The Impact Of Cyberwarfare On International Relations

The primary goal of this paper is to identify the issues cyberwarfare brings tointernational relations. Cyberwarfare is an effective weapon for weaker states toemploy against stronger adversaries, regardless of distance, which has repercussions forinternational peace and security. The heart of cyberwarfare’s effectiveness as a weaponis its asymmetric qualities. Moreover, a discussion of how international relations theorymight incorporate cyberwarfare for analysis demonstrates the theoretical compatibilitybetween cyberwarfare and the field of international relations.There are three groups of asymmetries in cyberwarfare that benefit the weakerstate in a conflict with a stronger adversary: favoring the attacker, favoring opaquegovernments, and favoring poorer states. There are two categories of issues for howcyberwarfare impacts international relations: issues arising from a highly networkedworld, and issues arising from cyber law and international regulations. The researchapproach of this paper is to examine cyberwarfare’s asymmetries, the structure ofcyberspace, the nature of cyberpower, the rise of cyberwarfare, watershed incidents ofstate-sponsored cyberattacks, the aftermath of a state-sponsored cyberattack, andChina’s cyberwarfare program, which offer insights into how cyberwarfare favorsweaker states. Moreover, these discussions reveal ways in which cyberwarfare impactsinternational relations. Finally, the examination of how different international relationstheories can incorporate different issues of cyberwarfare demonstrates the virtues anddrawbacks of each theoretical approach. For many issues, liberalism and constructivismprovide the most compelling framework.This paper offers a new conceptual framework for the analysis of cyberwarfare, asit organizes cyberwarfare’s asymmetries into categories, it combines political andtechnical aspects of cyberwarfare with environmental and historical factors, and itapplies international relations theory to the resulting issues.