define. We must go beyond the traditional understanding of the national borders. In the virtual cyberspace, the delimitation of frontiers will no longer be based on physical existence, cyber boundaries will not be fixed, but in a dynamic course of changing. A country needs to continuously inject energy into cyberspace, can it maintain its own the existing cyber territory. A Country cyber boundary may unnecessarily coincide with its terrestrial boundaries. The former is in constant changes while the latter can remain long-term stable. The energy to maintain the former derives from the comprehensive national strength. A size of national cyber territory is positively correlated with its comprehensive national strength, the relative stronger the comprehensive national strength, the relatively larger the cyber boundary.14

Based on the above studies, this understanding as follows can be reached, Internet expands the national security connotations, i.e. Internet security has become an important component of national security similar to the political security, economic security, military security and others, and related with national survival, independence and development. And although belonging to the information category of the national security interests, the Internet security interests become equally important part of the national security interests the same with political security interests, economic security interests and military security interests, etc. Therefore, to safeguard Internet security is to safeguard the national security interests, which requires fundamentally commanding the Internet system rights. Cyber commanding rights is the state power within cyberspace, is a fundamental guarantee of sovereign state survival in cyberspace and is a new element of state power in international politics. With increasing impact of Internet on the real world, the national cyber power determines its position in the current and future international system. It should be noted that from the Internet internal structure to cyberspace existence, the United States not only controls and occupies global cyberspace commanding heights, moreover, and is in an absolute advantageous position other countries are difficult to shake in the short term. Thereby, Information is power.15

Internet is a high-tech product.24High-Tech itself has both permeability and political feature, which can play a role in a political environment.16Internet in fact has become means and field domains platform for international political game-play, and cyber safety risks also constitute the 2l century's most severe economic challenges and national security challenges. The intra-country contests in the Internet virtual space are not more peaceful than their response to a real conflict in international politics. Internet can also affect national political situation developments. Take Egypt for example, Internet played a catalyst role in the l8-day Egyptian "revolution" from 25 January to 11 February 2011. The Egyptian case indicates that Internet helps actors act more quickly in political participation, promote the speed of social change more rapidly, and may ultimately result in the loss of social stability. This shows that in the virtual cyberspace, ideology and values still exist and play important roles.

III. The Role of Internet in Boosting International Structural Changes: Catalytic, Synchronized, and Structural Roles

The changes among the individual, national and global systems levels are interactive, these interactive changes of which constitute systematic effects produced by the global political system under the Internet impact, and also reflect catalytic, synchronized, and structural roles of Internet. In addition to these main roles, Internet also has a variety of different minor roles, which sub-react on the main ones.

(1) Catalysis: providing opportunities for transforming factors to achieve changes in the current international politics

Catalyst role refers to Internet as a catalyst to eliminate the stagnating time and space because of some factors to stall changes, thus avoiding systematic effects, and offsetting factors for changes so as to ensure the linear results, i.e. ensuring the international political changes to happen.

Regarding the social system, Internet via organization, notice, evaluation and exchange acts as a catalyst for changes of international politics, which not only accelerates the occurrence of certain events, but also enables some events to occur that are normally unlikely to happen. .

From organization perspective, the Organizational role of Internet is to gather followers and liaison staff and mobilize mass actions. This Internet characteristics show interaction between the individual level and the national level as well as interaction between the national level and international level through the individual level.

Actors for collective actions can be spontaneous and one-off, or organized and long-term. Even though Internet cannot determine any event, yet, does affect the interactive mood of participants and organizers coordinative capacity, or even affect the outcome of a collective action.

The crowd scale created by the Internet liaison capacity within a short time is unprecedented in the human history, so in the real political interaction, gathering camp forces through Internet often plays a key role. This effect is constitutive, can help boost the success of a political act and the original reason of the event may simply inadequate to make it successful. It should be noted that this power can be used both for beneficial purposes and destructive purposes.

From Bulletin perspective, the bulletin role of Internet is to publish information, show identity and information feedback. Publishing bulletin is a inherent role of media for communication and information, so Internet must also convey national interests, or international cooperation, international disputes, national security-related information, thus, exchanging information at individual, national and international levels.

Individuals, organizations and states all can disseminate information via Internet in order to achieve rapid, large-scale dissemination effect, so the public can be first to understand what happens around the world. Internet is the fast and effective channel to popularize national policies and image, though a national image is actually created by various sources.

In the traditional era of television or newspaper, television is timelier than newspaper in terms of timely news report. However, with the rise of the Internet as a new media, an event witness can straightforwardly go onto Internet without the voice through a microphone. In short, a lot of very important or authoritative news is no longer released through the competent authority. Concerns help a message transmission rather than a message transmission influencing concerns.

From evaluation perspective, evaluation role of Internet is reflected on comments of different topics such as political, economic, military situation and the people's livelihood, power, government decision-making, the international situation and others. This role of evaluation is no longer just to guide public opinion, but to some extent be guided by the public opinion.

This feature of Internet is able to display public opinions on national events and policies. A sovereign state could collect views from all perspectives, and national leaders could communicate with the public through cyberspace, officials wrongdoings will be exposed and continually criticized by network users and the sentencing of a case may ultimately unfold a debate on Internet.

Regarding impacts on international politics, issues such as war and peace, conflict and cooperation, security and development, and overseas economic policy directions, inter-country comparisons, national political systems, and even cultural advantages and disadvantages, racial discrimination and other issues are all shared and discussed and debated, and constitute Internet different voices. However, these voices can exert direct impact on the people’s beliefs, ideology, emotions and psychology, and strengthen some people's identity, and form interests consensus. Whether these public views are correct or misguided, undoubtedly once formed, will inevitably have an impact on the real society.

From Exchanges perspective, the community role of Internet indicates that Internet enters the interpersonal era following the emergence of blog, social networking and microblogging. This Internet feature shows interactions between the system-level and individual-level.

The interpersonal interactive world is indeed a judgment on the future world model by constructivism and the idea of this world model or the future features of international community is from the ideas of Kant's lasting peace. This ideal is made possible by emergence of internet with named microblogging and exchanges.

Undoubtedly, the interpersonal interaction on Internet is a brand new thing, and the potential of Internet is unmatched currently by any other technology and communication methods, everyone in the Internet communities is all-dimensional and engaged indirect contacts while everyone is also in the hands of others comprehensive information.

(2) Synchronous Role: ensuring the international political reality to have era characteristics

The synchronous role of the Internet refers here to continuously transmitting the Internet stored information to all levels within the international political system through efforts of all systems levels to adapt to the times, and the international politics constantly renew it to keep compatible with the trend of the times. This effect occurs and completes through changing interactions at all system levels with the same level, lower level or higher level. Changing views on system behavior logic by Realism, liberalism, Constructivism, eclecticism keep abreast with the changing times, among which eclecticism implies characteristics of contemporary international politics, and the Internet role is basically compatible with this feature.

This result indicates that all levels of international politics are still influenced by traditional factors such as the comparative strengths of major powers while gradually moving away from the traditional power control. State remains responsible for the security and power but non-survival issues are up to the individual decisions. This integration trend is not achieved by the international politics and the Internet independently, but by the interaction between the two.

Contemporary international relations theory tends to develop an analytical eclecticism. Since interaction of all elements in the world society becomes complex, the world eco-logic shows a trend of theoretical models integration.

(3) The structural role: to provide a real space for the international political evolution

Internet has indeed provided the necessary conditions for birth of world society and disintegration of the international boundaries, and promoted the real progress of this trend. As a driving force of evolution of the international community, Internet structural role is played in the following four aspects:

In aspect of world space flattening, at the individual level, integrated human nature unfolds from the side. At the national level, similar actors in different areas involved in coinciding field. On the one hand, action scope of state actors is not limited to the political sphere, but is much more extensive; on the other hand, behavior of individual actors gradually writes off national boundaries. Individual actors and state actors compete hard in cooperation, which does not result in states retrogress and NGOs progress. At the system level, compared with the relative human capacity, the world becomes smaller. The Internet Nature demonstrates a virtual space, which covers the entire globe, and in which people-to-people and information-to-information can interact directly, and the performance of which is convenient, fast, and foundationally powerful.

In aspect of world time synchronization, at the individual level, interpersonal contact requires very short time, which is a significant change, but also very simple, and provides interpersonal communication without an intermediary. At the national level, various countries become more open, centralized and diversified interactions become more prominent. The premise of time synchronization is that countries are open to each other, but only having to become a member of the Internet world, can it get Internet synchronization service. At the international level, the States become more equal. All the latest advances on Internet in the world are available to everyone including a sovereign country, an individual or a NGO. New progress of mankind through the Internet can become a common background for national policy makers, technicians, businessmen, etc.

In aspect of reality of interpersonal society, at the individual level, identified personal characteristics enable individuals to become actors in the international system, rather than only source of information. At the national level, all levels actors have equal access to information, the ability to publish information is the same under normal situation conditions, of course, and the Internet-commanding states are leading. States as units of international community have a special position on Internet, and are the more important unified units than any other elements. At the international level, Internet can cover world-wide communication, but individuals are main players. This Internet community is virtual, but exchange of information is real, and the content of information is based on social reality.

In aspect of domestic and international integration. on the one hand, the Internet impact influences the personal, national and international system levels to get their levels integrated, on the other hand, reflects the existing varieties of boundaries. Because individuals as the main actors in the Internet space exert a stronger impact than any other non-state actors on reducing the dominance of state actors. Because NGOs governance model is still an asymmetrical governance structure while interpersonal interactions fully shows a symmetrical governance structure, resulting in a fundamental impact on the national borders, which echoes the Marxist theory of individuals as actors in a society without any system level.

IV. Conclusion

International political process experiences many changes under influence of Internet, which only provides for actors a new carrier or a new platform, the virtual space and real world community can interact. However, Internet cannot replace existing ability of the international community, neither can it complete the task of the international community evolution, and can only provide a possibility for a world society evolution. National interests, national power and national security remain reality of the existential international community with pursuit of interests by sovereign states. For example, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, etc. have developed their cyber strategy, which is the hard evidence. Of course, it should be noted that the Internet real impact on international politics indicates the historical development of the international community is correlated with human time and space capacity.

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